NAB Show: Actus Digital Unveils OTT StreamWatch and v9.0 Enhancements to Intelligent Monitoring & Compliance Platform

Actus Digital, a solutions provider for quality assurance (QA) alerting, compliance logging, multiviewer monitoring, broadcast analysis and asset repurposing, will unveil its latest solutions for TV, radio and MVPD (multichannel video programming distributors) at the 2023 NAB Show (April 16-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth W-1767). Actus v.9.0 expanded offerings address the needs of traditional broadcasters and MVPDs, and the new OTT StreamWatch, extends benefits to those creating and distributing OTT FAST/IPTV streaming channels.
New OTT StreamWatch
Available via SaaS and on-premises solutions, OTT StreamWatch provides 24×7 OTT stream monitoring and recording of native HLS streams. It makes it easy for engineers to monitor and maintain the quality of linear FAST/IPTV channels through the workflow – from encoding through delivery.  OTT StreamWatch– handles a range of resolutions and speeds returning from various CDNs across unmanaged networks.

Live OTT video streams can be displayed on multiviewers at various probe-points in their workflow and combined with traditional TV station/broadcast content. This approach highlights affected probe-points as issues occur, demonstrating how widespread those issues are, and immediately identifying where they began so engineers can quickly remedy them.
In addition to the issues being identified on the multiviewer, the Actus platform sends real-time alerts on critical audio-video Quality-of-Experience issues like missing/frozen content, and compliance violations such as Loudness and missing closed captions/subtitles.

With the addition of OTT StreamWatch to a traditional Actus Intelligent Monitoring Platform, detailed OTT Quality-of-Service (QoS) information is added to transport stream analysis. The same professional OTA Quality Assurance (QA) and compliance from the Actus monitoring platform is extended to OTT QA. Among other OTT QA analysis, OTT StreamWatch evaluates bandwidth usage, streaming media download times, and buffering issues for each rendition included within an HLS stream. It also includes SCTE insertion information, ensuring digital ads are played accurately and indicating when QoE/QoS issues occurred while commercials were playing.

The Actus platform provides a single interface that is intuitive and searchable for content based on channel/date/time, issues, closed captions, advertiser, program names and more. Taking advantage of the content and metadata captured within the Actus platform, optional AI-based workflows make it easy to create and edit clips together, manually or using automation for effortless creation and monetization of VoD content and publishing to social media to optimize viewer engagement.

Version 9.0 Enhancements to Digital Monitoring Platform

Version 9.0 of the Actus Digital Intelligent Monitoring Platform adds significant enhancements. Among these are support for additional standards which now include ingest of every popular format, including ATSC 3.0, SMPTE 2110/2022-6/7, and most streaming standards.
Specific improvements were also achieved in the Actus Remote Video Monitoring (RVM) tools for MVPD engineering and operations, and in Actus AdWatch that makes it easier for TV station sales teams to produce AI-generated Zero-Run and Delta-Report lead lists.

“While many customers deploy Actus systems solely for locally ingested or OTT streaming content, those that are responsible for delivering content for both OTA and OTT can deploy a hybrid approach on Actus Digital’s traditional Intelligent Monitoring Platform using OTT StreamWatch for multiviewer monitoring, compliance logging, QA alerting, and many other use cases and advanced workflows,” said Ken Rubin, Actus Digital senior vice president. “For companies that deliver only FAST/IPTV channels, as well as those starting to include OTT, Actus is proud to offer SaaS, on-premises, and hybrid solutions for professional media monitoring and quality assurance.”