APPLICATIONS
Government and Public Administration

• Auditing of current social or political event.
• Systems to monitor and control catastrophes, emergencies and incidents.

Political Parties

• Computing control tool in electoral campaigns.
• Auditing and monitoring of meetings, political propaganda and marketing.

Production companies and TV stations

• Monitoring of content companies broadcasting for programs.
• Registry of news and events.
• Monitoring of advertising and studies of the competition.

The Media

• Extraction of clips and images from video to publish online or in magazines.

ADVANTAGES

• Modular and scalable web application.

• Multiple channels can be recorded, monitored and
visualized.

• Automatic indexing by closed caption.

• Data imported from the EPG, run log and previously created metadata.

• Keyword searches.

• Email alerts sent and automatic clips created when the system detects information being analyzed.

• Information imported and exported with XML.

• Connection with other datamining applications through Videoma’s API Module based on Web Service.

• Standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) broadcasting monitored.

• Customized cataloguing through metadata fields.

• Platform available in English or Spanish.

WORKFLOW

Although Videoma Broadcast Monitor is designed to support a wide range of workflows, the content’s lifecycle, from its capture to its publication, can be summarized in the following sections.

Recording television and radio
Broadcasts are recorded through recording units controlled and programmed from the Capture Module. Capture can be operative 24/7 or defined by time slot.

In the case of multicast recordings, the signal is captured through IP gateways that send the information contained in the MPEG2 transport stream. The program stream is grouped in bundles called multiplexes that contain the broadcast, subtitles and the EPG (electronic programming guides). The system allows access to a broadcast seconds after the recording starts. All material captured in the platform as a broadcast is automatically precatalogued by channel, date and time.

Transcoding
If resources online need to accessed, a heavy broadband cost can be incurred. This means that automatically converting material that will be used by a variety of users at the same time is important. That could include transcoding high quality formats like MPEG2 to other low quality formats like WMV a 300 kbits, for example, to not take up excessive storage space. This also facilitates connection for users that connect to the system from outside the local network.

Automatic resource recognition
When the broadcasts are provided with closed captioning, textual information can be extracted, including the broadcast’s transcription. When this is possible, searches in the file are faster using keywords and showing a storyboard of the results. This way, the database turns into a search engine of related video and text. Content can also be extracted from the EPG or the run log if there is relevant information.

Integration with FINGERPRINTING and SPEECH TO TEXT technologies. Videoma recognizes and stores patterns to identify acoustic fingerprints or registers of voice.

Clipping and management
The system can be configured to automatically or manually do press clippings and send email alerts when information under analysis is identified.

VBM carried out basic functions that are extremely helpful for later editing. Visualization, generation of clips for EDLs (Edit Decision Lists), insertion of water marks and effects, association of documents (Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel) to content, extraction of stills from a video, etc.

Cataloguing
This is one of the most important points of the workflow since good documenting means content that is easier to look for and find. Media cataloguing is organized hierarchically by frames or catalogue templates as the backbone from which the metadata is derived. Metadata can be edited via VBM.

Search and recovery
Videoma Broadcast Monitor makes group work in an organization easier since it is a web application and allows sharing elements, views, documentation, etc. The user can configure the searches, depending on the metadata introduced during the cataloguing stage. Other more automatic searches are based on closed caption. The search module supplies reports.

Flexibility when using content
Resources that have been stored can easily be exported to other systems. They are integrated with datamining technologies to draw up statistical, or more complex, reports. Using the API Module, based on a Web Service, content can be published on a web portal.

Videoma Broadcast Monitor adapts to a large variety of clients’ workflows: institutional press rooms, press clipping agencies, production companies, broadcasting councils, etc. It is a flexible tool that allows the user to publish resources on different mediums: cell phones, websites or any other type of medium.