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Mission: An integrated Asset Management

solution for Quantel sQ servers This article describes the technical design and operational features of Quantel‟s „Mission‟

asset management system. The motivation to develop Mission was commercial: at the time,

Quantel‟s highly successful sQ server systems relied on third-party products to provide a

number of common workflows, including scheduled recording and archive management.

Our customers wanted a cost-effective and highly-integrated solution provided within the

familiar Quantel user experience. The Mission solution is scalable to meet the requirements

of all but the largest broadcast installations.

Trevor Francis is Worldwide Marketing Manager, Broadcast at Quantel Ltd. in Newbury, UK. His

responsibility includes steering the roadmap for product development, heading the product management team

and producing presentations and papers for major trade shows.

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Introduction

Mission is a media and asset management system specifically designed for Quantel‟s

server-based production system. It provides extended facilities for the acquisition,

movement, viewing and management of video, file-based media and associated metadata.

Mission has been designed to be modular, allowing our customers to select the workflows

they need, adding more features as and when required.

The feature list includes e.g.:

Scheduled baseband recording tool for capturing video-based feeds

File-based ingest from a both broadcast and domestic/consumer source with built-in automated transcode

Automated capture and association of incoming XML-based metadata – from news agencies, for example

Automated VTR ingest controller

Archive output to disk, data tape or VTR

Advanced search and retrieve of on-line and archived assets from editors desktop

Search and view of media assets from standard web browser.

Media and metadata output to multiple destinations based on a scripted transcode and destination file path

The following diagram shows the workflows in relation to a typical four-server sQ solution.

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SDI ingest- ‘Mission Transfer’

Overview

A product called „Mission Transfer‟ controls ingest of video feeds via sQ Server baseband

HDSDI and SDI video ports.

Three types of job are supported:

Instant „crash recording‟. A spontaneous recording which is not planned.

Timed recording. A single job which will take place some time on the future.

Scheduled recordings. A diary of regular events from sources like News Agencies, overseas

bureaux etc.

The operator can use the Mission Transfer timeline view for direct scheduling of all

recordings. Each row represents an SDI/HDSDI port.

The operator can enter or modify the job parameters in the pop-up dialogue box. Properties

such as start and end time, recording channel, router cross-point are directly entered or

selected. Production metadata defaults to Title, Owner, category and Description. Other

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numeric or text fields are configured by the System Adminstrator (see later section). All

metadata may be added before, during or after a recording.

The status of a job is illustrated by its colour. For example, white indicates a job is queued;

yellow indicates that a job is currently being recorded; red indicates a fault.

The start and end times of a job may be modified by simple drag-and drop on the timeline.

Crash Recordings

These “spontaneous” recordings are started in the Timeline view of Transfer by selecting

the Crash Record function.

The duration of the recording is also set to a configurable default value but can be manually

extended. If however another recording is already scheduled for the same encoding channel,

the Crash Record job duration is set to one minute before the start of the following job.

The metadata may be subsequently entered after the start of the recording.

Repeated Recordings

Repeated recordings are managed using Periodic Jobs view. These are defined once then

subsequently Transfer automatically creates daily corresponding to each instance of the

recording.

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File-based input ‘Mission Transfer’

Mission Transfer utilises “Watch” folders to identify media to be imported into the Quantel

servers. The module periodically checks the contents of such Watch folders. If any new

clips are found, these are transferred to sQ Server and subsequently deleted from the Watch

folders.

Mission is scaled and configured to support multiple file ingest and output of standard

broadcast file formats as supported in the Quantel sQ server.

For any files containing non-broadcast file formats, wrappers or codecs, additional watch

folders may be provided to transcode these to a pre-set sQ server format.

A separate „track‟ on the Mission Transfer timeline screen allows the operator to see and

track file-based transactions and to trace progress or trouble-shoot any problems.

Mission uses an embedded Rhozet Carbon Coder to perform the transcodes.

The range of essence formats supported is constantly reviewed by Rhozet, but includes all

the most-used files generated by professional and domestic devices and software:

MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.263, H264, HDV, Flash, DV DVCPro25, DVCPro 50, DVC

Pro HD, AVI, QuickTime, Windows Media, Real, ASF, WMA, WMV, MXF, D10/IMX,

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MPEG 2 PS, MPEG 2 LS, LXF, GXF, 3GP, 3G2, PCM, MP3, DTS, AAC, AMC, AMR-

NB, Windows Media Audio, Real Audio.

The detailed profile e.g. Bit depth, TV standard, aspect etc are preset as part of installation.

File-based output – ‘Mission Tracker’

Any clip on the sQ server may be selected for export as a file to a pre-set destination. This

selection is made in the Quantel „Mission Tracker‟ interface which is an option for all

desktop and craft editing workstations.

The export destination is currently set by a „roller-selector‟ which can be configured with a

matrix of up to 100 destinations and formats.

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Each destination maps to a pre-defined table of scripted destinations which is held in the

Mission Administration module. The destinations take the form of a Windows file path

followed by the selected essence format and wrapper.

Quantel expects the end user to provide suitable bandwidth and storage for the destination

folder host. Once a file is placed in a destination folder it becomes the responsibility of the

receiving system – a playout server, web server etc.

Mission: Technical Structure

The technical structure of Mission is shown in the diagram II. There is a central set of

resources, shown within the ellipse, with additional components related to each of the sQ

servers. The dual redundant „ISA‟, the central management system for the Quantel servers

is also shown as part of the central resources. A typical sQ server system may comprise

between one and eight sQ servers; we are using an example system with four.

Mission has an optional Archive sub-system, this shown in the dotted circle.

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sQ server interfaces to Mission

ISA Sync module

The ISA Sync modules convey database messages between the Mission Database and the

Quantel ISA. They use a special mechanism provided by the sQ servers, called „ISA

listeners‟, which describe any clip generation / modification / deletion activity on the sQ

server mainframes. ISA Listeners remove the need for database polling and ensure the

Mission database remains synchronised with ISA with minimal latency. The Quantel ISA

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Manager will be installed as a Master/Slave pair of mySQL servers. The Mission database

will automatically maintain sync with the current ISA Master.

Port Control

An sQ server mainframe can be configured with up to 8 HD or 12 SD SDI ports. Each

server has an associated pair of Port Control PCs. These convey the commands to server

ports, for example, to set codec formats and begin recordings. Each will have one instance

of port control software for every port on the sQ server. In a typical installation, these Port

Control services will be set to auto-run so as to distribute port control across the pair of PCs.

For example, one unit may control ports 0,2,4,6 and the other may control ports 1,3,5,7.

Mission central services

Core Services

Mission Core Services runs on a redundant pair of PC servers

Core Services handles a number of Mission functions:

System Administration

Key Frame generation

Media management

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System administration

There is a central administration area which stores key central information

Definition of Quantel sQ mainframes and storage

o IP address of Quantel storage management unit („ISA)

o Ingest ports

o Essence formats supported

o Storage capacity

Database configuration (see below)

Keyframe configuration (see below)

Rhozet Carbon Coder definitions

Databases

The Mission Database is an ODBC-capable, relational database (Microsoft SQL)

containing links to preview videos, metadata and system configuration settings.

It is permanently synchronised with the Quantel ISA. It records all clip additions,

modifications and deletions.

In addition to the basic descriptive metadata fields, up to twelve additional user-defined

fields may be configured.

2 x large text fields (4000 chars)

3 x number field

7 x text fields with a maximum length of 255 characters

The Mission database also holds references to essence stored on other hardware locations,

including disk and tape archives. These are interfaced via bespoke „balance modules‟ which

carry metadata and essence movements.

Browse Video & Key Frame Generation

Low resolution video stored in sQ Server is used to optionally generate key frames which

are used in Tracker. Optionally, key frames can be generated at fixed periods or by

automatic key-frame detection. A picture cut detection algorithm generates a key frame at

the beginning of the video and after every detected change of the scene. The timecode

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information is stored in the data base and the JPEG pictures generated at the cut marks are

stored within the Mission file system.

Mission Data Portal

Mission Data Portal is a special version of the Quantel MXF Power Portal dedicated to

Mission.

Mission Data supports the following media transactions:

LBR (ie Quantel MPEG1 proxy video)

HBR - SD or HD essence in MXF wrapper.

The Quantel system design will take account of expected traffic through Data Portals, SDI

ports and HBR editing workstations and scale hardware, storage and network infrastructure

accordingly. Storage has a large but finite bandwidth; traditional video recordings and

playback require a full SD or HD bandwidth for each. This is easily accounted for when

designing the system.

File-based transfers into and out of the system also require bandwidth from the central

storage. File transfers may be expected at speeds greater than real time, therefore the

requirements may be multiples of SD/HD bandwidths. We therefore require more

consultation time with the client during the design stage to understand the expected demand

for simultaneous video and file-based transactions.

Mission Browse server

Mission maintains a browse server for storing LBR video files and keyframes. These are

internal resources used to populate the Quantel „Tracker‟, the library research tool and the

Mission „Webview‟ multi-platform browser.

Rhozet Carbon Server

Mission uses an embedded Rhozet Carbon Coder to transcode between Quantel native and

other file formats. This is a proprietary product, more information available directly form

the suppliers: http://www.rhozet.com/carbon_coder.html

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Mission Archive

For any broadcaster, archive design and management is an immensely complex subject. It

is beyond the scope of this paper to cover in any detail. Our experience has shown that it is

impossible to design an off-the-shelf product which will satisfy all needs. We have

therefore decided to maintain Mission Archive as an optional module. There are ready-

made interfaces to some popular hardware and middleware suppliers, but these are typically

adapted to the specific requirements of the project.

Conclusion

Mission offers a flexible package of workflow tools which are highly integrated into the

Quantel range. It is structured to be flexible in the deployment of features and scalable to

the needs of all but the very largest broadcast installations. Mission itself remains an option,

so the choice of Asset Management solutions remains with the end user.

ENDS.