Voice & Video Analysis
About Voice & Video analysis
Voice & Video view window
Voice & Video upper pane views
Voice & Video lower pane tabs
Calls and Media Options
Configuring options in Voice & Video views
Summary voice and video statistics
About Voice & Video analysis
If you have purchased OmniPeek with the Advanced Voice & Video option, voice and video over IP signaling and media is available for capture analysis.
Voice over IP and Video over IP refer to protocol suites used to set up and maintain two way voice or video communications over the Internet. Voice and video protocol suites include those relating to SIP, SCCP, RTSP, etc. The unit of communication is the call and an individual call may be carried in multiple channels, some dedicated to signaling and others to carrying the encoded voice data. The encoded data is referred to as media, and a call containing such data has media channels. Media channels contain RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) or RTCP (RTP Control Protocol) data. The conversion of voice data into digital form and back again is accomplished using a particular codec (coder/decoder), specified in the RTP header.
The Voice & Video views in capture windows provide simultaneous analysis of voice and video traffic with subjective and objective quality metrics. The Calls view displays one row for each call in a capture and the Media view displays one row for each RTP media flow in a call.
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Note: OmniPeek voice and video analysis derives its call quality metrics from industry-standard Telchemy technology.
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The Voice & Video Visual Expert displays signal bounce diagrams of the signaling and RTP/RTCP packets of an entire call in a single window. See Voice & Video Visual Expert.
Voice & Video view window
The Voice & Video views have two data areas. The upper pane contains voice and video data arranged by call or by the media streams within a call. See Voice & Video upper pane views.
The lower pane contains three tabs which present additional information for a row or rows selected in the upper pane, allowing you to view call details, a summary count of the Voice & Video expert events found in the capture, or a capture log of the individual VoIP expert events. See Voice & Video lower pane tabs.
The parts of the Voice & Video view window are identified below.
- Summary counts: This area displays the total calls and media flows in this capture.
- Refresh: You can immediately update the currently displayed Voice & Video view with the latest information. You can also choose a refresh interval from the drop-down list.
- Play Audio: This button lets you play the audio from a call or media flow that has a playback-supported codec. The button is only available when a selected call or media flow has a playback-supported codec.
- Upper pane Voice & Video views: This area displays voice or video data arranged by calls or media. See Calls view and Media view. Additional options are available from these views by right-clicking a call or media flow. See Calls and Media Options.
- Lower pane Voice & Video tabs: This area displays additional information corresponding to a selected row of data in the upper pane. See Voice & Video lower pane tabs.
Voice & Video upper pane views
The upper pane contains captured voice data arranged in two formats: by individual call or by the individual media streams within a call.
Calls view
The Calls view displays one row for each call. Each call is displayed in the order in which it was captured, with call number, call name, and end cause information.
Right-click the column header to display additional view columns. See Voice & Video view columns and Voice & Video view columns for a complete list and description of the available columns.
To view a visual display of the call details, right-click a call and select Voice & Video Visual Expert (or double-click the call). See Voice & Video Visual Expert for more information.
Media view
The Media view displays one row for each RTP media flow in a call. A voice call will usually have two media flows, one for each direction. Video calls will usually have four media flows: two voice and two video.
Right-click the column header to display additional view columns. SeeVoice & Video view columns and Voice & Video view columns for a complete list and description of the available columns, including those providing distinct voice and video quality scores.
Voice & Video lower pane tabs
Additional information is provided in nested tabs for selected calls or media flows displayed in the upper pane of the Voice & Video view.
Voice & Video Details tab
In the Calls view, the Details tab contains all the information about the call. Every column in the Calls view is displayed in the Details tab.
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Note: In the Media view, the Details tab displays details about the selected media flow and the call that contains it.
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Voice & Video Event Summary tab
The Event Summary tab shows a count of each voice and video expert event for this capture. Severity levels configured in the EventFinder are displayed to the left of each voice and video expert event.
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Note: The Expert EventFinder contains many VoIP expert events, including those relating to H.225, MGCP, RTP, and SIP. For details, see Expert EventFinder.
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Voice & Video Event Log tab
The Event Log tab shows a list of all voice and video expert events found in this capture. The four toggle buttons in the Event Log tab header let you show or hide events by levels of severity. See Expert EventFinder for instructions on how to configure levels of severity for voice and video expert events.
Calls and Media Options
You can right-click a call or media flow in the Calls or Media views to display the following options:
- Voice & Video Visual Expert: Opens a Voice & Video Visual Expert window for the selected call or media flow. See Voice & Video Visual Expert.
Voice & Video Visual Expert
The Voice & Video Visual Expert displays each individual packet of an entire call within a single window, as well as the RTP packet timing, jitter, and quality score over time. If there are gaps of missing or late RTP packets, these gaps are also displayed, along with a their effect on call quality.
The Signaling tab of the Voice & Video Visual Expert window displays signal bounce diagrams with columns corresponding to each node participating in the call. Signaling and media stream packets are represented by horizontal lines, giving you an immediate overview of the contents of a call. The bounce diagram also includes linear representations as well as numerical measurements of R-Factor and jitter values.
In addition to many of the columns available in the Calls and Media views, the Voice & Video Visual Expert columns allow you to calculate the relative time lapse between individual packets, the signaling sequence method of the call, and more (see Voice & Video Visual Expert columns).
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Note: The Voice & Video Visual Expert displays only calls, not individual media flows. Opening a Voice & Video Visual Expert window for one or more media flows is the same as opening their corresponding calls.
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To view the Voice & Video Visual Expert:
- Select one or more calls or media flows in the Calls or Media views of a capture window.
- Right-click and choose Voice & Video Visual Expert. The Signaling tab for this call or calls appears.
The parts of the Signaling tab are described below.
- Nodes: Each node participating in the call gets a vertical line, with the caller usually on the left, the gatekeeper in the middle, and callee on the right.
- Signaling packets:
- Each signaling packet appears as a black horizontal arrow, with a summary above the arrow:
- Packets that start a call (such as SIP INVITE packets) start with a small diamond:
- Packets that usually mean the end of call setup (such as SIP ACK packets) start with a small bar. The time between these two packets is the call setup time.
- RTP/RTCP packets: RTP/RTCP media packets appear as horizontal light grey arrows, with a green R-Factor and blue jitter line graph above the arrow. See RTP/RTCP Rows.
- Voice & Video Visual Expert columns: Right-click the column header to display available columns. For example, selecting Relative Time displays the time elapsed since the start of the call and the individual signaling and RTP media packets:
For a complete list and description of Voice & Video Visual Expert columns, see Voice & Video Visual Expert columns.
- Right-click options:
- Go To Packet: Show a selected packet in the Packets view and bring Packets view to front.
- Decode Packet: Open a decode window for the selected packet.
- Select Related Packets:
- By Call: All signaling, media, and media control packets for the selected call
- By Source: All packets to or from the source IP address.
- By Destination: All packets to or from the destination IP address.
- By RTP/RTCP Packets: All packets in the RTP/RTCP row.
See Selecting related packets for more information about using this feature.
- Call background color: Each call gets its own background color in the bounce diagram, making it possible to follow several simultaneous calls within a single window:
RTP/RTCP Rows
The media or voice streams (RTP/RTCP packets) within a call display in the Signaling tab as rows progressing through time, with the first packet in the row at the left to the last packet at the right. Since most calls are bidirectional, a pair of rows often appears with one row for each direction.
The parts of a the RTP/RTCP media packets in a bidirectional call are identified below.
- Grey arrows and numbers: Grey horizontal arrows represent the RTP/RTCP media packets. The last packet in the row displays a small grey number showing the entire duration for the row. (Trivial durations are not shown for very brief rows.)
- Green lines and numbers: Green horizontal lines show R-Factor conversational values, with the row's final value and minimum-maximum range in green to the right of the last packet in the row.
- Blue lines and numbers: Blue lines show jitter values, with the row's final value and minimum-maximum range in blue to the right of the last packet in the row.
- Blue tick marks: Blue tick marks represent RTCP packets.
- Grey tick marks: Grey tick marks represent out-of-sequence RTP packets.
- Red tick mark: Red tick marks show gaps of one or more missing packets.
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Note: Gaps where no packets appear are readily visible, as well as their immediate effects of lowering R-Factor and raising jitter values.
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As you widen the bounce diagram column, the Voice & Video Visual Expert can break an RTP line into its individual packets, as shown below:
Saving voice and video statistics
To save voice and video statistics, right-click the call or media flow in the Calls or Media views, and choose Save Voice & Video Statistics.... You can save statistics in the following formats:
- Text (tab delimited) *.txt
- CSV (Comma delimited) *.csv
The content and arrangement of the saved files matches the content of the pane being saved. You can hide or display optional columns or change the column order to control the information that will be included in the saved file.
Playing calls or media as audio
To play the audio, right-click the call or media flow in the Calls or Media views, and choose Play Audio (you can also select the call or media flow and click the Play Audio button in the upper pane header). The default media player starts and begins playing the audio of the selected call.
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Note: The Play Audio option is only available when a selected call or media flow has a playback-supported codec.
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Saving calls or media as audio WAV files
To save as an audio WAV file, right-click the call or media flow in the Calls or Media views, and choose Save Audio WAV File.
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Note: The Save Audio WAV File option is only available when a selected call or media flow has a playback-supported codec.
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Selecting voice and video related packets
To select related packets, right-click the call or media flow in the Calls or Media views, and choose Select Related Packets. You can select packets using one of the following options:
- By Call: All packets in this call. Includes all signaling, media, and media control packets.
- By Caller: All packets to or from the caller's IP address
- By Callee: All packets to or from the callee's IP address
- By Port: All packets between the client and server IP address and ports (usually the same as Flow, but not always if a node pair reuses ports for multiple TCP or UDP connections)
- By Flow ID: All packets in the flow identified in the Flow ID column
- By Media Flow: All packets in the media flow
For more information on how to select related packets, see Selecting related packets.
Making a voice or video filter
Filters are easy to create for calls and media flows.
For calls, you can create an address filter between caller and callee, caller and gateway, and gateway and callee. If these are three separate nodes, an advanced filter with three bidirectional address filters will be created, as shown in the example below.
To make a filter for a selected call:
- Select a call in the Calls view of a capture window.
- Right-click and choose Make Filter. If the call includes a Gatekeeper, the Advanced view of the Insert Filter dialog appears. In this example, three bidirectional address filters displayed.
- Enter a Name for your filter.
- Click the And, Or, or Not buttons to further define your filter.
- Click OK. Your filter will now appear in all filter lists in the program.
For media flows, you can create an address or port filter for the selected media flow.
To create a filter for a media flow:
- Select a media flow in the Media view of a capture window.
- Right-click and choose Make Filter. The Simple view of the Insert Filter dialog appears with the address and port details entered for this media flow.
- Enter a Name for your filter.
- Click OK. Your filter will now appear in all filter lists in the program.
Configuring options in Voice & Video views
You can customize the display of columns in the Voice & Video views, select packets for further analysis using a variety of options, and save voice and video statistics in several formats.
Voice & Video view columns
To change the display of columns in the Calls, Media, and Voice & Video Visual Expert views:
- Right-click in the column headers to select the columns you wish to display. You can also select Show All Columns to have all columns appear in the Voice & Video view.
- Use drag and drop in the upper pane of the Voice & Video views to change column order.
- Sort the contents of any column in ascending or descending order.
- Double-click the right edge of a column header to automatically resize the column area.
- Hold down the Shift key and double-click the right edge of any column header to automatically resize all of the columns.
- Right-click in the column headers and select Columns.... The Columns dialog appears. Check the columns you wish to display in the Voice & Video views and click OK.
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Tip: Right-click to Check All or Uncheck All columns in the Columns dialog.
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For a complete list and description of the columns common to the Voice & Video views of a capture window, see Voice & Video view columns. For additional columns available only in the Voice & Video Visual Expert, see Voice & Video Visual Expert columns.
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Note: Some calls lack values for all columns. This is especially true for calls where the RTP media flows are detected, but the signaling protocol associated with the call is not detected or not supported in the Voice & Video views.
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Setting VoIP options
You can select a geographical region and VoIP emulation model to use when calculating VoIP quality scores.
To select a geographical region for Voice & Video views:
- Choose Tools > Options. The Options dialog appears.
- Select the VoIP options.
- Select a geographical region from the drop-down list and click OK.
- Restart OmniPeek to enable the new geographical region setting.
Summary voice and video statistics
Summary voice and video statistics are displayed in the Summary view of capture windows and saved capture files. A Voice & Video summary statistics group displays values collected and aggregated across all calls within the capture or file.
To view summary Voice & Video statistics:
- Select the Summary view in a capture window.
- Scroll to Voice & Video to see summary voice and video statistics for this capture.
The following table describes each voice and video statistic displayed in the Summary view:
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Voice and Video Statistic
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Description
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Calls (Total)
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All calls for the capture. Includes opened and closed calls, as well as recycled calls.
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Calls (Current)
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Calls currently displayed in the Calls view. Calls (Current) = Calls (Total) - Calls (Recycled).
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Calls (Recycled)
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Calls that are no longer in the Calls view. The call limit is 1000. After 1000 calls, calls are recycled. Calls (Recycled) = Calls (Total) - Calls (Current).
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Total Packet Loss %
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Expected but never received packets as a percentage of expected packets (expected - captured) / (expected). Calculated using all media flows (supported codecs only) for all closed calls.
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Voice Score Elements
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Total number of voice media flows (supported codecs only) for all closed calls.
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Voice Packet Loss %
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Expected but never received packets as a percentage of expected packets (expected - captured) / (expected). Calculated using all voice score elements.
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MOS-LQ
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MOS score calculated under the assumption that this is a one-way "listen only" media flow.
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MOS-CQ
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MOS score calculated under the assumption that this is an interactive "conversation" media flow.
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MOS-PQ
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MOS score calculated using a model that permits apples-to-apples comparisons with other MOS-PQ measurements.
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R Factor Listening
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R-Factor calculated under the assumption that this is a one-way "listen only" media flow.
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R Factor Conversational
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R-Factor calculated under the assumption that this is an interactive "conversation" media flow.
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R Factor G.107
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R-Factor calculated using an ITU G.107 model that permits apples-to-apples comparisons with other G.107 measurements.
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Audio Score Elements
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Total number of audio media flows (supported codecs only) for all closed calls.
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Audio Packet Loss %
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Expected but never received packets as a percentage of expected packets (expected - captured) / (expected). Calculated using all audio score elements.
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VSAQ
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Video Service Audio Quality expressed as a score in the range of 0 to 50. This is an audio codec dependent measure related to the subjective quality of the decoded audio stream.
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MOS-Audio
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The video service audio quality expressed as a score in the range 1.0 to 5.0. This is an audio codec dependant measure related to the subjective quality of the decoded audio stream(s).
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Video Score Elements
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Total number of video media flows (supported codecs only) for all closed calls.
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Video Packet Loss %
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Expected but never received packets as a percentage of expected packets (expected - captured) / (expected). Calculated using all video score elements.
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VS-PQ
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Video Service Picture Quality expressed in the range 0 to 50. This is a codec dependent measure of the subjective quality of the decoded video stream.
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VS-MQ
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Video Service Multimedia Quality expressed as a score in range 0 to 50. This is a composite audio/video measure related to the overall subjective user experience and considers picture quality, audio quality and audio/video synchronization.
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VS-TQ
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Video Service Transmission Quality expressed as a score in the range 0 to 50. This is a codec independent measure related to the ability of the bearer channel to support reliable video.
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MOS-Audio Video
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The multimedia quality expressed as a score in the range 1.0 to 5.0. This is a composite audio/video measure that is related to the overall subjective user experience and considers picture quality, audio quality and audio/video synchronization.
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MOS-Video
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The absolute picture quality expressed as a score in the range 1.0 to 5.0. This is a codec dependant measure that is related to the subjective quality of the decoded video stream and considers the effects of codec, loss, bit rate/quantization level, image resolution and frame loss concealment.
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For more information on voice and video statistics in the Summary view of capture windows, see Summary statistics.
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