Major broadcasters & post houses adopt Baton for automated quality control for fle based Video

Major broadcasters & post houses adopt Baton for automated quality control for fle based Video Interras Baton ensures content quality across content life cycle

Interview: Krishna Uppuluri, Interra Systems

Studio Systems - Feb 25, 2012

The media industry is rapidly migrating from tape-based acquisition and broadcast to file-based workflows. The digitization of content has led to several changes in comprehension standards, editing and transmission technologies.

The issues are complexities involved in file based broadcast workflow necessitates the adoption of automated content verification for video and audio quality. Major broadcasters in India and globally rely on Interras Baton, a file-based QC or Automated Content Verification Software that ensures media content readiness.

Krishna Uppuluri, VP - Marketing of Interra Systems discusses exclusively with Studio Systems the scope and requirement of quality control solutions for broadcasters and post production houses and Batons role in monitoring the same.

How does Interras Baton monitor quality control for the broadcast channels and post production studios?

A key requirement for QC solution is to be able to verify a wide ranging media content that is transformed by diverse infrastructure across various stages. For example, the content can be in many different formats depending on its origins. Or, content quality can be impacted as it is processed by various Transcoders, Editors, etc.

Interras Baton QC software supports a wide variety of content formats and offers the most comprehensive quality checks. Hence, Baton can verify the quality of any content at any stage of Broadcast and Post production workflows. Baton verification is further optimized by exhaustive verification controls in Test Plans and many innovative techniques for efficient verification.

What is the need of quality control software for the major broadcasters? How has Baton expanded its scope over the traditional content verification?

In tape-based media, Broadcasters used dedicated devices and controlled methods to process the content from creation to distribution. Digital, file-based media enables more freedom to transform and transfer the content. With the freedom comes the risk of impacting content quality because of incomplete or incompatible processing anywhere in the content lifecycle. Such issues lead to unexpected delays in operations and in content monetization opportunity for Broadcasters.

For example, the content can be supplied to expanded global markets using localization and regulations compliance. Similarly Broadcasters can also acquire expanded content from global suppliers. In both case, predictable content quality ensures efficient incorporation of content into Broadcaster workflows.

Baton has expanded the scope of content verification beyond traditional QC. Traditional QC solutions were designed with dedicated hardware and for fixed configuration content. Baton is the first QC solution that has expanded the scope of QC with extensive formats support, comprehensive quality checks for accurate assessment, efficiency of verification and High availability, thus evolving QC in alignment with the customer requirements - as an Enterprise class solution.

Which are the major broadcast channels and post production studios that have recently installed Baton. What according to you will be the impact of file-based QC software on the existing workflows and operational methods?

Interras Baton for File-based QC is in production use at leading Broadcasters, Post production houses, IPTV, Satellite and Archiving companies. Baton customer wins include Prime Focus, Disney, Sony, Fox, BBC, TV18, and many more.

A comprehensive, scalable File-based QC solution makes workflows efficient and nimble. As content gets transformed at each stage of workflows and transferred to next, it can be verified immediately by QC solution to prevent propagation of content quality issues and to improve operational efficiencies.

What are the content quality requirements across a workflow? What are challenges faced by automated QC solutions like Baton in the changing dynamics of the broadcast and post market in India?

The content quality requirements change across various stages of content lifecycle such as Ingest, edit, Transcoding, Playout and Archive. For example, common quality issues at Ingest stage tend to include Black Frames, Video Signal Levels, Transient Noise, Audio Loudness, and more. In Playout stage content quality issues include Blockiness, Combing artifact, Stripe errors, Audio silence, and more.

The challenges for any QC solution are multi-faceted. The content eco-system is constantly evolving - the formats, the broadcast regulations, the infrastructure, the delivery mechanisms for multi-screen delivery, the content size and the content throughput. As the eco-system evolves, the QC solutions need to support all necessary formats, fine-tune the quality checks, expand integration readiness with various other infrastructure solutions and enable efficient verification for large, high volume content.

As with any Enterprise class solutions, there will be additional requirements for enabling tiered quality control and reporting.

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