MPEG-2 digital add insertion from Channelmatic/Silicon Graphics....................................
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Channelmatic-LIMT, Silicon Graphics and Viewgraphics Show Cost Effective MPEG Stream Splicing Ad Insertion
PR Newswire - December 02, 1998 08:18
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ANAHEIM, Calif., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Shattering previous price/performance boundaries, Viewgraphics, Channelmatic-LIMT and Silicon Graphics today ushered in a revolution in cost containment for digital domain ad insertion. The breakthrough solution combines Viewgraphics' award winning Dynamo MediaPump and MediaSplice MPEG2 technology with Silicon Graphics' and Channelmatic-LIMT servers and automation to yield an incredibly cost effective approach to local insertion of commercials at a digital cable headend facility. The companies are demonstrating the solution here at the Western Cable Show.
With Viewgraphics' MediaSplice, it is now possible to play DTV programs back to back and insert commercials into DTV constant bit rate (CBR) streams -- in the compressed domain -- all without that undesirable picture breakup.
The Silicon Graphics and PC NT server systems being demonstrated in the Channelmatic-LIMT booth clearly illustrate the efficiencies gained by insertion directly into a CBR digital feed. A single PC server housing Viewgraphics' MediaPump adapter running MediaSplice is shown inserting commercials into eight simultaneous television programs.
With this approach, the entire commercial insertion operation of a digital headend can be performed by a single low cost server. By using multiple boards in a single commercial insertion server, more than one hundred simultaneous programs can be processed.
Alternative approaches, requiring expensive variable bit rate (VBR) and statistical multiplexer stream processing, decoding and recoding equipment, results in a dramatically higher cost per channel.
The US cable industry has been very interested in VBR statistically multiplexed streams due to a significant increase in stream capacity that this complex technology provides. However, the economic benefit gained from this approach must be analyzed against the increased capital cost of the system-wide deployment of the technology, and with the technical limits imposed by all networks running commercials at the same time.
With over 5,000 cable headend facilities to equip, and potentially dozens of channels to insert into per headend, the cost to the industry could range as high as several billion versus a few hundred million with CBR transmission.
"What we're trying to do is save the cable industry a few billion dollars," says John Krooss, president of Viewgraphics. "Switching into a VBR stream is fantastically complex, requiring at least partial recoding of the stream. This requires a lot of processing, so it is expensive." Krooss goes on to explain that the recoding operation also results in visual quality degradation to the commercial. "Anytime you decompress and recompress you are further damaging image quality. I don't know how advertisers are going to like the fact that they are not getting the best quality possible."
"Roadblocking of spots on most all networks at the same time profoundly limits how far you can push stat-mux channel loading," says Jim O'Brien, Director Business Development for Channelmatic-LIMT. "Maintaining ad quality is a high priority. Spots have the highest stat-mux data rate demand, due to post-production layering and the common style of rapid changes in scenes. It's especially true with national spots. We feel our CBR stream splicing system can make a major contribution to the industry and we'll support it on the powerful, inexpensive SGI server as well as other servers. We will also support stat-mux based systems, consistent with our open platform approach."
Viewgraphics' MediaSplice delivers an effective, low cost solution to MPEG2 seamless splicing for CBR streams. The Channelmatic-LIMT system provides world-class automation control and an elegant multi-channel user interface.
MediaSplice works with unmodified MPEG2 transport streams currently produced by industry standard MPEG2 encoders. No special clues or codes need to be encoded into the bitstreams. MediaSplice splices streams of different bit rates together, and it can processes all programs simultaneously.
MediaSplice joins any valid CBR transport stream to any other valid CBR transport stream seamlessly. No recoding is performed, so the compressed MPEG2 stream suffers no quality degradation. No decoder buffer exceptions are introduced. The decoder buffer will not overflow or underflow. No black frames are inserted at the switch point and no discontinuities are presented downstream to the decoder.
The transition behaves like a normal video vertical interval switch or an insert edit. The first picture of the new stream is displayed immediately following the last picture of the old stream. The new stream continues to be decoded as if the decoder had been reset and begun with the new stream.
MediaSplice splices both video and audio in real time with very modest demands on the host computer system. Streams are processed for splicing as the data is transferred through the MediaSplice interface. Multiple splicing operations occur simultaneously. The spliced streams are then muxed together by the Viewgraphics' MediaPump into one output multi-program transport stream. Everything is done in real time.
Founded in 1985, Viewgraphics, Inc. manufactures a growing line of advanced video, imaging and computer interface products targeted at film and video production, broadcast and research applications. For further information, please write or call Viewgraphics, Inc. at: 1340 Space Park Way, Mountain View, CA 94043; Telephone: 650-903-4900; Fax: 650-969-6388; Information via Internet: info@viewgraphics.com or visit the Viewgraphics World Wide Web Site at viewgraphics.com.
Channelmatic-LIMT is a 24 year pioneer in ad insertion, with approximately 20,000 channels of ad insertion, local origination and movie playback running throughout the world. CML offers a range of video server and automation solutions for the cable industry.
Channelmatic-LIMT won the industry's first large-scale MPEG stream splicing project last year and is integrating the system now using MediaSplice. This system, which provides Direct DVB in multiple program transport streams directly out of the SGI server, is being installed at Golden Channels in Israel. There are three other large digital systems being provided to the other cable operators of Israel as part of this project, all on the inexpensive new Silicon Graphics Origin 200 GigaChannel server.
The Headquarters of Channelmatic-LIMT is in Stockholm Sweden, with offices in San Diego, Nice France, Stuttgart Germany, Sydney Australia, Sundsvall Sweden and integrators around the world. 1700 N. Gillespie Way, El Cajon CA 92020. 619-596-8968. cml.com.
SOURCE Viewgraphics, Inc.
/CONTACT: Adam Schadle of Viewgraphics Incorporated, 650-903-4900, or
fax, 650-969-6388, or adam@viewgraphics.com; or Jim O'Brien of
Channelmatic-LIMT, 619-596-8968, or fax, 619-596-8969, or Jim.obrien@cml.com/
/Web site: cml.com
/Web site: viewgraphics.com
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