58 TVBEurope Forum Automated QC Eyeandear forquality
As the industry hurtles into the file-based domain, there is growing confusion around the role of Automated Quality Control in television programme delivery. Philip Stevens reports
AT TVBEUROPE’S recent IT Broadcast Workflow conference, the subject of Quality Control was frequently mentioned as a major element in the digital workflow process. However, contacting suppliers of ingesting and archiving products for this Forum has revealed that QC is often an add-on to other solutions rather than being an end in itself. As a result, some of those vendors felt unable to take part. So, should QC be a ‘standalone’ process? And with loudness being an ongoing issue, how effective are QC systems at handling the matter? We discuss these and other issues with (in alphabetical order) David Ackroyd, Business
Should QC be a ‘standalone’ operation or form part of other processes in the ingest-to- delivery chain?
Ackroyd: Random sample-based QC can provide a good balance between 100% QC on all ingest and ad-hoc QC. This keeps suppliers aware of the need to comply, yet can minimise the time and expense of providing a full QC net. Begent: QC should be an
integral part of any workflow — in post production during edit, and after the file has been rendered before delivery to the broadcaster. For the broadcaster on ingest, after transcode and on the playout server before broadcast. Devlin: It seems only the media industry thinks QC can be a standalone process. When you buy milk, you look at the metadata on the carton and if the date is greater than the date on your clock, you assume that all sorts of QC has been done upstream. Then your final ‘sniff test’ QC will be sufficient to ensure that drinking the milk won’t kill you. This QC metadata is, if you
like, the ultimate in metadata compression. By comparison, many in the media industry want a software QC tool to dismantle a 100GB media file, analyse the video, audio, VANC, metadata, wrapper, synchronisation, loudness, blockiness, colourimitry and a hundred other parameters in zero time
for zero cost. And then report the results with a single traffic light that covers all the business risks of the processes that have taken place upstream. Unrealistic? I think so, too.
We need to think of QC as the application of periodic measurements to assure the quality of material through a cascade of processes. QC is not test and measurement. AmberFin’s QCML document can take multiple tools with multiple measures at multiple phases of the lifecycle of the material and portray them in a way that requires almost no training to interpret. Sounds too good to be true, but our customers see the benefits!!! Fabian: We would set the visual
QC apart from the technical QC. While visual QC focusses on the actual impression, the technical QC takes all those aspects into account. Thus, technical QC is always mandatory to all tactical workflow steps, such as ingest and delivery, and should be part of this respective process. The visual QC, however, would be a standalone operation at the end of the production chain since the technical checks would not be sufficient. Gupta: File-based workflows
have become reality and with that QC has moved from being a point /standalone operation just
David Ackroyd: “Random
sample-based QC can provide a good balance between 100% QC on all ingest and ad-hoc QC”
Development director at Omnitek; Simon Begent, sales director of VidCheck; Bruce Devlin, CTO at AmberFin; Niklas Fabian, product manager, Rohde & Schwarz DVS; Manik Gupta, product architect, Interra Systems; KJ Kandell, senior director, Media and Entertainment Products at Nexidia; Robert Millis, senior product manager — Compressed Server Systems at Harris Broadcast; MC Patel, CEO Emotion Systems; Vikas Singhal, executive director, Business Development at Veneratech; and Owen Walker, head of Product Management, root6 Technology.
Kandell: The efficiency of the chain of tasks from ingest to delivery can be significantly improved by treating it as one long file-based workflow, whereby components should be loosely coupled via integrations, methodologies, and applications that are suited to the task. Millis: There is no one right
answer. QC has to work well with existing customer workflows. Many QC checks can only be done after the material is completely written as a package. You want to apply the right ‘level’ of testing at various touch points. Certain things you look for at ingest will likely be
Bruce Devlin: “QC is not test and measurement”
www.tvbeurope.com September 2013
K J Kandell: “Metadata by itself should not be trusted as accurate and thus the need for automated QC”
“The efficiency of the chain of tasks from ingest to delivery can be significantly improved by treating it as one long file-based workflow”
Simon Begent: “QC should be an integral part of any workflow”
before playout or transmission. QC needs to be integrated with file-based workflows so that it is performed at each stage of the process. Early detection of any issue can prevent a cascading effect on content quality at later stages. Baton web services can be tightly integrated with the asset management systems so that QC failures at any workflow stage can be sent out as alerts, allowing necessary action to be taken.
different than what is done after transcode, creative adjustments or pull from archive. Singhal: While QC systems
can work independently, the real automation is possible with integration inside the workflows. While Automated QC vendors can work with off-the-shelf management packages to provide integrated offerings to the customer, the QC offerings provide APIs for easy integration with home grown management systems. Walker: QC can be performed standalone, but for maximum efficiency it should be part of
the overall workflow. For example, before editorial is performed, clips can be checked to make sure that they are in the right wrapper and video/audio format. If not, they are transcoded or rewrapped to the required editing format. When finishing/mastering is completed, visual QC can be done to check that titles, for example, are correct. Once final master broadcast deliverables have been created, again, QC can be performed to check that the file-based delivery specification has been met.
K J Kandell, Nexidia
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