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Live Monitor

Live video quality assurance that correlates with human vision across your network.

Live Monitor is a unified end-to-end system that analyzes and informs video quality evaluation at scale using automation.

Stop worrying about quality drop-offs and high operational costs. Live Monitor fully automates your QA process with the only quality metric that is correlated to human vision so that it can trace your video quality throughout its distribution.

A few ways Live Monitor ensures a consistent viewing experience:

  • Guards against the degradation of video quality across the network.
  • Increase efficiency of your video operations and reduce overhead costs.
  • System wide QA automation.
Macroblocking on a capture with a swimming shark video

Correlated real-time monitoring of every distribution function that can impact video quality.

Independently monitor and evaluate all active encoders and transcoders.

SSIMPLUS Live Monitor Dashboard on a computer screen

Live Monitor uses computationally efficient software-based probes to monitor content quality at all points in the video distribution and streaming pipeline, including:

  • Source validation for Linear Channels and Events.
  • Encoding performance and packaging validation.
  • Quality of Delivery and Viewer Experience monitoring across all demarcation points.
  • Content delivery and Playback monitoring.

Download the paper on live streaming optimization

Achieving cost-effective QA at scale is hard.

Live Monitor isn’t just another lab tool. It gives you a unified end-to-end system that analyzes and informs status of the viewer experience regardless of delivery method and display in use. When you consider the high operational cost of QA tools and that most do not correlate well to human vision, a quality assurance system that scales reliably is essential.

Connect with our team to learn more

Source validation demo of a skiier with 31 SSIMPLUS score

Live Monitor was built to address the QA needs of every video service.

You will enjoy unified and end-to-end monitoring of Viewer Scores, QoS, and regulatory compliance tracking across your full workflow with Live Monitor.

Subscriber satisfaction chain from creation (100 score) to processing and compression, then to final delivery the score lowers to 70.

Live Monitor delivers viewer-first real-time monitoring of input and output video quality including audio at every stage of the delivery ecosystem. It provides a clear view of potential problems including root causes, frequency and solutions even before subscribers notice them.

Dig deep dashboards.

Complex algorithms and big data visually presented so that executives and video operations teams can make better informed decisions.

SSIMPLUS LiveMonitor Business Operational Intelligence

How Live Monitor compares to other tools.

Product Capability Other Tools in the Market Live Monitor Solutions
1 Optimized alerts No Yes Live Monitor aggregates and correlates alerts across streams, location, path, monitoring point into one single alert to unburden NOC/OPS.
2 The most accurate perceptual quality metric No Yes Live Monitor processes each pixel for accurate perceptual quality assessment.
3 Root cause delineation No Yes Live Monitor offers single-pane correlated view between multiple streams, monitoring points, and redundancy paths to identify the cause.
4 Scale of impact & fault localization Partially Yes Live Monitor offers operational and alerting intelligence that quickly helps identify the scale of impact on customers.
5 Super search (search and sort) No Yes Live Monitor has the most flexible search engine that allows users to find information with the least number of clicks.
6 Latency between monitoring points No Yes Live Monitor computes latency across any two points in a delivery chain.
7 Audio/video lip sync No Yes Live Monitor detects video lip sync issues.
8 Uniform viewer score at all stages No Yes Live Monitor is the only tool in the industry that provides uniform scoring for any device, network, and stage across a content delivery chain.

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Why video services use Live Monitor.

Live Monitor offers real-time monitoring of the network while tracking and evaluating all encoders and transcoders to ensure consistent end user video quality at the device level.

Operational Benefits

Live Monitor enables you to deliver consistently better video experiences without increasing your operational costs or introducing unwanted technical complexity. Live Monitor provides a complete solution to Quality of Delivery, Viewer Experience, and Compliance Monitoring.

Using Live Monitor you can:

  • Root cause and fix issues at scale across a delivery chain faster than ever before using best-in-class Operational Intelligence platform
  • Monitor and compare viewer experiences over a variety of delivery methods or workflow segments.
  • Measure and trace viewer experience with the only objective quality metric that is aligned with human vision.

Business Operations

Live Monitor connects to your Live video workflow and operationalizes viewer experience data to remove the guesswork and inconsistency from manual QC and validation steps. By plugging into the content creation, contribution, distribution, and delivery steps, your quality assurance function may be scaled beyond non-metric-based processes so that you can deliver a reliable quality of experience to your distributors and subscribers. 

Using Live Monitor you can:

  • Reduce churn by understanding empirically how video quality and UX impact subscriber behavior.
  • Validate source quality to ensure that you are meeting SLAs and delivering the best viewer experience.

Live Monitor Versions

Professional Advanced Master
Description Automated Quality of Delivery Monitoring at Scale with Optimized Mean Time to Resolution Trace Viewer Experience from Content Creation to Consumption at Scale with Optimized Alerting Video Experience Automation using cutting edge metrics to locate and resolve the most challenging issues in real-time
Top Features
  • Transport and ABR Stream Monitoring
  • Full HD video support
  • Real-time alerting for delivery issues and content behaviour validation
  • Data Integrations using REST API
  • Perceptual Quality Monitoring
  • SDI, SDI over IP and Post STB Monitoring
  • Service level alerting
  • Custom dashboards with scheduled reports
  • Macroblocking, Lip Sync, Latency issue detection
  • SRT and Zixi Support
  • Monitoring for Redundant path included
  • Real-time data streaming integration
Recommended for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Operations teams primarily focused on content delivery All tiers of content operations and technology teams Content Operations, Technology, and Data teams

Live Monitor Detailed Features

Data resolution

Professional Advanced Master
1 second real-time data
1 minute historical data

Data retention

Professional Advanced Master
1 second real-time data granularity 30 min 30 min 30 min
1 minute historical data granularity 30 days 90 days 1 year

Operational Intelligence

Professional Advanced Master
Default dashboards and reports 4 6 10
Custom dashboards and reports 0 5 10
Custom dashboard development time (hrs) 0 10 40
Insights Platform UI access
Insights User accounts 0 4 10
Scheduled reports

Signal Interfaces

Professional Advanced Master
MPEG-TS over Multicast or Unicast
HLS
DASH
SMPTE 2110 & SMPTE 2022-6
SDI
HDMI
HDMI with channel change
Zixi
SRT

Video attributes

Professional Advanced Master
SD
HD
UHD

Codecs

Professional Advanced Master
All commonly used video and audio codecs

Delivery Metrics

Professional Advanced Master
ETR-101-290
Quality of Delivery
Network, transport, and streaming protocol metrics
Elementary stream metrics

Perceptual Video Metrics

Professional Advanced Master
SSIMPLUS Viewer Score
Encoder Performance Score
No-reference SSIMPLUS Viewer Score
Macroblocking

Other Metrics

Professional Advanced Master
Audio
Closed captions
SCTE monitoring

Content Behavior Validation

Professional Advanced Master
Video freeze
Audio loudness level
Video latency
Audio/video sync

Visual validation

Professional Advanced Master
Thumbnail wall for all services
Thumbnails for all streams
Content captures
Multiviewer for post-STB monitoring

Alerts

Professional Advanced Master
Stream alerts
Service alerts
SNMP traps
Slack and email based alerting

API/Data Integrations

Professional Advanced Master
Configuration REST API
Data REST API (queries/hr) 1 5 10
Data REST API (records/hr) 500 5,000 50,000
Data streaming integration
API based alerts

Support

Professional Advanced Master
Hours 8/5 8/7 24/7
Response time SLA 1 day 1 hour 15 mins

Maximum streams per monitoring point

Professional Advanced Master
5 8 15

Redundant Paths

Professional Advanced Master

Connect with our team to learn more

Automate your QA and stop worrying about quality drop-offs, and high operational cost so that you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes from the only end-to-end solution that works across broadcast, OTT streaming, and cable workflows.

SSIMWAVE's measurement standard represents a generational breakthrough in the video industry.

The Television Academy, 67th Primetime Emmy Awardfor significantly impacting television technology and engineering.

SSIMWAVE's SSIMPLUS™ platform is by far the best device-adaptive perceptual video quality predictor we have seen in the market.

Miguel Cabello, Video Technology ArchitectTelefonica

Technical Specifications

System requirements

SSIMPLUS Live Monitor is a software-based solution that deploys on commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Run a single instance on a single server or scale to multiple instances on a cluster with database redundancy and geo-diverse deployment.

  • Operating systems: CentOS, Redhat
  • Virtual machines: VirtualBox, VMWare
  • Containers: Docker
  • Internet access for centralized data platform

Supported input formats

Uncompressed formats
  • SMPTE ST 2110-20
    • Supported pixel formats: YUV 4:2:2, 8, 10, 12, 16 bit
    • Supported video resolutions: 4k30, 1080p60, 1080i30, 720p60
  • SMPTE ST 2022-6 (SDI over IP)
    • Supported pixel formats: YUV 4:2:2, 10 bit
    • Supported video resolutions: 1080p60, 1080i30, 720p60, 480i
  • SDI (Blackmagic Design DeckLink cards)
  • HDMI (Magewell ProCapture cards)
    • HDMI 1.4a, 2.0
    • HDCP 1.4
    • IR support for channel change
Compressed formats
  • MPEG Transport Streams
    • UDP Multicast/Unicast, RTP, Zixi, SRT
    • Parsing and reporting of SCTE-35 messages
ABR HLS
DASH-IF
DASH-CIF
CMAF
Parsing and reporting of SCTE-35 messages
HDR HLG & PQ for HEVC/AVC
SMPTE ST 2110-20

Supported codecs

Video codecs H.264/AVC
H.265/HEVC
MPEG-2
Audio codecs AAC
HE-ACC
HE-ACC v2
Dolby Digital (AC-3)
Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3)
Dolby Atmos
MPEG-2 (L1, 2, 3)
MPEG-1
PCM Audio over SDI/HDMI/ST 2022-6*
IEC61937 (AC-3 over HDMI)
*SMPTE ST 2022-6 Audio support for interlaced content only

Supported video, audio and compliance metrics

Perceptual video metrics Target Display Device Adaptive SSIMPLUS Viewer Score for TV, Tablet, Phone, Monitor, and Laptop
Encoder Performance Score
No-reference SSIMPLUS Viewer Score
Macroblocking
Delivery metrics ETSI TR 101 290
QoD
Network, transport, and streaming protocol metrics
Elementary stream metrics
Content behaviour validation Video freeze
Audio loudness level
Video latency
Audio/video sync
Visual validation Thumbnail wall for all services
Thumbnails for all streams
Content captures
Multiviewer for post-STB monitoring
Audio QoD
True Peak Loudness measurement
Integrated Loudness measurement
Short term measurement
Momentary loudness measurement
Closed Captions (CEA-608/CEA-708) Quality of Experience (Measures abnormalities in presentation and display of captions)

Quality of Delivery (Measures abnormalities in control commands and packet processing)

HLS Metrics HTTP Response Code counts for Manifests/Segments
Ad insertion

  • SCTE-35 SpliceInsert / TimeSignal commands containing Provider/Distributor Placement Opportunities
Timing information
QoE transitions
Loudness transitions

Actionable dashboards

Flexible organizational levels Create rich topology levels to organize your deployment

  • For example; Networks contain Regions contain Markets contain Services contain Streams
Reporting Report metrics at a Network and Region level
Report metrics at a Market level
Report metrics at a Service and Stream level
Settings & Configuration Global settings
Alert template configuration
Server manager
Support portal
Help portal

Get Live Monitor working for you

Download the product sheet or talk to a representative.

Download the Live Monitor Product Sheet

Connect with our team to learn more

View a demo of our technology