Further maturation of remote production for live events, especially sports, and more mainstream adoption of machine learning based AI across the content lifecycle, are evident at NAB 2025, reflected in product launches and vendor positioning in playout and compliance monitoring. Several vendors have implemented machine learning based speech to text capabilities, as well as recognition of objects in the video, for content analysis and application to classification, metadata generation, personalization and caption creation.

Among them is media workflow technology vendor Telestream, based in Nevada City, California, which is demonstrating new AI capabilities for professional quality captioning and subtitle workflows in its Vantage system. This also automates time-based metadata creation and can generate summary extracts to enhance content search and retrieve.

Actus Digital is on a similar track with the latest version of its 20-year-old compliance logging and quality assurance monitoring system. Called Actus X, this is designed to extract relevant insights from programming aired on local or international news, as well as direct-camera feeds.

This helps identify, summarize, and highlight breaking news and developing stories, according to Leslie Edelman, Actus Marketing VP. For government customers, there is the additional benefit of being able to detect and generate alerts on potential security threats as they emerge, including some relating to the content itself, such as fake news.

Stepping back from the products themselves, a clear theme at NAB 2025, more so than at previous events, is a more nuanced approach to the cloud. There is a sense of rebalancing between the public cloud and the premise, on the basis that in broadcasting, as in other industries, some applications are best processed locally. This can be because they need the ultra-low latency that can only be achieved over short communication paths, for security, or compliance with data privacy regulations. The latter is where compliance monitoring enters the equation particularly.

Telestream underlined this theme with its latest Vantage system, as its chief growth and strategy officer Benjamin Desbois explained. “Vantage empowers customers to strategically navigate these challenges with a flexible platform that optimizes both infrastructure and workflows — on-premises, hybrid, and in the cloud — to achieve maximum performance, scalability, cost-efficiency, and monetization,” said Desbois.

California based video quality assurance vendor Interra Systems is on much the same page. “While [public] cloud technology has indeed become a backbone for many in our industry, offering scalability, flexibility, and often cost-efficiency, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Anupama Anantharaman, Interra’s VP for Product Management. “Concerns about content security and the need for high-speed processing are particularly significant in media and broadcast industries, where the stakes are high.”

Anantharaman proceeded to stress the growing importance of cloud native design, which is also cited by other vendors at the event, often without much clarity over what this means. In essence it is about employing contemporary software development methods like microservices in a private or public data center based compute model, breaking down coding into smaller reusable chunks that can be deployed on commodity hardware within software containers, distributed across fluid infrastructures.

There is an emphasis on scale and automation, both increasingly important aspects of streaming video services. Monitoring features here by extracting the information needed to implement compliance in these dynamic models and automate as much of the workflow as possible.

Broadcast monitoring system vendor Bridge Technologies, headquartered in Norway’s capital Oslo, has pitched at this by developing agents it calls software workers, which are designed to emulate playback of protected content by end users to enable continuous checking for authentication, as well as monitoring of operational metrics. This approach allows performance and availability of CDNs, as well as primary video platforms, to be monitored dynamically in real time, according to the company.

One other key thread at NAB 2025, especially given its US centricity, is ATSC 3.0 and the associated monitoring requirements, as Edelman emphasized. “With the recent announcement by the FCC (US regulator) mandating that US TV stations in top markets move to ATSC 3.0 within the next three years, you can bet ATSC 3.0 will be a hot topic. Actus is an ATSC member and in fact I ran for the Board of Directors last year. Any stations that want to assure quality of their ATSC 3.0 transmissions should stop by the Actus booth to learn how to add 3.0 QA and monitoring to their current system or add an appliance just for ATSC 3.0.”

Vendor Focus

Actus Digital (Booth SL 3307) is unveiling the tenth generation of its Intelligent Monitoring Platform at NAB 2025, with advances in each of the six integral standalone products, as well as improved synergy between them. The latter reflects the growing need for coordinated monitoring and compliance across the whole workflow.

Enhancements include better access and control over alerts and threshold settings via the system’s browser-based GUI. Alerts can now be categorized properly into problems, errors, Quality of Experience (QoE), and Quality of Service (QoS) issues, with the ability to adjust notification workflows for more precise control.

Also new is the AI driven media insight capable of extracting insights from news and other content, which we noted in the introduction. The other most significant development is a major upgrade to the Actus MV multiviewer, reducing latency and expanding data-overlay options such as SCTE trigger details for synchronization and ad insertion, and TS (Transport Stream) analysis of MPEG Transport Streams.

Interra Systems (Booth W 1921) is majoring on end-to-end content monitoring across the whole IP delivery path, including CDNs as well as the streaming delivery network, embodied in its Orion system. This delivers real time alerts, A/V quality checks, and detailed reports.

Alongside Orion, the firm is showing its Baton file-based Quality control (QC) system, designed to ensure content readiness from pre-production through to delivery, with support for automated subtitling and captioning in major languages, now backed by machine learning.

The third exhibit is the Vega media analyzer platform, designed for in-depth media analysis, content debugging, and compliance. It comprises a suite of analyzers, including AV1, HEVC, MPEG, VVC, and H.264, aiming to help manage these principal video codecs.

AI is deeply integrated into all our solutions,” said Anantharaman. “Our Baton platform leverages AI for automated quality control, including advanced captioning verification, logo detection, and content classification. Vega suite uses AI for in-depth video analysis, enabling faster debugging and compliance checks. We see AI as a critical component in ensuring media quality at scale, especially as content volumes continue to grow.”

Anantharaman went on to empathize that AI was no longer just a buzzword, but becoming mainstream in recognition that this was the way such systems were now being developed. “We're witnessing AI being deployed across the entire media life cycle, from content creation and quality control to personalized delivery. Over the past year, advancements in machine learning and computer vision have enabled more sophisticated applications, particularly in areas like automated captioning and video analysis.”

Bridge Technologies (Booth N 315) is leading on its QTT Application at NAB 2025, with a strong focus on managing DRM-protected content. This system assigns agents, coded components it calls autonomous software workers, designed to emulate playback of protected content by end users. It authenticates continually against video platforms, receiving authorization from DRM systems to retrieve live services from CDNs for playback.

The system also generates operational metrics such as player alarms, time to playing, interval to first picture and incorrect profile selection. “Such alarms and metrics are indicative of video platform and CDN health and performance, whilst picture analysis presentation and alarming enable correct programming and advertisement insertion verification,” said the company.

The technology is vital for next generation OTT deployments in which ingest, processing and distribution architectures are dispersed, and where administration of the service is not necessarily linked to a singular economic entity, the company argued.

The QTT Application integrates with the VB330 probe and VBC controller, although this is done on a bespoke basis by Bridge on behalf of each customer in order to match the application with the specific DRM system being used. This is executed on a high density, fully redundant and load-balanced suite of players emulating real subscribers on powerful CPE devices. This allows live services to be checked continuously in near real time.

Telestream (Booth W 1501). Telestream’s additions at NAB 2025 revolve around its flagship Vantage platform for workflow orchestration, transcoding and media processing for file-based, streaming workflows, whether live or on demand. The company is trumpeting a “significant update”, including enhancements to compliance, quality control, MAM (Media Asset Management), and archive workflows.

The firm underscores the growing role of AI, and also cloud nativeness, combining these to bring greater flexibility and intelligence, leading towards more automation. The latter has helped attract key customers which will be cited at the event, such as Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), a subsidiary of Comcast Cable set up to develop media systems for other media customers.

To serve a diverse customer base, CTS sought technology accessible to groups with different skill levels and chose Telestream’s Live Capture and GLIM, running on the Vantage platform. CTS exploited the automation capabilities of each product to streamline the ingest, QC, and transcoding of linear and VoD content.

Elecard (Booth W 2246) have been in the video encoding, transcoding and monitoring business since 1988. Along the way they have been an innovator at key stages of the evolution of streaming. Alongside their compression portfolio Elecard offer probe based analyzers for media streams and compressed video bitstreams, and QoS & QoE probes for real-time video monitoring. Alexey Malikov, Elecard Chief Business Development Officer, "We are promoting advanced and all-encompassing 24/7 distribution monitoring automation for broadcast and streaming environments. Our major products in this domain Elecard Boro and StreamEye Studio complement each other with Boro covering live streaming QoS/QoE monitoring and StreamEye Studio delivering in-depth video and container level analysis. We will present the latest enhancements in our live streaming QoS/QoE system in the analytics domain for more efficient TV availability summary representation, our precise SRT monitoring by sniffing approach with extended SRT specific parameters, improved and extended OTT delivery parameters on edges, and expansion with NDI/CDI protocols monitoring. On top of that we will also be hosting workshops on the expo floor, sharing use cases and best practices for streaming troubleshooting and optimizing video delivery."

At NAB Elecard will host two workshops featuring Boro (video quality monitoring system) and StreamEye (video quality analyzer). The workshop topics are: 1) Practical Tips for Troubleshooting your Streaming (on April, 7, 4.00-4.30PM); 2) Optimizing Video Delivery with Boro: Advanced Monitoring for Peak Performance (on April, 8, 4.00-4.30PM).

Conclusion

There is a clear drive to harmonize monitoring and compliance, both horizontally across the workflow chain, and vertically from higher level content analysis to low level QC down to the pixel level. AI is helping achieve this, as well as automation by scaling relevant intelligence across large networks, and as a result is being deployed at increasing pace.

Similarly, remote production, especially in live sports but also news, has progressed from being a temporary deployment on demand to a strategic imperative on a permanent basis. This in turn is extending the scope of monitoring to encompass the dynamic content being produced, incorporating multiple views and camera angles, as well as incorporation of XR content. 

Other articles in this NAB 2025 'Show Focus' series:

The Broadcast Bridge will be at the NAB Show – in the West Hall on booth W 3932. Please come and see us and share your thoughts on what we do and what you would like to see from us in the coming year.