Continuity Monitoring of Audio, Video and Data in a Multi-Channel Facility

Much has been written on the subject of maintaining video quality in a modern television facility. But with often as many as a hundred or more television channels to monitor, we must be concerned not only with signal quality, but also with the continuity of the video, multiple audio channels, closed captioning, V-Chip parental guidance and other VBI data associated with each channel. The task of monitoring so many channels, often involves employing a plethora of gadgets specifically designed to check each function. But even with the best equipment, it is difficult to watch up to a hundred picture monitors and impossible to monitor the levels and phases of hundreds of audio channels. And then what do we do about the closed captions, XDS and other data on every channel? — This paper describes a system using in-line video and audio converters, to automatically monitor signal continuity, at the same time as reporting video errors (including EDH, frozen video and black), audio levels and phases, closed captions, V-Chip parental guidance, source identification and time information. Any errors discovered, are automatically flagged over a TCI/IP network and may be logged in a database. A remote monitoring and control system, based on the common SNMP protocol, is described.

Published

2001-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00358

ISBN

978-1-61482-934-8