Volicon today announced the release of the Observer® Enterprise version 6.0 video content logging and monitoring system. Enhanced with robust new features, this latest Observer Enterprise version not only simplifies critical processes with new loudness-monitoring capabilities, closed-caption support, and transport-stream monitoring and export, but also serves as a convenient and versatile platform for additional monitoring applications.
"We're continually refining our Observer product line to meet the evolving demands facing broadcast and media companies," said Eli Warsawski, president and CEO at Volicon. "While our Observer Enterprise system has always provided the reliable and straightforward monitoring capabilities our customers require, the 6.0 system release reflects significant advances that simplify compliance with new standards, regulations, and practices in the management and delivery of DTV services, and it opens opportunities to introduce new revenue-generating services."
Key enhancements in the Observer Enterprise 6.0 include the same transport-stream logging capability that earned Volicon's Observer TS (transport stream) system a Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit award at the 2011 NAB Show. Now available in Enterprise 6.0, transport-stream logging gives broadcasters, networks, and cable operators the ability to handle MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 transport streams natively as high-resolution streams, or efficiently over the WAN as low-res proxies, while retaining the content and associated metadata within the stream. Dual-export functionality allows organizations to mark in and out points, clip content, and then export a full program and/or the full transport stream.
Using the system for compliance logging and air checks, operators can easily extract MPEG metadata and troubleshoot the MPEG transport stream live or from the Observer log. Because native transport-stream logging increases signal density and flexibility while enabling full-quality content logging, users also can employ their Observer Enterprise 6.0 systems to rebroadcast high-resolution data, provide interactive content, and offer dialnorm reporting for logged content.
Fully standards-compliant loudness monitoring also has been integrated into the Observer Enterprise 6.0 to enable real-time monitoring of broadcasts not only for regulatory compliance, but also to improve the overall listening experience for viewers. With intuitive overlay controls and browser-based loudness monitoring, Enterprise 6.0 users can maintain continuous measurement of program loudness and true-peak signal levels for instant verification, for review, or for export. These capabilities simplify the overall monitoring workflow and add value by eliminating the hassle and cost of working with external systems. The new Observer Enterprise release further simplifies operations by providing support for CEA-608/708 closed-captioning data within the transport stream.
Observer Enterprise 6.0 is now shipping.