September 2013 www.tvbeurope.com


TVBEurope 59 Forum Automated QC


How has demand for Quality Control parameters changed over, say, the last five years?


Patel: Emotion Systems specialises in the area of Loudness Compliance for file-based workflows and this area of work has changed markedly over the last few years due to the adoption of different compliance standards around the world. On a different note, an additional key change has been the demise of the trained operator with a corresponding increase in media volume. This has encouraged a trend towards automated and deskilled approaches to QC. Singhal: A few years ago,


Automated QC was a new concept


and people were struggling to understand whether it can replace a human tester. It had to do both with the user’s clarity on what they wished to achieve and the capabilities of the tools itself. Users now are identifying the correct application for ‘Automated QC’ as an aid to their QC processes rather than complete replacement of the human tester. Due to this improved understanding, the demands from the users are now clearer and more focussed. This is obviously good for both the users and the vendors.


Has the growing practice of shooting and editing one’s own material — perhaps with a creative, rather than technical, eye — brought about an increasing need for even more in-depth QC?


Ackroyd: While digital acquisition has helped to make video signal levels correct, multiple formats bring errors relating to aspect ratios, shoot-safe areas, up/down conversion and audio framing. Devlin: Yes. It has brought about the


need for more QC and also for more fix- up tools. One contributing factor is that the material is likely to be seen on more devices in more resolutions and more variants than before. A small production house that shoots in film mode in the US, edits in video mode and then naively exports a 1080x50i project for the EU is likely to have a significant number of QC failures in content — simply because their technical knowledge is not as good as their creative abilities. ‘This should never happen’, I hear readers cry. But they’re not crying as loudly as the poor broadcaster who has to try and fix it. Thankfully some vendors are on the ball and have solutions to these inevitable problems of supply chain complexity. Fabian: On the one hand, the


diversity of formats has increased considerably. But on the other, QC is seldom carried out, when the delivered material has its source from either camera or camcorder. Usually, this material is very reliable and will be bypassed into the central ingest immediately. Then again, material from other sources that has been edited, versioned or exported definitely requires an in-depth QC. Gupta: Yes, editing could lead to quality issues in content, of which a


Manik Gupta: “QC needs to be integrated with file-based workflows so that it is performed at each stage of the process”


person shooting/editing may not be aware. We have seen a lot of Baton QC users facing quality issues because of bad editing — Field Order error, RGB Colour Gamut issues, Video Signal Level issues, Field Dominance error, and Audio loudness. This is precisely where QC checks help these media companies ensure that content meets specification. Walker: A common mistake these


days is to set cameras to shoot at the wrong frame rate or set the audio to record at the wrong audio bit depth. Within our ContentAgent, product rushes and master delivery files can be automatically checked for these common mistakes and then corrected by performing a high quality frame rate conversion and converting the audio to the correct bit depth.


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