Over the past two years any piece of software guaranteeing QoS for OTT video, has become rather sexy, mostly because sending video at multiple bit rates to very different devices, gives operators a sense of foreboding that not all of it is getting through.
One of the first things to check is whether or not all the different conditions of the internet and of screen size on devices, can be supplied with quality video. The next thing to check is what kind of settings are right on your encoder/transcoder set up and finally all operators want the ability to have some form of objective measurement in real time at devices which are actually receiving the video. It is this combination of insecurities that IneoQuest promises to solve with its new Inspector LAB product line.
While most providers move to placing software on the end device, IneoQuest seems to stop short of that and appears to test the video inside the network on its way to the device. To us this means it is limiting its services to network owners, not true OTT services.
In the past, video could be tested on TV sets, and each person would be given the original video and the resulting broadcast video and offer their opinion of how well the video was delivered. These were called Mean Opinion Scores and the OTT industry has been after a standardized one for years.
Multiple players have come up with their own, but IneoQuest’s new service adds to its existing network probes and other in-network measurements, and is trying to create an end to end video quality regime. It will find the market already congested and S3 Group’s Stormtest product line, acquired last year by Accenture, is one such player which tests quality for each type of device, and aims to tackle real time video quality as well. Conviva test what arrives at each device and seems to have strong market share as well.
This is a long way outside the comfort zone of IneoQuest, which began in physical network probes, but it is suggesting that a key area where its system is useful is in selecting encoder suppliers in the first place and then in tuning them. It is one step away from the holy grail, which is testing the streams in real time and adjusting encoding parameters in real time to fix any problems.
It said that in order to remain competitive video providers are being challenged to re-evaluate content preparation, encoding technologies and workflows, especially where they use adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming, and that this can all be done with Inspector Lab.
The key is to have an objective test for video that does not require the delivered video being compared to the original encoder inputs, which it says it has done through a series of video quality scoring techniques.
This in turn lets multi-screen delivery be graded “on-the-fly,” enabling encoder/transcoder users to immediately see the impact changes they make to any of the dozen or more settings that can be used to tune the output and find the “sweet spot” between size reduction/cost savings and quality/viewer satisfaction.
The compression market has continued to heat up despite the three largest software based real time encoder suppliers being acquired during the past year (see separate story in this issue).
IneoQuest makes the point that operators currently check video quality using an expert visual acuity system, which means it needs a copy of the video in the same condition it was in before it was sent, and it must compare the two and says that this is time-consuming and can’t work on live streaming content such as rock concerts or sporting events, which are often the most important, as there is no reference copy.
This suggests that IneoQuest has lined up a customer for Live content and that it will soon announce its first design win for this software.
Kurt Michel, Marketing Director, IneoQuest said, “Inspector LAB enables compressionists to not only score live streaming content, but also dramatically reduce scoring time compared to these visual and reference-based methods. By making scoring easier, Inspector LAB helps video providers deliver consistent, high-quality content every time.”
This will be appealing to any operator that has already put trust in IneoQuest physical probes, but may not be sufficiently convincing to the wider community, which has no IneoQuest investment to protect.
Inspector LAB comes as a 1U rack-mountable appliance, and is now available for ordering.