Triple-Play Service Deployment

Chapter 6: Troubleshooting Video in the Headend
Figure 6.3: An Elementary Stream Analyzer can be used to test the compressed video frame by
frame to identify violations of encoding specifications and provide detailed information about
the frames, macro blocks, motion vectors, and other compression parameters.
The ES analyzer will examine the video at the micro level of frames,
slices, and macro blocks. Where compression was too heavy,
resulting picture quality defects will be evident. The ES analyzer
thus allows the operator to thoroughly test the various encoding
and transcoding solutions and settings available and determine
the optimum equipment model and configuration for their
network. A vigorous qualification of this compression stage is
important, as the hand-off from the encoder or transcoder to the
MPEG transport stage is another demarcation point. Real-time
monitoring of the compression product (the content itself) is neither
practical nor feasible, so the operator would like to have a high
degree of confidence that any problems with the programming
originated at some point after the compression stage.
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