AmberFin Announces Strategic Best in Breed Additions to Unified Quality Control Platform

AmberFin Announces Strategic Best in Breed' Additions to Unified Quality Control Platform 11 Sep 2013

UQC Architecture Empowers EBU Strategic Programme on Quality Control

Broadcasters moving to file-based production facilities have to consider how to use automated Quality Control (QC) systems. Manual quality control is simply not adequate anymore and it does not scale, so said Bruce Devlin, CTO at AmberFin on the eve of IBC. Devlin was reinforcing the view of the EBU and explaining how the company's Unified Quality Control (UQC) platform can help broadcasters, facilities and content owners to integrate EBU approved QC testing strategies.

At IBC, AmberFin will announce the addition of a further two software QC tools to UQC, Nexidia QC and Minnetonka's AudioToolsServer, which the company regards as best in breed'. They will enable users to specify an optimum combination of software tools for a specific QC task from 10 different vendors and products.

The EBU recognised QC as a key topic for the media industry in 2010: the following year it started an EBU Strategic Programme on Quality Control, with the aim to collect requirements, experiences and to create recommendations for broadcasters implementing file-based QC in their facilities. Adopting the resulting EBU guidelines enables content owners to take a media file and pass it through numerous third-party QC standards and then to collate the results in a meaningful way.

The EBU has created a Periodic Table' of QC tests, which is a visual representation of the different tests that users might wish to implement. Just as users need a visual representation of the tests, they also need a visual representation of the test results, which is exactly what UQC provides. To enable complete coverage of the EBU Periodic Table of QC tests a user will need more than one QC tool since some specialise in certain areas, but no one QC tool provides every test. AmberFin UQC enables users to select from a broad range of best of breed' QC systems that provide very specific capabilities and integrate them on a single platform. The results of all the tools are displayed on a single user interface and timeline.

UQC unique quality control capabilities designed for today's multi-platform environment

In today's market, UQC represents a unique approach to file-based media quality control since it combines multiple tools for baseband checks during tape ingest, file-based QC after ingest, and overall operator-controlled QC, including annotation and mark-up.

Already incorporating many of the market's established third-party QC solutions, the news at IBC 2013 tells of the addition of two best of breed' QC systems being integrated within UQC. Nexidia QC is a specialist in language and caption verification and QC system whilst Minnetonka's AudioToolsServer is a specialist audio QC and loudness management system.

With a palette of ten different vendors and systems, UQC users are able to mix and match tools to create the optimum QC environment for their needs, explained Bruce Devlin. With UQC, users can combine various QC tools and display all the QC results on a single intuitive user interface. No other QC platform available today offers this degree of intuitive operation, power and sophistication.

QC software tools integrated within UQC include:

Vendor

Product Name

Application Focus

Digimetrics

Aurora

General File QC

Tektronix

Cerify

General File QC

VidCheck

VidChecker

General File QC

Interra

Baton

General File QC

Snell

Hyperion

Baseband QC

MetaGlue

MXFixer

MXF Wrapper

MediaArea.net

MediaInfo

General Wrappers

Venera

Pulsar

General File QC

Nexidia

QC

Language and caption verification

Minnetonka

AudioToolsServer

Audio QC & Loudness

First introduced in 2011, AmberFin's iCR UQC system is unique. It provides a vendor agnostic QC platform that enables broadcasters and facilities to harness the broadest range of media QC software systems and create a quality control workflow that is uniquely adapted to their production needs.

Within an environment that is increasingly dominated by digital file-based workflows, AmberFin iCR UQC supports any business model in a totally unmatched fashion. It creates business efficiencies in real and meaningful ways.

AmberFin iCR UQC represents a successful combination of automation and human judgement. The system recognises that whilst operators need to make final judgement, human resources are extremely expensive and need to be used as efficiently as possible. It allows operators to focus on points within files where potential errors have been flagged, rather than spending time reviewing perfectly good content.

AmberFin's graphical view of automated QC results is much easier for operators to work with than printed reports, resulting in quicker job turnaround and fewer errors.

AmberFin iCR UQC's Cut and Splice' engine reduces time previously spent tying up cost intensive edit suites to carry out simple editing tasks.

AmberFin iCR UQC enables light' QC checks at multiple points in the workflow, which facilitates QC of processes as well as content. So, it is a straightforward task to identify where errors have been introduced into the workflow, take corrective action and avoid multiple instances of the same problem.

About AmberFin

AmberFin's business is intelligent media conversion, solving file-based workflow challenges for broadcasters, sports organizations, post-production houses and other media content owners. Scalable, agile and efficient, the Amberfin iCR (intelligent Content Re-Purposing) Platform brings true innovation and cost-effectiveness to the demands of multi-platform delivery, enabling the industry to deal with high volumes and true-to-source high quality pictures at the same time, all with exclusive slim-

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