[SatNews] SatNews Publishers stopped by Crystal Solutions at SATCON 2014 to learn about their metadata solutions and subsequent discussions of interference and carrier ID solutions.
"A lot of customers transmit a a great deal of video, and what we've been seeing is that what our customers are required to do is insert additional metadata into that video," said Crystal Solutions President and CEO Roger Franklin. "Data that describes the video in such a way that, if it should not be distributed on the Internet, their downstream distributor can read that metadata and turn off web streaming, or turn on local commercials and generate tageted advertising. We provide solutions to create and insert that metadata and validate the existence and accuracy of metadata throughout their network."
CEO Roger Franklin + Crystal Solutions dashboard at SATCON 2014
Crystal Solutions has also started providing its customers with carrier ID (CID) solutions, a capability that will be required of all occasional-use video satellite transmissions by the FCC starting in June 2016.
The implementation can ultimately be a learning experience, says Franklin. If satellite operators notice a pattern in which a particular uplink truck continues to cause problems and transmit to the wrong signal, the truck and operator in question can be targeted and given the opportunity to get more training and avoid future interference.
Both the video metadata analyzer and carrier ID detection solutions have been developed with ease-of-use in mind, says Franklin.
"We understand the operation requirements of our customers, how their business works and what they need to deliver their services. We look at how they work, what they need to accomplish, and how to recover from failure. Then we design automation capabilities to decrease the number of steps and design a user interface so operators are more comfortable and execute fewer steps. Sometimes we count clicks, how many scrrens they have to go through to execute what they need to accomplish," said Franklin.
Franklin will join a roundtable discussion regarding how to combat deliberate jamming and radio frequency interference on Thursday, November 13th from 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. in 1A22. He will be joined by Moderator Dick Tauber, Media Executive at D. Tauber LLC; and pannelists Martin Coleman, Executive Director at The Satellite Interference Reduction Group; Mark Rawlins, Director of Communication System Operations at Eutelstat; and Gary Thatcher, Associate Director of the US International Broadcasting Bureau.
Crystal Solutions will next attend NAB 2015 in April in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information on Crystal Solutions, please visit their infosite. More information on SATCON 2014 can be found here.
Emily G. Constance, SatNews Reporter
