Zixi, the software platform for live video delivery and orchestration, and TAG Video Systems today announced an extended integration that enables Zixi to leverage TAG’s Content Matching technology. Together, the platforms will help broadcasters and content owners verify that SCTE-35 markers remain intact across delivery paths and confirm that redundant feeds carry the expected content before a switching error reaches air.
SCTE-35 markers carry the ad avails, program boundaries and regional cues that live distribution runs on, but encoders, transcoders and other processing stages can strip them along the way, taking the revenue with them. Through the SDK, the Zixi Platform can act on TAG Content Matching results, confirming that the output of a processing chain carries the same content as the input, and measuring the latency between the two, the Zixi Platform will be able to restore the SCTE-35 markers at their precise, frame-accurate times. That adds to the SCTE-35 control Zixi customers already use for downstream compatibility, regional targeting and dynamic ad insertion.
“SCTE-35 is central to how our customers monetize live content, and everything we do with it depends on the markers surviving the processing chain,” said Tim Baldwin, Head of Product, Zixi. “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.”
Fingerprinting will also give operators an automated check on redundant feeds. When two sources match, Zixi can merge them for a seamless switch. When they stop matching, operations teams can catch a switching error before it reaches viewers.
“Broadcasters need to know that the right content is going to the right place,” said Alan Young, Vice President of Strategic Business Development, 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.”
“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,” said Ziv Mor, Chief Growth Officer at TAG Video Systems. “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.”
The work extends an integration that began in 2020 and has so far focused on monitoring and multiviewing. This step takes TAG’s content assurance capabilities into the delivery path itself. Zixi and TAG will discuss the integration at NAB Show New York, SVG TranSPORT and will be participating in the Local TV Strategies Conference.
