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Evolution of video monitoring displays offers more for less

Sep 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Kim Templeman-Holmes

The next generation of video monitoring displays promises greater performance and value.

Space is at a premium in Global Television’s OB truck.

Video monitoring displays traditionally have been used in newsroom, production, control room, studio and field operations, and their place within these broadcast operations is one of the few aspects of their use and functionality that has changed little over the years. How they fulfill these monitoring roles, however, is another story. With the evolution of the industry from analog to digital SD and HD operations, the demand has grown for displays boasting much richer feature sets, more intelligent design, greater versatility in handling different types of inputs and increased flexibility in the way those signals are handled and analyzed.

In response to market demand, manufacturers introduced more robust systems with a higher overall standard of performance, complemented by new features that enhance everyday monitoring operations. The industry's push for broadcast solutions also has led to innovation, as manufacturers have been asked to provide broader feature sets at the same or more attractive price points. As new materials and manufacturing techniques move from limited and costly production into the realm of mainstream use, the next generation of video monitoring displays promises to provide even greater performance and value.

DTV opens the door to richer monitoring tools

The full conversion of broadcast stations to digital has opened up new possibilities and options with respect to video monitoring displays. Because the digital signal incorporates both video and audio, all on one SDI stream, it offers conveniences in distribution, routing and networking. Rather than deal with different connectors and an interim stage for handling AES, the broadcaster only needs to worry about a single stream. And because audio typically accompanies video, operators of video monitoring displays now can put on headphones, pick the audio pair they wish to hear and watch audio level meters on-screen along with video.

Canal Overseas’ HD facility outside Paris relies on an HD/SD-SDI closed-captioning bridge to enable efficient handling and storage of World System Teletext (WST) subtitle data within an HD/SD playout infrastructure.

While these are welcome benefits, the shift to digital also has added complexity to the handling and display of video within the broadcast plant or other production environment. Over the long transition from analog to digital, broadcasters have adopted a broad variety of formats; there are 19 digital varieties as opposed to the single analog 625/525-line standard. The complexity and variety of digital signals requires more sophisticated video monitoring displays capable of accommodating multiple formats and sources, offering detailed information about the content, providing markers and other visually oriented analytical tools, supplying some routing capacity, and often giving operators the means to evaluate accompanying audio signals.

Today's video monitoring displays often accept multiple inputs, allowing operators to select and view pictures — as a single image or side by side — in color, blue-only or monochrome. Users can keep an eye on audio through an in-monitor display and listen to it through an integrated headphone jack. A variety of markers highlight the selected aspect ratio, either 16:9 or 4:3, with safe areas according to user-configurable settings (generally a percentage of the overall screen space). Also provided on-screen are key identifiers that indicate video format, source and time code. Within an in-monitor window, a waveform display of the input signal serves as a complementary monitoring tool. More recently, manufacturers also have introduced on-screen vectorscopes and even closed-captioning data.

Once relegated to a separate box in the control room, the vectorscope is now available as part of the video monitoring display. Broadcasters may not have realized it was a built-in feature they wanted, but now that they've seen it and know it's available, it has become a popular option. Along with the novel appeal of this innovation come the benefits of space savings, the elimination of a discrete hardware system, and related cost and maintenance savings.

As the demand has grown for richer feature sets at lower prices, manufacturers have built in numerous conveniences, both large and small, that address the challenges of dealing with more signals, more formats and more variations in how video is displayed.

Implications of HD for video monitoring displays

Rack-mounted video monitoring displays can offer advanced waveform, vectorscope and closed-captioning features.

The migration of the broadcast industry to HD has introduced more stringent demands of video monitoring displays, forcing manufacturers to get onboard and design appropriately robust solutions. The move to HD fueled the addition of many of the aforementioned features and also raised the bar for image quality. As a result, the majority of video monitoring displays on the market today meet an acceptable standard with respect to monitoring features and image quality and resolution.

Another change fostered by the shift to HD is the adoption by broadcasters of 3Gb/s infrastructures and their growing interest in 3Gb/s-ready or 3Gb/s-capable devices, including audio and video monitoring systems, as a future-proof addition to their investment. Just a few years ago, a good part of the industry had no idea what 3Gb/s was. Now, many broadcasters won't order equipment that isn't 3Gb/s-compatible, even if their stations can't yet support it.

The manufacturer is not the mother of invention as far as standards, new features and manufacturing technologies are concerned. It is the market that dictates the features and capabilities of video monitoring displays. If the demands of the market are technically feasible and worth the cost of R&D and production, then manufacturers will make and offer solutions that meet those demands. Support for 3Gb/s is among those capabilities viewed as a must-have going forward, and many products today offer it right out of the gate in order to address broadcasters' concern regarding the continued increase in formats and specifications — and the demands these changes place on broadcast equipment and infrastructure.