CVE promotes Zer0 Friction approach to remote production with Tag VS

Communication Video Engineering (CVE) has continued its initiative of explaining the potential of remote production by hosting an exclusive technical seminar with Tag Video Systems.

This follows on from a similar event with Sony and Nevion, both of which are intended to help overcome the hesitation towards the adoption of remote production still experienced in the Italian market.

A dedicated workshop

The event took place at CVE’s headquarters in Verano Brianza, with key figures from the broadcast, telco, AV production and media markets in attendance.

The driving theme of the day focused on the essential area of monitoring of the video management process – in its infinite variations and across four segments, live production, playout management, delivery and over the top (OTT).

Luca Catalano, CEO at CVE, introduced the event by underlining how, thanks to Tag and its Zer0 Friction solution, it is possible to achieve total monitoring of all television flows on the IP domain with a single package, visually and by means of metrics.

“The system”, said Catalano, “manageable on a COTS type server, allows any production company and broadcaster to constantly assess the health of the signals at any point in the process. The flexibility of Tag Zer0 Friction allows you to adapt to any scenario by configuring the signals on the multiviewers as desired so as to follow the entire workflow – and certainly not only in remote production.”

Nir Cang, Tag technical application specialist, then outlined the most important traits of the company, underlining that, “the team, now made up of 44 people, has seen organic growth and profits up 56% in 2021 alone”.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tag was formed by two experts in IP video processing software, Tomer Schechter (T) and Gal Waldman (G), which is how the name Tag came about. Their focus was on how to unify real-time process monitoring and the visualisation of all live and linear media streams in workflows, anywhere and at any scale.

With offices in the US, UK, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada, Tag’s strategy is based on Zer0 Friction, a solution considered to be a “culture, strategy, value proposition and discriminating business factor”.

It’s only software (but I like it)

Cang said: “We are faced with an integrated software solution for detection, monitoring and multiple display in real time with low latency that makes use of 100% equipment, COTS and cloud.

“Zer0 Friction is at the service of all major broadcast and multimedia applications.”

The solution covers live production (SMPTE ST2110, ST2022-6/7, JPEG XS, CDI, uncompressed ultra-low latency NDI); playout/delivery (uncompressed and compressed); broadcast (compressed H.264, HEVC); and OTT (compressed, ABR, decryption).

Nir Cang, Tag VS technical application specialist

It features over 500 deep investigation capabilities, connectivity up to 400Gbps, and UHD 4K input and display capability. Based on an open architecture with a state-of-the-art API, it integrates into NMS, BCS orchestration and automation processes. This software-based IP monitoring platform with bare metal, VM, cloud and hybrid implementation, has already been adopted by over 100,000 channels managed globally, he added.

Live production

Cang explained how Tag supports all live production input formats, even in the cloud. It can scale from simple quad displays to thousands of inputs and hundreds of displays. Thanks to REMI, the same equipment, the same team and the same structure have created greater reliability and the possibility of adding improvements for all productions.

However, he conceded that bandwidth costs are still a challenge when implementing REMI and each additional feed requires building another signal path, adding complexity and cost.

To enable REMI on a large scale and at lower cost, saving on bandwidth, he highlighted Tag Bridge technology, which is designed to remove the complexity of routing the same stream to diverse locations.

“Instead of creating mosaics at locations, Tag creates pre-scaled mosaic proxy streams. This allows you to freely size and position each source on any mosaic, further reducing the required bandwidth and without adding any significant latency. This equates to complete flexibility and independence when creating multiviewer mosaics, without restoring the raw source signal,” he explained.

Playout and transport

In this segment it is crucial to manage a large number of inputs and outputs (channels and monitoring points with high density but low latency). Often the signals to be monitored are compressed, uncompressed and OTT in the same system.

“Operators today suffer from an overload due to the number of channels and monitoring points. UHD support and integration with third party recording systems and NMS systems are essential,” he said.

The same Tag software and hardware can be used for playback and distribution applications, with over 400 detection parameters guaranteeing the integrity and so the quality, including MPEG-TS, video quality, audio quality, etc.

OTT

According to Cang, Tag identifies and solves the main challenges associated with OTT delivery and monitoring thanks to its Zer0 Friction offering.

These are: end-to-end control of the OTT offer from live events to the consumer experience; real-time notification and problem analysis; monitoring of TS and OTT encrypted content; and convenient monitoring of OTT distribution with dynamic scaling and last-minute events.

“Zer0 Friction is more than a slogan, it is a bottom line and represents the culture and corporate principles of Tag”

“The answers are in the high-density detection and multiple display capability of thousands of monitored signals and over 400 errors detected, even in UHD 4K,” he explained. “This is possible through the infinite scalability and adaptive monitoring of MPEG-TS and ABR, MPEG2, H.264 and H.265 signals and codecs.”

In addition to ensuring monitoring and viewing of OTT content after CDN, Tag also supports a wide range of encryption systems and operations within the Secure Zone and everything is completely compatible with the cloud.

Cang went on to underline that “Zer0 Friction is more than a slogan, it is a bottom line and represents the culture and corporate principles of Tag. Technology and business models are designed to guarantee the customer freedom, agility and innovation.”

Catalano concluded: “With Tag, in alignment with the intent and values ​​of CVE, it is possible to address the whole discourse of simplifying the orchestration of control and operations in all workflows of live production, playout, transport and OTT, so multifunctional and multi-application. Zer0 Friction allows us to move faster, innovate, acquire information and respond to the demands of the television market by reducing costs.”