Purple Monitoring
Purple Monitoring is a flexible solution for monitoring broadcasts at
transmission or off-air. It is suitable for monitoring most signal formats,
in either real-time or sampling modes, to detect errors such as video
freeze and video black, video sync (analogue), audio silence and audio
loudness. The display, which can be on a PC monitor and/or a Video Wall,
can be customised by the NOC engineer to display channel and alarm information.
Alarms are audible as well as visual. The alarm parameters include:
- Video freeze and Video Black
- Video Sync (analogue)
- Audio silence and audio loudness
- Missing data (including teletext)
- Low bit-rate detection (digital)
- Transport Stream Continuity errors
- Encryption Status
- Elementary Mpeg Video Errors
In most installations, this display will be sited in the master control
suite to provide an immediate, and very space-effective, confidence
check of the transmitted output. A second, master terminal VGA display
is also provided which gives further detailed information and technical
data on the status and performance of any selected service.
The system is also capable of multi-user access and one or more remote displays can also
be stablished using IP connectivity to the monitoring point.
24/7 Real-time Confidence Monitoring
Purple monitoring can be used to monitor all transmitted channels
real-time, continuously for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each VNOC
card accepts two inputs and outputs two channels to the network. The Purple Monitoring System Controller processes the data against pre-defined alarm parameters and displays the video, audio and other service data in whichever display format the customer has pre-selected.
Multi-channel sampling
An alternative configuration enables an entire ASI transport stream
to be monitored by just one VNOC card. Each card will sample, on a rotating
basis, all the services within an ASI stream at a pre-determined sampling
rate and, at the same time, one service from the transport stream can
be selected and monitored continuously. The video display clearly shows
the services being actively monitored and the other services display their
last known state and still frame.
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The System
A purple monitoring system would consist of a combination of some of the following
components:
VNOC card(s) and frame
ASI, Video / Audio input interface, capture and encoding hardware. A VNOC card can capture the input data, decode and re-compress it into one of a range
of encoding standards and bitrates (usually MPEG-1 at 768Kbit) and output this
via TCP/IP to the various purple applications. A VNOC card is capable of
accepting digital and analogue audio / video feeds as well as ASI Transport
Stream data. This allows a variety of different input types (from local sources, or
from external or contribution feeds) to make up the final output transport stream.
Purple Monitoring Software
When launched with a display configuration, this software drives the service display wall, monitors the feeds and raises audible and visual alarms.
When launched without a display configuration it becomes the display layout designer. A multitude of components can be added to the design, moved or
removed using simple mouse clicks. It is also here that alarm profiles are
created, giving the user the option to change thresholds and alarm types.
Purple Monitoring Controller (PC)
For real-time continuous monitoring of multiple channels, a high-performance
high-specification PC is required. This is usually supplied as a rack-mount PC
already installed with the Purple Monitoring software. Each PC is capable of
driving the monitoring displays for 16 real-time channels.
Purple “i” Monitoring Decoders
This is a 1U rack-mount device fitted with one or two VNOC cards. It comes supplied as
either a one or two stream input device and with a choice of one or two outputs per input
stream. If used to monitor ASI transport streams, the Purple “i” Monitoring Decoder,
combined with the Purple Monitoring software, will monitor, on a rotating basis, all services
within an ASI stream while allowing one service from the stream to be selected and
monitored continuously. The software can be supplied with or without a Purple Monitoring
Controller for such applications. The product is ideal for installation at remote
geographical locations where small numbers of services require monitoring. A monitoring
display can be located at both the monitoring point and another location if required,
provided IP connectivity is available.
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