v-factor competitive advantage october 2008. end-to-end solution headend to cpe monitoring is a...
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V-Factor Competitive AdvantageOctober 2008
End-to-End Solution
Headend to CPE monitoring is a great value proposition Control the delivery chain across multiple realms:
Video realm: Headend Network realm: Core/Access network User realm: CPE
Allows controlling the delivery of value-added services and content Allows faster root-cause fault analysis by segmenting the delivery
chain
But what about the input to the delivery chain?
Source Video AnalysisExisting solutions
What operators use for source quality control today Nothing at all Subjective tests Manual quality check (technician, golden eye) Network/Transport stream-based monitoring solutions Full-reference video test solutions
Open questions Scalability: How can I monitor 100s of channels in parallel? Efficiency: Does my quality assurance process leverage my
infrastructure and expertise? Objectivity: How questionable is my quality assurance process? Repeatability: – fatigue, expert opinion, quality test sampling, etc…
Source Video AnalysisV-Factor
V-Factor is ideal to validate source video quality Automated source video testing Pre- and post-encoder monitoring Managed monitoring solution
(Q-1200) Emulates Human Visual System
(HVS) – high correlation with subjective tests
Repeatable, objective results Non-intrusive and real-time Video Mean Opinion Score (MOS) – similar to voice/audio test Additional metrics to facilitate issue identification
Blockiness Blur Jerkiness
Network impairments Loss Jitter Bandwidth
A/Video artifacts (source, compressed) Blockiness Blur Pixelation, bad audio Freezes, black frame
Human Vision System model Score
Transport issues Sync Multiplex Bandwidth
In order to be accurate and pertinent, A/V content artifacts and network - A/V transports impairments must be detected.
Q-AdvisorCorrelation
Network impairments Loss Jitter Bandwidth
A/Video artifacts (source, compressed) Blockiness Blur Pixelation, bad audio Freezes, black frame
Human Vision System model Score
When the stream is encrypted, content is not accessible
Transport issues Sync Multiplex Bandwidth
Only network and A/V transport metrics are available
Without correlation, only network and A/V transport impairments can be monitored. Correlation between upstream and downstream metrics remove this limitation.
Q-AdvisorCorrelation
Network impairments Loss Jitter Bandwidth
A/Video artifacts (source, compressed) Blockiness Blur Pixelation, bad audio Freezes, black frame
Transport issues Sync Multiplex Bandwidth
Network and A/V transport impairments are monitored downstream for all encrypted programs.
Content artifacts are monitored upstream before encryption.
Q-AdvisorCorrelation
Symmetricom patent pending solution overcomes all limitations when the video contents are encrypted. It combines both DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) in the headend and correlation downstream using MPEG2TS time stamps
Content metrics are captured in the headendNetwork and A/V transport metrics are captured in the network
Time stamps are used for synchronizing downstream and upstream metrics for each program (patent pending)
Q-Advisor V-Factor® Aggregation/Correlation
Loss ModelLoss ModelEntropyEntropy
Transport Stream analysis (PCR, Out of sequence) , network jitter, loss
Correlation EngineTSi = I-FrameTSi = I-Frame TSi = Packet Loss
Packet Loss : I-FramePacket Loss : I-Frame
Human Vision System model
V-Factor vs MDI Network conditions
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Jitter1 to 50ms
Packet Drop1 in 500 periodic
Packet Drop1 in 500 poisson
Packet Drop1 in 500 uniform
Packet Drop1 in 500 and Jitter
Duplicate Packets1 in 10
Duplicate Packets1 in 500
Reordering Packets1 in 500
MDI indicates good video quality while V-Factor indicates poor video quality
Both indicate good video quality
V-Factor vs MDI Variable Bitrate – Symmetricom Lab
Video – Spiderman Standard Definition Video Coding: H.264 Audio Coding: MPEG-4 Encoder: SW Streamer: Tektronix Bit rate: 4% Variable Q-400
– Video Jitter Buffer: 50– Audio Jitter Buffer: 50– Quantization: 36
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MDI metrics (MLR-DF) are not a reliable video quality metric on VBR
V-Factor vs MDI Variable Bitrate – Major MSO Live Network
Same source content with CBR encoding (top) and VBR encoding (bottom)
V-Factor is suited for both CBR and VBR content.
MDI is designed for CBR content – Alarm flood for VBR content
V-Factor vs MDI Variable Bitrate – Major MSO Live Network
Same channel before (top) and after (bottom) encoder fault isolation.
MPEG-2 quantizer value set to 30 (top), and adaptative 7 to 23 (bottom)
V-Factor can detect headend issues even in the network.DPI provides content monitoring when MDI provides network monitoring only.