TAG Video Systems launches realtime media platform

TAG Video Systems, the leader in realtime, software-based deep monitoring of linear video workflows, has launched the Realtime Media Platform, a groundbreaking, open-source paradigm that monitors, aggregates, manages and utilizes data-driven viewer analytics to provide users with the insight required to build performant linear media systems. The unique, multi-level Realtime Media Platform provides users with the tools they need for informed and intelligent decision making resulting in a precise and pristine viewer experience and leading to an increase in consumption, elevated customer engagement, and heightened loyalty. The platform was introduced by Kevin Joyce, Zer0 Friction Officer at TAG during a virtual press briefing on October 5, 2021. Paul Briscoe, the company’s Chief Architect; and Peter Wharton, Chief Strategy Officer, participated in the presentation.

“We are incredibly excited to present our Realtime Media Platform to the industry,” explained Joyce. “TAG has been the architect of so many industry firsts, and this is no exception. We were the first IP-based, all software integrated probing, monitoring and visualization solution, the first (and only) to implement a Zer0 Friction strategy of asset utilization, and now we are the first to provide our users with the open-source tools they need to extract accurate data-driven information and use it to truly improve both Quality of Service and Quality of Experience for their customers. The Realtime Media Platform will give them the insights they need to achieve better performance, streamlined workloads and help them hit the sweet spot of true customer satisfaction.”

MCM (Multi-Channel Monitoring)
Comprised of multiple levels, the foundation of the Realtime Media Platform is TAG’s MCM (Multi-Channel Monitoring), a software-based IP end-to-end monitoring, deep probing, logging, and visualization solution offering numerous deployment options including bare metal, virtual machine, cloud and hybrid. The MCM monitors every type of signal from live production through OTT delivery and supports hundreds of sources including all the latest formats and transport methods such as JPEG XS, NDI 5, Dolby ATMOS, SRT and AWS CDI. It provides realtime visualization across the entire video enterprise and deep probing for critical analysis into signal health and the networks that carry them resulting in huge volumes of live source metrics and metadata. Signal metrics are displayed realtime in TAG user interfaces, retained in TAG logs for analysis and exposed to 3rd-party systems like DataMiner for aggregation and root cause analysis.

TAG MCM (Media Control System)
Now with TAG’s MCS that voluminous raw data can be aggregated and correlated using the power of the cloud and machine learning, leveraging TAG data and metrics to create actionable insights. Using an open-source paradigm, the MCS serves as an aggregation engine capable of exposing the data collected by the MCM to standard third party analytic and visualization applications such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, Grafana and Prometheus to analyze and visualize data. For the first time, media companies will be able to measure internet networks and CDN performance across all of their signals and know where to shift workloads for optimum performance. It will identify cyclical errors within the log file noise and drive faster root cause analysis and recovery from intermittent issues. By aggregating data across multiple customers’ CDNs and internet networks, TAG will provide realtime CDN and network metrics to its customers, helping them steer around outages and congestion. It will correlate and identify problems across specific consumer devices, versions and platforms and identify content and delivery issues including bad source, origin, encoding; or CDN, regional or device problems, helping customers deliver interoperable signals. With TAG’s MCS, customers will be able to deliver an exceptional viewer experience that can be validated and measured.

“Until now,” Joyce added, “A lot of meaningful, insightful and actionable data was left in dusty logfiles that never saw the light of day. The Realtime Media Platform, with the MCS, provides users with the deep insight into quality, metrics and issues that will enable them to turn that data into a positive consumer experience with better curation, programming and improved integrity resulting in improved promotion, increased consumption and more customers with heightened loyalty.” Streaming Media