Zixi abd TAG Video Systems have announced an extension of their collaboration, enabling the Zixi Platform to leverage TAG’s Content Matching technology.
Building on an partnership that began in 2020, the integration aims to enable broadcasters and content owners to ensure that SCTE-35 markers remain intact across delivery feeds and confirm redundant feeds are carrying expected content to prevent switching errors reaching air, extending TAG’s content assurance capabilities into the delivery path.
Carrying the ad avails, programme boundaries and regional cues that live distribution runs on, SCTE-35 markers can be susceptible to stripping by encoders, transcoders and other processing stages, resulting in the removal of revenue. Through the SDK, the Zixi Platform can act on TAG Content Matching results, said the company, confirming processing chain inputs and outputs carry the same content and measuring latency between the two. This enables the Zixi Platform to restore markers at their precise, frame-accurate times, adding to operator control used for downstream compatibility, regional targeting and dynamic ad insertion.
Additionally, fingerprinting aims to provide operators with an automated check on redundant feeds, Where two sources match, Zixi merges them for a seamless switch. When they stop matching, teams are able to catch switching errors before viewers notice.
Tim Baldwin, SVP of Product, Zixi, said, “SCTE-35 is central to how our customers monetise live content, and everything we do with it depends on the markers surviving the processing chain. Bringing the TAG SDK into the Zixi Platform gives us a verified reference for what went in and what came out. That extends the SCTE-35 insertion, removal, and modification our customers already rely on across the encoders and transcoders in their workflow.”
“Broadcasters need to know that the right content is going to the right place,” said Alan Young, VP of strategic business development at Zixi. “As soon as a switching error has occurred and the feeds no longer match, you need to know immediately. Making sure it maintains broadcast quality and keeping it on air, that’s the crux of it.”
Chief growth officer at TAG Video Systems, Ziv Mor, added, “We developed TAG’s Content Matching technology to help customers catch issues that can cost them revenue, from the wrong content going to air to ad opportunities that fail to reach their destination. It gives them a way to verify content and quality across multiple workflow paths without relying on someone watching every point. Our expanded collaboration with Zixi is an important milestone: it extends that assurance beyond the customer’s own facilities into contribution and distribution paths, where issues can otherwise be difficult to detect and resolve, and moves us closer to TAG Blue’s vision of a fully connected media workflow.”
