In Broadcast - April 2015 - 40

40

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 4 | April 2015

InMedia

To QC Or Not To QC? cont'd...

Interra Systems Baton Media Player

"...Nexidia QC is the
only product that actually
uses the spoken word
to ensure those
[caption] items
are accurate"
Colin Blake
Nexidia

loss of viewership, reduction in the
perceived quality of the programming,
and possible regulatory ﬁnes."
Standards Control
The UK's DPP may have set the bar
high in terms of standard ﬁle-delivery,
but other territories are working
toward their own version, which means
vendors need to rework their tools to
ﬁt.
In most territories, standardisation
is moving towards AVC-i, which is
inherent in the DPP speciﬁcation.
The DPP is a shim (application
compatibility workaround) of AS-11
originally published by the Advanced
Media Workﬂow Association (AMWA) in
the US. AMWA is also the organisation
certifying products as 'DPP Compliant'.
Another group in the US, JTFFFMI are
looking to do something similar the
DPP although Mehring notes that
progress seems to be slow.
Not only do the tools have to be
reworked, but so does compliance
procedure for each and every different
standard.
"Some technology vendors may
need to rework their tools if they
don't already support those speciﬁc
requirements," says Basu. "Interra
does not because we integrate
through
comprehensive,
ﬂexible
APIs. Customers looking to meet new

requirements from regulators also
have the option to simply add new test
plans - or templates.
The German-speaking (DACH) region
is probably the closest in terms of
speciﬁcation and roll out, although
the program there - which is based
on ARD-ZDF MXF Proﬁles, differs
signiﬁcantly. For example, ﬁles can
be exchanged between German
public broadcasters at any point in
the workﬂow from acquisition to
distribution.
Tuning Accuracy
Nexidia QC uses spoken word content
in the media to check for valid closed
captions, validate the presence of
video descriptions, and verify that both
the language of the caption ﬁle and the
language being spoken are correct.
"We believe Nexidia QC is the only
product that actually uses the spoken
word to ensure those items are
accurate," says Blake. "The underlying
technology is resilient to speaker
accents, background noise or music,
and minor paraphrasing common in
captions."
Extending beyond QC, Nexidia
can
automatically
ﬁx
caption
synchronisation problems - typically
due to live-captioning or frame rate
conversion issues - and output
new captions that are timed
to display in sync with the
audio. "This eliminates the
time-consuming manual effort
of repurposing content for the
web, and it enhances viewer
experience," says Blake.
At NAB, Nexidia QC 2.3
adds a caption review player,
allowing users to view their
media along with the original
and resynchronised captions.
A new version of the product,
Nexidia Compliance, is in the

works. This is tuned towards caption
and video description compliance
monitoring, to be used with
compliance monitoring solutions such
as those from Volicon, Digital Nirvana,
Triveni.
Good Results
According to Ben Davenport, a
Dalet UQC is unique in combining
the best of automated media ﬁle
QC with 'the human touch.' "Results
from automated QC tools are, where
required, presented in a clear interface
where users can quickly jump to
QC events, and make quick and
effective judgment whether to pass
the ﬁle, reject it or send to a creative
or automated ﬁx-up workﬂow," he
explains.
Dalet UQC can utilise automated
QC data from all key players in the
market today, including Interra,
Vidcheck,
Tektronix/Digimetrics,
Venera, Metaglue etc. but does not
generate any automated QC data
itself. QC tasks are managed through
the Dalet interface and results are
collected directly back where they are
presented to users, and combined with
manual review and approval (where
necessary).
NAB will see a number of
incremental enhancements added
to the Dalet UQC interface. In a more
general AQC sense, there are two
areas of development Dalet expects to
see at NAB - wider format support and
more advanced ﬁx-up tools.
Snell's Momentum MAM is claimed
as unique in its conﬁgurability of
workﬂow and metadata schemas.
"With Momentum the user can
reconﬁgure workﬂows on the ﬂy via its
simple to use but powerful drag and
drop interface," says Mehring.
At NAB, Snell is introducing
'Media Biometrics' - enabling media
organisations to assess the quality of
media but also to validate it against a
unique signature. "QC will only tell you
if the media has integrity - not whether

"You need to know what
to do when the automated
QC ﬂags something
- and how to ﬁx it"
Karl Mehring
Snell

it's the right media," he says. "To be
useful, media validation systems have
to be fast, and Media Biometrics can
lock to a media signature in just two
seconds."
Where Interra's Baton platform "is
robust, scalable and accurate" other
solutions often fail, says Basu. "They
are not robust enough to handle
real-world applications. Still others
don't scale and cannot support a
large installation or a large number
of ﬁles. Some solutions don't provide
accurate checks. Erroneous results
(false positives, for example) can take
up more of a facility's time than simply
having the right errors identiﬁed in the
ﬁrst place.
QC analytics are being demonstrated
by Interra in Las Vegas. "Imagine the
value in understanding quality issue
trends (both good and bad), and being
able to predict where problems might
arise in the future," says Basu. Interra
will also demonstrate new workﬂow
capabilities, i.e., digital ﬁngerprinting
within Baton.
Like other technologies, Vidcheck
supports the AS-11 DPP delivery
standard, but unlike other vendors it
goes further, so it claims. "If there are
issues with a ﬁle, Vidchecker not only
describes the problem, it automatically
corrects it too, which is what makes it
different from any other QC product on
the market," says Twine.
At NAB, the company is introducing a
Vidapps-Video plug-in for Adobe After
Effects, or Premiere Pro to correct RGB
gamut and YUV levels within the NLE.
This means that users of Adobe After
Effects and Premiere Pro can correct
illegal video levels to broadcast
safe
parameters
using
Vidcheck's patented algorithms
as part of the edit process,
immediately before the media is
rendered.
This approach means that
the user can be conﬁdent that
the rendered media will fully
comply with the speciﬁed
requirements before it leaves
the Adobe environment.
Nexidia QC caption
v. dialogue checking
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.interrasystems.com/file-based-qc.php https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUGVJQITdyw&list=PLXvzMkwOg7D4BodzZPBCUgURVAA8lb7om&index=1
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