Fovea is a streaming video analysis tool that is designed to monitor up to 500 simultaneous video streams. The unit gives the user flexibility to serve a wide range of applications associated with network performance and its ability to support video applications simulating a user watching and changing channels. While watching a channel, quality measurements are performed to determine the user's overall quality experience while channel surfing, Zap Time measurements are performed to determine how quickly network elements respond to commands.

Capabilities

• Fovea simulates hundreds of IPTV subscribers/Set Top Boxes (STBs) independently changing channels and watching video.
• Fovea GoldenEyes simultaneously monitor hundreds of Multicast IPTV streams in real-time, quantifying the Quality of Experience (QOE) per viewer.
• Fovea provides the industry’s first Video Reception Index (VRI), a measurement that quantifies the effect of lost and corrupted video frames on the viewer.
• Fovea presents the following measurements per viewer endpoint:
• MPEG Transport Stream (TS) packet metrics
• RFC 4445, RFC 3550 and ETSI TR 101 290
• Video I, P and B frame metrics and detail
• Perceptual Quality measurements
• Zap Times
• Fovea’s simple GUI interface increases productivity by enabling the user to configure a test within minutes.

Tests Performed

Ameritec has incorporated into Fovea a comprehensive set of measurements designed to best depict the user's experience as it pertains to video quality. Utilizing a standards based approach, Ameritec has incorporated ETSI TR101290, Media Delivery Index (RFC4445) and RFC3550 measurements as well as perceptual quality metrics such as MOS-V for each of the TS streams configured, up to a maximum of 500 streams. Additionally, Fovea provides a Video Reception Index measurement that captures two critical components of a video quality problem: (1) the percentage of bad frames and (2) the duration of the longest video degradation in seconds. Fovea also measures Zap Times.

Summary

With a wide range of simulation and leading monitoring capability, Ameritec with the Fovea have produced a simple to use tool for all IPTV testers who need to know what’s happening on their system. With its detailed analysis capabilities Fovea provides not only qualitative but also a quantitative measurements that will be a timesaving benefit to all engineers in this area.