olympics everywhere supplement
special report
In recent years, each successive Games has been associated with a quantum progression in television technology: the Beijing Games, for example, was the first where high definition technology added significantly to the home entertainment experience. Already, it is evident that the London Games will see a new revolution in terms of the wide variety of platforms from the TV to the PC, smartphone and beyond, which will provide coverage of the event. The challenge facing broadcasters is that the Games are one of the predominant global brands and as an event they deserve premium pictures, however they are viewed. Bruce Devlin, chief technology officer at AmberFin, reports.
with content is the consumer's decision. The challenge facing content owners and aggregators is that of providing content in forms that are fit for purpose across a range of distribution platforms in whatever level of resolution the consumer requires, and wherever they live. Often times, the market for this
When quality counts O
n a large or small screen, in standard or high definition, 2D or 3D, at home or on the move - the choice of how, where and when to engage
acquiring content, but this content cannot be monetised by a broadcaster until it has successfully made it into the business workflow. The central purpose of any media
Bruce Devlin, chief technology officer at AmberFin.
facility is to capture and store content, repurpose it according to market demand and then to distribute it across a range of platforms and channels to market. Underlying all these operations are two mission critical requirements: efficiency and quality.
content will be international, which means that there is an implicit need for standards conversion. Furthermore, it is not just a matter of applying standards conversion, but also of implementing it well - which will greatly increase the value of the content on international markets. With the evolution of file-based
workflows this transformation, or transcoding process, has become more accessible. However, there remains the important issue of quality control - being certain that the quality of each media form is consistent and at a level that the content owner requires. Quality control (QC) is an important
part of bringing content into broadcasters’ workflows and archives. Broadcasters industry-wide spend a large proportion of their revenue on
The challenge facing content owners and aggregators is that of providing content in forms that are fit for purpose across a range of distribution platforms.
At next year's London Games, there will be a plethora of content generated within a relatively short timeframe. There will be a large number of devices that will be able to replay the material - or put another way, a large number of screens on which it can be viewed. But there will little time to view the content before it loses a large part of its relevance as the Games progress. The right kind of QC system can
help media facilities create an efficient flow of media, in a range of different file formats, suitable for viewing across a diversity of screens, all in a quality which is acceptable to the consumer and appropriate to the Olympic brand. QC has been available across media
ingest operations for some time: the big challenge today is to offer unified quality control across all ingest and
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transcoding operations and to include that into a single operating timeline.
Unified quality control from AmberFin
iCR Unified QC (UQC) is the world’s first unified quality control solution for content ingest and transcoding operations. This unique approach to quality control combines multiple tools for baseband checks during tape ingest, file-based QC after ingest, and overall operator-controlled QC, including annotation and mark-up in one single unified timeline. This unified timeline gives an accurate and easy to use display of potential issues of any kind such as simple video and audio problems, file wrapper abnormalities, artefact detection, PSE (Photo sensitive Epilepsy) flash detection, loudness violations and potential content- related editorial issues. QC processes can be implemented at any point in the lifecycle of an asset, using the most appropriate technique. Easy to read reports and a range of graphic displays enable operators to easily identify the source, nature and position of an error with a thumbnail of the frame where it occurred. The addition of UQC to AmberFin's iCR file-based content ingest and transcoding system means that users
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