How to configure PATHS (Content Matching)
- Ramya Raman
Content-Matching mechanism detects similar content across two different streams to ensure correct and uninterrupted delivery to the intended destination. This is done by creating a unique fingerprint for each video frame and audio and matching them across various monitoring points in the media distribution path against a user-defined reference point. Content Matching can accurately identify and correlate audio and video uniqueness regardless of the resolution, bitrate, or framerate, thus enabling a match between two or more points in the workflow, even after the content has been processed and manipulated.
The MCM creates fingerprints for each source stream that needs to be tested. Fingerprints then being sent to the matching engine on the MCS for correlation and comparison. MCS produces the result for each pair of streams and sends them back to the MCM to be embedded in stream monitoring data. To ensure that an array of consecutive frames matches across the two tested streams, there is a correlation window (20-25 seconds) on the MCS during which all the frames must match. Once a frame
does not match, there is a much shorter period for the system to react and report a no-match.
**PATHS (Content Matching) is available from MCS 1.1.1 version onwards and is compatible with MCM 6.3.3 and above.
Configuration
To set up content matching on the TAG system, follow these steps:
Navigate to Sources –> Configuration, enable fingerprinting on the sources you want to match the content as shown below and click on save.
** Please note that Finger Printing can be enabled only on the channel that is not monitored. Hence, please stop the channel monitoring to enable finer printing.
** License for Content Matching is 0.2 points per fingerprint for both regular channel, OTT parent or child.Navigate to Sources → Paths to create your path and relationships between the streams.
3. To create a path for content matching, drag and drop the channels on the left side pane in the layout of the paths as shown below and click on save.
The connection can be Serial or Parallel, as shown below.
Serial : In serial path connection, the adjacent channel contents are compared.
Parallel : In parallel path connect, one channel is compared with one or more channels.
Please note content matching will always be done in pairs. They can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or even many-to-one.
In the above example, the following matching pairs will be created:
Tested Streams | Reference Point |
|---|---|
Serial Connection | |
path_2 | path_1 |
path_3 | path_2 |
Parallel Connection | |
path_5 | path_4 |
path_6 | path_4 |
path_7 | path_4 |
To ensure content matching works, navigate to Sources → Statistics on the MCM device and expand the PID tree view.
Choose the channel from the right pane and expand the PID component; an additional field Matching is seen as shown below.
If no data is recieved, “No Data“ is displayed along with the reference point.
b. If a matching is found, “Match“ is displayed along with the Latency and path reference point.
UMD hashtags
The following hashtags can be used to display matching and latency results on the video output tile:
HashTag | Description |
#LATENCY# | Displays video latency compared to reference |
#REFNAME# | Displays reference channel name (useful where there are more than one reference) |
#PATHNAME# | Displays channel name’s path (useful where there are more than one path) |
#REFSTATE# | Dispalys match/no match status |
#BREFSTATE# #CREFSTATE# | Sets the color (Foreground / Background) based on the match state. |