Improve the ROI of networked Broadcast Equipment - Video Equipment. These complex systems are sometimes difficult to keep working properly, and when there is difficulty - it is a challenge to determine the cause of the trouble.
At MTD Systems, what we do is watch every part of every device in the system. And we don’t limit the means of collecting the data either. MTD will collect data by any available means.
The four biggest mistakes made in monitoring broadcast equipment systems are:
They Gather data by SNMP and WMI only when the richest data sets on this equipment in in logs. Some devices only have a serial port or a telnet connection.
Failure to follow the media. On media based systems sometimes you can only see error conditions by noting that the media isn’t where it should be.
Inability to track media through an enterprise. Media prepared in one facility must move properly with it’s metadata to another.
Slow aggregation of the data. On sites with thousands of endpoints data collection may take an hour or more. Meantime events have passed without status being known.
MTD Systems gathers data by any available means, tracks media even through an enterprise, and is massivly parallel so that data from thousands of sites can be collected in minutes. The four mistakes in monitoring these systems is usually caused by monitoring with generic network monitoring systems. Some broadcast equipment makers have even rolled out such systems.
Broadcast equipment and video equipment needs monitoring designed for it. MTD Systems monitoring is designed by broadcast engineers, who have been in the trenches at the stations, for IT broadcast equipment monitoring and data collection by any and all means.
http://www.mtdsystems.com ROI (Return on Investment) is what you will get with MTD Systems Media-Aware-Monitoring for broadcasting, digital cinema, video conference, or any media based system.
Monitoring broadcast equipment with it’s unique characteristics with traditional IT software misses important data. Media, logs, and a host of other data must be reported.
Broadcast newsrooms systems have made news departments many-many times more productive but are there steps to get past some of the remaining frustrations that can improve productivity more?
At MTD Systems - customers told us that their news editors were up in arms about having to double enter data when working between systems.
Make a placeholder for the story on INews.
Enter the same data into the editor.
Be sure you have carried the story number across correctly.
News departments have been told by the broadcast systems makers and integrators that the problem is unsolvable.
At MTD Systems we solve unsolvable problems.
See a short video of the Broadcast Newsroom Systems solution that is in use in major market stations today.
It will be an interesting year at NAB. Despite the economic climate many will be coming to NAB looking for the technology that will drive their business forward.
This is the year to make every dollar count at NAB. MTD Systems will be at NAB with an ROI all star line up. We can’t tell you that you’ll save 25% or some other number but read our customers stories:
What our (major market) customers say is:
“we’re not putting black on the air instead of the spot anymore.” That was happening three or four times a month for them and media tracking insured the material for playout was where it needed to be.
Another: “our news room system used to sometimes crash during the news.” MTD Monitoring found the underlying causes and allowed the customer to get the issues addressed - and while they were being addressed MTD was able to provide mitigation that immediately increased uptime by 900% and avoid the crashes in the news.
We have worked with manufacturers
A manufacturer was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on on-site support for problems in their product. Due to the nature of large distributed processing systems they were unable to get a handle on what was happening. Again when monitoring was installed there was a quick understanding of where and what the problems were and a resolution first by mitigation followed by long term fixes to the product.
Satellite Distribution, and video conference:
Satellite distribution has it’s own challenge, thousands of sites, how long do you have to wait to learn that the receivers are on channel and locked - or i they have a problem? This takes hours with traditional systems, we typically do it in 5 minutes.
What is the ROI of playing a commercial instead of black, of not having an anchor with egg-on-the-face, of reducing budget hemorrhage, of knowing the state your system is in when you need to know it? We think this is very high ROI and so do our customers.
We have solutions that work with all major manufactures systems. MTD Software not only uses SNMP and WMI, we also get the data by any means nessecary. We give you the most complete picture of what your media based system is doing of any monitoring solution on the market. Check MTD Systems out at NAB. Visit MTD Systems at NAB in Booth C4151. or on the web at: http://www.mtdsystems.com. You’ll find out that MTD Systems is unique in the marketplace.
There is such an array of equipment and you need to watch it all the MTD System gets data from all devices with a parallel collection system. We get the data by any means… not locked into SNMP and WMI, many systems do not have this capability but MTD Still gets the data. The discussion below is about satellite data but really involves any large system. Our data collectors get the data quickly and reliably and present it to you in a way that makes system issues clear.
Today’s Satellite Systems
Many satellite system projects these days involve satellite uplinks with hundreds or perhaps thousands of receivers in the network receiving content from them. Traditionally, if these networks are monitored, the planners rely on SNMP traps for big troubles and plan for round-robin polling and pinging to determine the health of the receivers and other devices. The applications include digital cinema distribution, teleconference, distance learning, TV broadcast content distribution, digital signage, and the list goes on.
Traditional monitoring systems, because of polling speed, within an hour or two NOC personnel can know whether a device has failed or not and whether the receiver was up, on the right channel with adequate signal level, and locked for the transmission. As to the traps, a little secret: many of the devices do not support traps and if they do traps can be lost because they are sent as UDP traffic with no assured delivery. Requirements for today’s professional satellite systems have evolved to the point where NOC personnel need more information and they need it more quickly. Representative are teleconference, distance learning, and media distribution systems.
For these new systems the requirements for monitoring have moved out of a strictly maintenance need to both a maintenance and operational requirement.
Teleconference and distance learning have an almost interactive need for status and data:
Is the receiver is on the right channel?
Is the feed good? Are error rates low and the signal level high?
If the signal is low in Milwaukee, what’s the weather like?
Are all of the correct materials downloaded to the receiver?
Are keypads and other data entry devices ready?
Media distribution systems for broadcast and digital cinema have many of the same needs and some others:
Is there sufficient space on the device to receive the huge files used in these operations?
What is the progress of the transfer (it takes a long time to transfer multi-gigabyte files)?
Did the digital rights management (DRM) keys arrive?
If it is a playout device, did the correct play list arrive?
Can we get the playback logs as events play?
What about maintenance logs, do we have to SSH into each device and retrieve them manually, or will the system automatically gather and check them for us?
These lists are representative of information the NOC needs to ensure proper operation of the network. First and second generation monitoring systems don’t even begin to broach gathering and reporting the new types of information needed to reliably operate these systems.
MTD Systems third-generation network monitoring software is massively parallel with media-aware enhancements that reflect industry needs and our companies TV broadcast roots. All of the data is collected, parsed, centralized, archived, and presented in a way that takes you quickly to points of issue. We not only have traditional tabular views, but maps with active Icons automatically generated from the addresses where the satellite receivers are located, and Google earth views (how cool is that?). You can fly around the world and know within seconds where any difficulty may lie. Drilling in takes you to a device page where data can be seen in detail, current status as well as historic data, site notes, trouble tickets, and the media extensions required. Wrapped around the whole network an aggregation process tracks your media to ensure it is where it needs to be.
MTD Systems satellite network monitoring is not your traditional network monitoring solution but a true third generation advance for satellite teleconference, satellite distance learning, and satellite program delivery systems.
The purpose of this website is to keep you up to date on MTD Systems and to help bring together resources to help you effectively manage and monitor your network based system.
Have you discovered Google notebook yet? It’s a tool that will help make you more productive.
When I do web research for MTD Systems I typically favorite lots of things and cut and paste information into documents and save them into folders. At the end of it all I have something that will help me that day and that I want to keep - so it sits there on my computer. Over a short period of time my browser favorites fills up - even if I use folders and I have lots of documents around on my computer that, despite my best efforts, have names that make no sense to me unless I open them.
With Google Notebook I still search and find the data I want, then mark the section I’m interested in and right click. Google notebook has added an entry for itself to the context menu. You can see the marked area I want to save and the notebook menu item selected below:
When I press enter the selected area goes into a Google notepad entry, weblink, picture, text and all. Now I can save it in a particular ‘Notebook’ along with other information I grab along the way.
When I’m done I have information organized in folders - that I can use a full Google search with keywords and phrases on that allows me to find what I have put away. Not only that but since it’s on the internet I can go between office/home/friends house or wherever and always be able to hook up with the information again.
It’s made a great difference to me. Not all of those bookmarks that I can’t recall making, notes from the site as well as anything I care to add, and I can get to it from anywhere.
Go to www.google.com/notebook and you can get it set up. If you don’t have a gmail account you’ll need to set that up first, but it’s all free and a simple but great resource.
MTD Systems has been doing this Network Monitoring thing for awhile now and we have developed many ways for our clients to look at devices, systems, and their enterprise. It’s been called The Human Interface: How can your technical people and operators best get their mind around what is happening anywhere in the enterprise? Here are some examples of looking at an enterprise and how it might look to drill into a device (this example is taken from an 1100 node system located all across the US).
US Map view that has several parameters displayed on a per-state basis. The hover will provide details of the issues of all sites with in the state.
If one of the states is drilled into, then you get this display that shows where the issues are by icon color.
Here is another representation of the sites - buttons in a tabular view change color to depict status.
If a device at the site is selected, then this is displayed.
Finally the Google Earth View that lets you fly around the world, zoom in and zoom out, to visit any facility in your enterprise. Of course you can drill into it as above.
