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80 TVBEurope QC Forum


Quality control matters


We return to the pressing issue of automated quality control for this month’s Forum. Philip Stevens moderates the discussion between some of the major players in the fi eld


Views continue to vary when it comes to the benefi ts of automated QC versus manual intervention. So what are the keys to an effective automated system? Has the proliferation of second screens made a difference to QC procedures? And what’s the next innovation? To debate these and other issues we invited (in alphabetical order) Simon Begent, sales director, VidCheck; Ben Davenport, director of channels, Dalet; Karl Mehring, senior product manager, TV Everywhere, Snell; StephenNunney, managing director, Hamlet Video International; Raphael Samad, business development director, Emotion Systems; Adam Schadle, vice president, Video Clarity; Vikas Singhal, co-founder and executive director, business development, Venera Technologies; U.N. Vasudev, strategic product planner and business development manager, video product line, Tektronix; and Penny Westlake, director of EU sales at Interra Systems.


What are the keys to developing a fi le-based quality control strategy?


Begent: A key point is that QC should be integrated at all stages of your workfl ow. The earlier you catch problems the better. QC should be done when the fi les are fi rst received, during and after edit, before and after transcode and not just as an add-on immediately before delivery. It is also important to understand the QC requirements of your customer. File-based QC has to be able to work with many different formats and test requirements. The DPP initiative seeks to standardise requirements for major UK broadcasters, however, different needs for international delivery – for Netfl ix, iTunes and other providers – will continue to require QC systems with test templates for different levels of testing. Davenport: Wherever you are in the content creation and distribution chain, the reason we do QC is money. For example, to QC fi les for subjective and objective content, video and audio quality may enable us to charge more for a premium service. To QC fi les absolutely against standards and delivery specifi cations can avoid the re-processing of fi les later in the chain. To QC fi les against regulatory checks, such as loudness or fl ash patterns, can avoid costly rework, or worse, fi nes. All these things have associated costs and so does QC. An effective QC strategy will balance these costs against trust in content.


www.tvbeurope.com September 2014


Simon Begent Vidcheck


Ben Davenport Dalet


Mehring: Above all – plan. It may seem obvious, but planning is critical. You need to know exactly what you want to check for and what false positives you need to eliminate, with your specifi c types of media in mind. It is common on some types of media to have many frames of still or black, for example. So, the best tools and workfl ows for fi le-based quality control must have more subjective levels of tolerance and confi gurable thresholds. It’s the best way to avoid the classic ‘boy-who-cried-wolf’ scenario. If your QC system constantly sends alerts about problems that don’t exist, you will be less likely to react quickly when there really is a problem. Samad: Accuracy of measurement, ease of use, understandable reports, good ways to not only fi nd, but also fi x problems, appropriateness of location in the workfl ow and a rigorous procedure are all attributes that come to mind


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