CAA - TDT
Monday, 24 August 2009 01:00
CAA - TDT
TEDIAL widens CAA´s monitoring system and introduces TDT.
The Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía (CAA) has decided to increased by five (5) units the system used to monitor TV and Radio contents. On top of this, the fifteen (15) units installed in 2006 have been updated to also monitor Terrestrial Digital Television (TDT). The programmable system to record TV and Radio channels, TARSYS LegalCopy, is installed across twenty different locations in Andalusia, with an over 90% coverage of the radio frequency spectrum in this geographical region.
The extension of the monitoring system at CAA is a consequence of the success of the technology developed by TEDIAL for all audio-visual councils (CA): CAC-Catalonia (2001), CNA-Romania (2003), RTC-Mexico (2004), CEM-Bulgaria (2005), CAA-Andalusia (2006) and CONATEL-Venezuela (2008).
To support the transition phase from analogue television to TDT, TEDIAL has included in all recording units the hardware and software required by the digital register of analogue and TDT broadcastings. Through the recordings planning system developed by TEDIAL, the CAA determines on a weekly basis the television and radio channels to be recorded daily, generating so Windows Media files.
Each system of TARSYS LegalCopy records four television and four radio channels. The system has a local archive/storage equivalent to one month´s recording. The information generated in every recording system is archived/stored in the content management central system TARSYS, located in Málaga. In addition, the central system has the required recording stations to register television and radio channels across the national territory.
The recording of TDT broadcasting presents two (2) important problems affecting the scalability and the reliability of the solution. The TDT signal transports MPEG-2 media with and average bit rate of 4 Mbps and with a frequent loss of information during the transmission, is blocking the tuners.
To make the solution scalable, it is mandatory to reduce the bit rate. And so, the recording units from TEDIAL transcode in real time the MPEG-2 signal to Windows Media Video format, reducing costs related to local archiving and transmission costs of video files to the main system. Besides, the capture SW developed by TEDIAL has the automatic recovery mechanisms in the event of a hypothetical temporary loss of the TDT signal, guaranteeing the unassisted automatic recording during long periods of time.
TARSYS, the central system located in Málaga, is a high availability cluster architecture that includes a data tape library of latest generation, controlled by AST. AST is the automatic hierarchical storage manager of discs and tapes, developed by TEDIAL. The 20 recording centres, the central archiving system and CAA installation facilities, located in Seville, are connected via VPN, having ONO as the service provider/operator. The integration of the 20 recording centres and the central system is done by the Media Process Manager (MPM) from TEDIAL. MPM, being the best system available on the market to integrate TV systems, adjusts the media and meta-data transfers optimizing so, the performance of the data network.
The combination of TARSYS and AST offers CAA an historical archive of media broadcast in Andalusia and across Spain, together with the set of specialized reports generated out of content analysis.
To facilitate the generation of specialized reports, linked to various themes (politics, publicity, violence, etc.), TEDIAL has added a module to TARSYS to program/schedule campaigns to analyse the media and allowing so, the possibility to adapt the module to the needs of every specific campaign without having to continuously upgrade/expand the data module. TARSYS has an universal abstract data model and the campaign planner assigns to each meta-data a descriptor specific to each campaign. And so, a meta-data in TARSYS has different meanings, linked to specific campaigns.
Lastly, the system TARSYS LegalCopy, able to include the information “as run log” from TV broadcastings, turns to be the only scalable platform on the market to generate the mandatory legal copy of the TDT channels. TARSYS LegalCopy, unifies from the archive/file point of view, the recording of analogue and TDT TV broadcastings.
Who is CAA:
Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía (Audiovisual Council of Andalusia) is an independent institution that regulates any activity in the audiovisual industry in Andalusia, according to assigned functions as described in its Creation Law. Its main purpose is to safeguard the rights and freedoms recognized in the Spanish Constitution and the Andalusia Statute, as well as the adherence to the current legislation in audiovisual matters and publicity.
Who is Tedial:
TEDIAL (Tecnologías Digitales Audiovisuales) is a high technology company, based in Málaga, Spain, specialized in management of audio-visual assets and control processes in areas like broadcast, institutions, healthcare and industrial. It is a leader in the Spanish and Latin American market, with global presence, innovative and highly functional to systems managing processes and media.