For most of broadcast history, captioning was treated as a metadata problem. QC systems checked whether caption data was present, whether files were correctly formatted, and whether character encoding was valid. If a CEA-608 or CEA-708 stream was embedded and a sidecar file — SCC, SRT, WebVTT — was properly formed, the asset passed. Whether the captions accurately reflected what was spoken was largely outside the scope of automated review.

FCC requirements in the United States and emerging mandates across Europe have moved from nominal compliance gates to substantive quality standards. Caption files that pass every technical check can still fail on accuracy, synchronization, or readability.

What broadcast and streaming organizations need is content-level validation: verifying that captions are accurate, properly timed, readable, and ready for multiplatform delivery. Captioning is becoming part of the broader media intelligence layer — one that evaluates a caption track against the content it accompanies, treating accuracy, timing, readability, and compliance as properties the system actively measures.

Caption Accuracy Starts With the Audio Track
The practical difference between metadata validation and content validation shows up in what each one misses. A traditional QC pass confirms that a caption file is present and well- formed. It does not detect dialogue that was misheard during transcription, lines that were omitted, or text that lags consistently behind speech — all failure modes that reach viewers and, increasingly, regulators.

Content-intelligent captioning systems work directly with audio. Modern automatic speech recognition (ASR) models transcribe spoken dialogue from the audio track, producing a reference against which existing captions can be checked, or generating a new track directly. Current-generation ASR achieves word error rates below 5% on standard broadcast dialogue — comparable to experienced human transcribers, and substantially lower than error rates produced under the time pressure of manual captioning at scale.

Accurate transcription addresses what is said; alignment addresses when it appears. AI alignment engines analyze audio waveforms to synchronize caption timing against actual speech, accounting for pace variation and pausing that fixed-offset methods miss. Captions that drift from dialogue constitute a real accessibility failure, and automated alignment catches those errors systematically across an entire content library. These systems can also surface compliance risk before delivery, flagging assets where timing drift, word error rate, or reading speed exceeds regulatory thresholds.

How Captions Render on Screen
A caption that is correctly transcribed and timed can still be difficult to follow if segmented poorly. Breaking mid-phrase or mid-clause forces viewers to piece together meaning across display windows. This presents a functional problem for all audiences and a more significant one for viewers with hearing impairments who rely on captions as their primary communication channel.

Rather than breaking text at fixed character counts, machine learning models identify natural language boundaries, such as clause endings, breath pauses, and semantic units, then segment accordingly. The result is captions that read more naturally. Emerging standards reflect this: quality evaluation is increasingly extending from file validity to content readability, including reading speed, display duration, and caption segmentation.

A complete evaluation also requires reference to the video frame. Text that covers a speaker's face, obscures on-screen graphics, or overlaps burnt-in text creates problems that fall outside the scope of transcription-level review. Managing visual placement has traditionally required frame-by-frame manual review or post-production adjustment — both slow and unsystematic at the scale modern workflows demand.

Video analysis integrated into current captioning platforms detects faces, on-screen graphics, and critical visual elements, then adjusts caption positioning automatically. These tools can also prevent captions from spanning scene-change boundaries, a source of visual discontinuity invisible to metadata validation. The caption track is evaluated against the full audio-visual context of the content it serves — a quality assurance step that operates where file-level checks end.

From One Validated Track to Many
Once a base caption track has been validated, the same content intelligence can carry through to multilingual delivery. Machine translation pipelines generate multilingual versions from that source track without a proportional increase in localization effort. Additionally, systems incorporating large language models can preserve timing, segmentation logic, and reading-speed compliance across the target language, so translated tracks inherit the quality properties of the source without a separate QC cycle.

Broadcast, OTT, and streaming platforms each impose distinct caption format requirements, and a caption track that passes QC for one delivery destination may fail for another. Generating and validating multiple output formats — SCC, WebVTT, TTML, and others — within the same pipeline means format-specific compliance is confirmed once, upstream, before distribution splits across platforms.

Accuracy That Compounds With Use
One persistent limitation of traditional captioning pipelines is that errors recur without systematic correction. When a captioning process mishandles a recurring term, such as a character name, an athlete, or a brand, that error propagates across multiple assets with no mechanism to resolve it at the source.

Content-intelligent platforms address this through a continuous learning loop. When operators review and correct AI-generated captions, those corrections are captured and used to fine-tune the underlying model. Over successive production cycles, the system becomes progressively more accurate for that organization's specific content mix, speakers, and terminology. This provides a meaningful advantage over static vendor relationships, where the same errors resurface without correction.

Moving Quality Decisions Upstream
These capabilities move captioning from a production checkpoint into a media quality system. Content-intelligent workflows generate structured, validated caption data that feeds directly into MAM systems, localization platforms, and distribution pipelines. The caption track arrives at each stage as a verified asset, ready for use without additional QC. That changes where quality decisions happen. Compliance risk is surfaced before delivery.

Multilingual tracks inherit the quality properties of the source. Format-specific requirements are confirmed once, before distribution splits across platforms. The underlying shift is from discovering caption failures at the point of delivery, where correction is costly and timelines are unforgiving, to catching them at the point of production.

For much of its history, the multiviewer has served a straightforward purpose: Provide a quick visual check that channels were present and behaving. Operators watched feeds, listened to audio, and scanned captions for obvious issues. That approach worked when facilities monitored a relatively small group of linear channels.

Today’s environment is more demanding. Operations span linear broadcast, OTT, FAST, and pop-up services, often supported by teams that haven’t grown at the same pace. Add hybrid SDI/IP infrastructures and issues that don’t show up visually, and the limitations of traditional monitoring become clear. In response, the multiviewer has had to grow into a far more capable operational tool.

The Classic Multiviewer: What It Solved — and What It Missed
Legacy multiviewers excelled at confidence monitoring. They confirmed feed presence, audio activity, and the basic health of captions and formats. Their shortcomings became more visible as operations expanded.

Many were hardware-bound, difficult to scale, and reliant on constant human attention. Operators could easily miss issues that weren’t visually obvious, such as loudness violations, subtle compression problems, caption sync drift, or packet-level instability in IP streams. These systems also sat apart from deeper monitoring tools, forcing operators to jump between systems to determine the cause of an issue.

As more services came online and distribution moved across multiple platforms, that model stopped being sustainable. The traditional multiviewer simply couldn’t keep pace with the volume and complexity of signals in play.

Why Operations Teams Are Feeling New Pressure
Operations teams today face a convergence of added responsibilities and tighter resources. Channels have multiplied across linear, OTT, and FAST workflows, yet staffing often remains flat. Many teams now work across facilities, regions, and time zones, making coordination more complex and increasing reliance on automation.

Hybrid SDI/IP environments add challenges of their own. Timing drift, jitter, packet loss, and hardware instability can degrade service even when the video looks fine. Operators don’t just need to see that something is wrong on a multiviewer; they need insight into what’s driving those issues across the chain.

The Evolution of the Multiviewer: From Passive Display to Integrated Intelligence
The expanding scope of modern operations forced the multiviewer to evolve. Alarms and basic QC overlays were early additions, but they didn’t go far enough. Teams needed a clearer understanding of what was happening behind the picture.

Modern multiviewers now incorporate QoE and QoS metrics, loudness levels, caption behavior, SCTE-35 markers, transport stream data, network timing, and encoder/decoder health. Seeing these signals alongside video transforms the multiviewer from a passive display to an intelligence tool.

That change shows up in everyday workflows. Compression artifacts that appear intermittently, caption drift that worsens over time, or missing SCTE markers that disrupt ad delivery are often overlooked during visual monitoring alone. When these conditions are visible in the same place as the video, operators spot patterns sooner and can move more quickly toward root-cause analysis.

Enhancing Situational Awareness for Lean, Distributed Teams
Teams overseeing growing volumes of content need tools that help them focus on what matters. Modern multiviewers use metadata stacks, color cues, and KPIs to help operators evaluate issues at a glance. These cues highlight whether a problem affects the viewer and offer clues about its origin without requiring multiple toolsets.

The way alerts are handled is just as important. When thresholds and priorities are tuned correctly, automated alerts elevate meaningful events and help operators avoid distraction from less critical noise. Automation doesn’t override human judgment; instead, it supports exception-based monitoring, which has become essential for teams working across different locations. Shared dashboards also give operations, engineering, and IT a unified view of system health and service performance.

Multiviewers in IP Architectures — and the Arrival of Intelligence Platforms
As more facilities move toward IP-driven workflows, the link between network behavior and video quality becomes impossible to ignore. Packet loss, jitter, buffer instability, congestion, and PTP timing drift can disrupt service even when the picture appears stable on screen.

A modern multiviewer needs to surface transport—and network-level insight directly alongside video feeds so operators can interpret issues more accurately. This combined visibility helps close the long-standing gap between traditional engineering and IT/network teams.

At the same time, software-based, scalable multiviewers are replacing fixed hardware systems, giving teams the flexibility to run monitoring on standard servers or in the cloud. This makes it easier to expand monitoring capacity as workloads increase or change.

More advanced analysis capabilities are following the same path. Pattern recognition and intelligent correlation can help highlight trends or emerging failures before viewers notice anything is wrong. To support modern operations, next-generation multiviewers should unify monitoring and visualization, provide real-time actionable insight from anywhere, and correlate issues across the entire workflow. The aim is simple: help teams identify problems sooner, resolve them efficiently, and maintain high-quality service without adding operational burden.

As channel counts rise and workflows become more distributed and IP-driven, teams need tools that reveal insight rather than simply presenting imagery. For many organizations, the multiviewer is increasingly becoming that central surface — a place where video, metadata, network signals, and diagnostic context come together. For teams evaluating new platforms, the focus should be on flexibility, integrated intelligence, and the ability to support lean, distributed operations with confidence.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Quality assurance solutions provider Interra Systems has announced that Elite Media Technologies has selected its BATON file-based QC solution for file-based media workflows.

Elite Media Technologies specializes in master-level and international audio QC, SDR and HDR finishing, IMF and DCP packaging, and full-service picture and sound restoration along with distribution and delivery across streaming and broadcast platforms.

“We offer comprehensive master-level and foreign audio quality control services, along with SDR and HDR mastering, IMF and DCP creation, as well as picture and sound restoration,” said Nick Mairose, president and CEO of Elite Media Technologies. “Our mission is to create high-quality media experiences for clients worldwide. After an in-depth evaluation, we selected BATON for its audio and video analysis, scalable architecture and feature set, which align with our commitment to maintaining high standards in content transformation and delivery.”

BATON is used to automate quality control processes for media files, helping ensure compliance and consistency across formats, including SDR and HDR content.

“For more than 15 years, Elite Media Technologies has specialized in creating high-quality content for global distribution across multiple languages and formats,” said Ashish Basu, executive vice president of global sales and business development at Interra Systems. “As a highly respected company in the industry, Elite Media Technologies’ focus on quality makes its adoption of BATON for file-based QC significant for us.”

“We continue to invest in research and development based on customer feedback,” Basu added. “In addition to checking the quality of SDR and HDR content, BATON can support Elite Media Technologies in delivering content to its VOD, SVOD, and OTT distribution clients.”

During the 2026 NAB Show (booth # W2243) from April 19-22, in Las Vegas, Interra Systems will showcase the latest version of its BATON platform, along with its entire suite of QC, monitoring, and analyzing solutions — including ORION for real-time monitoring and VEGA Media Analyzer for deep technical analysis and debugging. Live demos can be scheduled here: www.interrasystems.com/mailer/nab-2026/index.html.

More information about Interra Systems’ solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com.

At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, Interra Systems will showcase its latest advancements in automated QC, real-time monitoring, and captioning.

“Media and broadcast companies are under increasing pressure to scale streaming operations while maintaining absolute reliability, with little margin for error. As the industry moves toward IP- and streaming-first workflows, the conversation has shifted from experimentation to execution at scale,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “Our solutions provide a trusted platform for mission critical operations, delivering production-ready, human-trustable media intelligence for FAST, live linear, and on-demand workflows. Automated QC, captioning, and real-time monitoring for IP and OTT streaming remain our foundational pillars, so we are sharpening our focus in areas where we have strong traction and credibility.”

“At NAB Show 2026, we will also demonstrate how Interra Systems is applying AI responsibly to deliver results customers can rely on, especially where accuracy and error-free content delivery are crucial,” Anantharaman added.

Interra Systems solutions on display:

• ORION monitoring platform: Recent updates include all-frame deep-dive analysis, support for modern IP formats such as NDI and Zixi, and AI-driven video corruption detection to improve visual quality and reduce troubleshooting time. For live events, ORION enables faster issue detection and response, helping teams operate with greater confidence under pressure. ORION Suite now includes an integrated multiviewer that unifies monitoring data across multiple streams. Enhanced automation – including real-time multiviewing, automated audio language detection, and updated SCTE35 signaling – streamlines advertising workflows and monetization. Additional security and networking enhancements such as IPv6 compatibility, SNMPv3 support, and granular DRM authentication provide a flexible, reliable foundation for live sports, news, and large-scale streaming operations across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments.
• BATON Automated QC: Interra Systems will introduce BATON 9.4, the company’s latest version of its BATON platform featuring enhanced audio and video QC that delivers greater accuracy, fewer false alarms, and broader detection for more reliable automation and reduced manual rechecks. Other enhancements include support for Oracle Cloud Interface (OCI) as S3 compatible storage, one-click diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and quicker resolution of operational issues, and more.
• BATON Captions: The latest BATON Captions updates focus on faster workflows, higher transcription accuracy, and simplified compliance. Enhancements include a new web-based editing experience, Whisper AI integration, expanded language support, automated workflows, and advanced tools for localization and broadcast compliance — all designed to reduce operational overhead for streaming and broadcast teams.
• VEGA Media Analyzer: Interra Systems’ VEGA media analyzers help teams validate compliance and troubleshoot complex streaming and hybrid workflows, with recent updates adding AV1, VVC, faster multicore analysis, built-in chatbot assistance, expanded cloud compatibility, and improved tools to boost reliability and reduce validation time.

Interra Systems will be in Booth W2243 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems today unveiled ORION stream recording support and seamless integration with BATON Media Player, a combination that lets broadcast engineers and operations teams perform frame-by-frame debugging of monitored streams with ease and precision, the company said.

“Our goal with the ORION–BMP integration was to make it easier for customers to move from detection to diagnosis within a single, streamlined workflow,” Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra, said. “By connecting real-time monitoring with frame-level playback and inspection, we’re helping operations teams pinpoint issues faster and resolve them with precision. This enhancement reflects our ongoing commitment to simplifying quality assurance workflows while enabling customers to deliver flawless content across every platform.”

The new recording feature allows users of ORION, the company’s real-time monitoring platform, to capture segments of monitored streams, particularly around error events. Each recording includes a buffer of 5 to 6 seconds before the error occurs and continues until the issue is resolved or for a user-defined duration. Recordings can also be triggered manually, scheduled or initiated during ad transitions, offering flexible options for capturing critical stream data, Interra said.

Integration of ORION with BMP lets users troubleshoot video delivery issues more quickly and effectively. It enables users to move seamlessly from real-time monitoring in ORION to frame-accurate playback and deep inspection in BMP, speeding up analysis of the causes of errors and quality anomalies, the company said.

The ORION–BMP integration delivers significant operational efficiency and confidence in delivering superior video experiences. From within the ORION interface, users can launch BMP with a single click to analyze recorded streams in detail. Errors detected during the recording window are automatically displayed in BMP, allowing users to jump directly to the relevant timestamps and perform frame-by-frame analysis, it said.

The company’s ORION-OTT monitoring solution for OTT workflows already includes BMP integration for debugging VOD assets. Recording support for live streams in ORION-OTT is planned for a future release, Interra said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

At NAB Show New York (Stand 244), Oct. 22-23 at the Javits Center in New York, Interra Systems will showcase the future of media QC, monitoring and captioning, highlighting its award-winning, AI- and machine learning-powered solutions designed to meet the demands of today’s multiplatform media landscape.

Visitors to Booth 244 will see the latest advancements across the company’s Baton, Orion, Vega, and Baton Captions product suites, demonstrating how Interra Systems’ powerful tools are driving efficiency, ensuring compliance, enhancing content quality, and unlocking new monetization opportunities across broadcast, IP, and OTT workflows.

“For over 25 years, Interra Systems has partnered with leading media companies across the world to ensure audiences receive flawless content, anytime, anywhere,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management. “At the NAB Show in New York this year, we’re excited to showcase how QC, monitoring, and captioning solutions are solving today’s most pressing workflow challenges and enabling new monetization opportunities for our customers. No matter the format— linear broadcast, IP, or OTT; live or VOD—our mission is to help media organizations ensure consistent video quality, maintain compliance, and deliver outstanding viewing experiences across every platform and deployment model, whether that’s on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid scenarios.”

Interra Systems Solutions on Display: Orion Suite
Interra will spotlight the latest enhancements to its award-winning Orion content monitoring suite, including a powerful new Multiviewer feature for real-time visualization of multiple video and audio streams. Orion continues to set the standard for robust, real-time monitoring across linear, IP, and OTT workflows. With flexible deployment, broad format support, industry-first all-frame decoding, real-time audio language detection, ad insertion monitoring, and advanced analysis, Orion dramatically improves video quality checks and playback assurance for critical channels.

Orion Central Manager (OCM)
Interra Systems’ flagship OCM platform delivers centralized, end-to-end visibility across the entire media workflow. Recent updates include support for IPv6 compatibility, advanced probe management and user group permissions and support for enhanced end-to-end ad insertion monitoring — boosting operational efficiency and security for large-scale media operations.

Baton 9.3
Baton 9.3, the latest version of Interra Systems’ industry-leading automated QC solution, introduces enhanced autoscaling, improved 4K video quality checks and new validations such as blank bar detection and CIE color gamut analysis. Baton 9.3 aligns with the latest ITU-R BT.1702-2023 PSE flash guidelines and features advanced algorithms for QR code detection, freeze/duplicate frames, media offline, blockiness, defective pixels, video dropouts, burnt-in text and shot transitions.

Baton Captions
With the demand for accurate, multilingual accessibility at an all-time high, Baton Captions delivers robust, AI-powered captioning and subtitling. New features include intelligent caption placement that follows scene change guidelines to prevent overlap with burnt-in text—a common challenge in regional content.

With added support for 23 new languages, Baton Captions now supports 109 languages overall, the company said.

The latest version also includes advanced quality control and correction tools, which use machine learning, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and natural language processing (NLP). The user interface has been redesigned for better usability, with features like an integrated workflow service, vertical zoom on audio waveforms, and smart caption segmentation that automatically adjusts captions based on natural speech patterns and character limits. These improvements make the captioning process more efficient, help ensure compliance, and provide a seamless multilingual viewing experience across various formats.

Vega Media Analyzer
Interra Systems’ Vega suite remains the industry’s go-to platform for compliance, debugging, and stream interoperability. With expanded support for VVC, AV1, HEVC, MV-HEVC, AVS3, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, ATSC 3.0, and more, Vega simplifies complex video standards and ensures seamless compatibility across platforms and devices.

To register for NAB Show New York, visit nabshow.com.

Interra Systems, a global provider of end-to-end quality assurance for the media industry, will unveil its latest innovations in media QC, monitoring, and analysis at IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam.

As the media and entertainment industry looks ahead to a future defined by multiplatform complexity and rapid technological change, Interra Systems’ solutions empower broadcasters, telcos, and streaming providers to deliver outstanding viewer experiences. Visitors to Booth 7.C11 will see how the company’s integrated QC and monitoring tools help media organizations identify and resolve issues early, optimize workflows, and ensure seamless, high-quality content delivery in today’s dynamic environment.

“IBC is where the global media community comes together to shape what’s next. Our long-standing team of engineers is committed to developing technology that enables our customers to thrive in a fast-changing landscape,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “We’re excited to showcase our latest advances in QC, monitoring, and captioning, and to collaborate with industry leaders on driving the future of media quality and innovation.”

Interra Systems Solutions on Display at IBC2025:
ORION Suite: Comprehensive Video Monitoring for Every Platform
At IBC2025, Interra Systems will spotlight the latest enhancements to its award-winning ORION content monitoring suite, including a powerful new multiviewer feature for real-time visualization of multiple video and audio streams. ORION continues to set the standard for robust, real-time monitoring across linear, IP, and OTT workflows. With flexible deployment, broad format support, industry-first all-frame decoding, real-time audio language detection, ad insertion monitoring, and advanced analysis, ORION dramatically improves video quality checks and playback assurance for critical channels.

ORION Central Manager (OCM): Unified Workflow Oversight
Interra Systems’ flagship OCM platform delivers centralized, end-to-end visibility across the entire media workflow. Recent updates include support for IPv6 compatibility, advanced probe management and user group permissions, and support for enhanced end-to-end ad insertion monitoring — boosting operational efficiency and security for large-scale media operations.

BATON 9.3: AI-Powered Automated QC
BATON 9.3, the latest version of Interra Systems’ industry-leading automated QC solution, introduces enhanced autoscaling, improved 4K video quality checks, and new validations such as blank bar detection and CIE color gamut analysis. BATON 9.3 aligns with the latest ITU-R BT.1702-2023 PSE flash guidelines and features advanced algorithms for QR code detection, freeze/duplicate frames, media offline, blockiness, defective pixels, video dropouts, burnt-in text, and shot transitions.

BATON Captions: Intelligent Captioning and Subtitling
With the demand for accurate, multilingual accessibility at an all-time high, BATON Captions delivers robust, AI-powered captioning and subtitling. New features include intelligent caption placement that follows scene change guidelines to prevent overlap with burnt-in text — a common challenge in regional content.

The latest release also introduces advanced QC and correction tools powered by machine learning, ASR, and NLP. A redesigned UI enhances usability with an integrated relay workflow service, vertical zoom on audio waveforms, and smart caption segmentation that automatically splits, merges, and resegments captions based on clause boundaries, character limits, and natural pauses. These enhancements improve efficiency, ensure compliance, and support seamless multilingual viewing experiences across formats.

VEGA Media Analyzer: In-Depth Media Analysis and Debugging
Interra Systems’ VEGA suite for compliance, debugging, and stream interoperability features expanded support for VVC, AV1, HEVC, MV-HEVC, AVS3, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, ATSC 3.0, and more. VEGA simplifies complex video standards and ensures seamless compatibility across platforms and devices.

Interra Systems will be in Booth 7.C11 at the RAI Amsterdam.

Over the past several years, there has been a surge in interest and demand for non-English video content. Viewership is booming, especially among younger audiences in primarily English-speaking markets like the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.

In a recent study from Ampere Analysis, 54% of internet users in those markets reported watching international (i.e., non-English) TV and movies “very often” or “sometimes” — up from 43% five years ago. Likewise, 66% of 18-to-34-year-olds in those markets reported watching international content regularly. And, according to the report, the most popular way to consume that content was through subtitles.

These findings underscore just how important subtitles and captions have become. Delivering properly localized subtitles is now essential for making content accessible to a broader audience. Without a solid subtitling and captioning solution, broadcasters and video service providers risk being left behind in the race to secure viewers and keep them happy.

The Complexity of Implementing Proper Captions and Subtitles
International content presents a huge monetization opportunity for video service providers, but many say that the complexity of localized captioning makes it hard to capitalize on that opportunity.

Ensuring synchronization between audio and text is critical, as captions must match dialogue precisely to maintain clarity and viewer engagement. Synchronization is especially tough for multilingual or fast-paced content, where timing discrepancies can happen easily. Manual captioning is labor-intensive and error-prone, requiring multiple reviews to meet guidelines for accuracy, completeness, and display metrics.

Additionally, captions must be carefully placed to avoid obscuring important on-screen visuals, often necessitating frame-by-frame inspection or advanced object detection. Translating humor, idioms, and cultural references and nuances further complicates the process. Literal translations can fail to capture the intended meaning, requiring nuanced adaptation so that audiences can relate.

Finally, complying with varying regional accessibility and legal standards adds another layer of complexity. It can take up to 10 hours to caption one hour of video content manually, and even then, there’s no guarantee the captions will be compliant.

Automated Captioning for the Win
Automated, software-based captioning tools streamline the process by converting spoken language into text (speech to text), segmenting it appropriately, and ensuring captions are accurately timed and placed within the video frame. Modern systems are designed to maintain high standards of accuracy and synchronization, and they often include features for multilanguage support, error correction, and compliance checks. Such characteristics make these systems essential for today’s global and fast-paced video streaming environment.

These tools also perform comprehensive quality control checks, such as verifying reading speed, display duration, and caption segmentation, and can automatically adjust placement to avoid blocking important elements like scoreboards or faces. This level of precision ensures captions meet legal requirements, such as those set by the FCC in the U.S. or Ofcom in the U.K., and adhere to best practices for accessibility.

By automating much of the workflow, automated captioning systems significantly reduce captioning time and effort vs. manual processes. That 10-hour captioning task can now be completed in real time or near-real time, cutting production time by 40% to 50% and labor costs by 30% to 40%.

Automated captioning systems also consolidate tasks such as transcription, review, and compliance checks within a single interface, minimizing errors and streamlining collaboration between automated processes and human reviewers. This efficiency is crucial for delivering high-quality, accessible content quickly across multiple languages and formats.

How AI Improves the Process and Elevates the Viewer Experience
The latest captioning tools use AI-driven technologies such as automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) to deliver superior results. ASR rapidly transcribes spoken audio into text, even in challenging conditions with background noise or diverse accents.

NLP further processes this text, interpreting context, idioms, slang, and tone to produce captions that are not only accurate but also natural and easy to read. These technologies also enable features like automatic speaker identification, punctuation correction, and the grouping of words into meaningful segments for improved readability.

AI and machine learning advancements have transformed captioning by enabling adaptive learning and multimodal analysis. For example, computer vision can detect faces, on-screen text, or important visual cues, allowing the system to reposition captions dynamically to avoid covering critical information.

Machine translation models, now enhanced with large language models, provide more context-aware and culturally appropriate translations, ensuring captions resonate with local audiences. Multimodal AI can also identify nonverbal cues, such as laughter or gestures, and incorporate them into captions, resulting in a richer and more immersive viewing experience.

As these systems process more data, their accuracy and adaptability continue to improve, reducing the need for manual intervention and ensuring consistent quality across diverse content.

Cultural Sensitivity: It’s About More Than Translation
When it comes to captions and subtitles, cultural resonance and compliance with local standards can determine a title’s success. Today's mainstream translation engines excel at converting languages. As sophisticated large language models become fully integrated into readily available translation engines and captioning tools, they will be able to natively incorporate deep cultural sensitivity too.

That means AI-driven captioning solutions are poised to go far beyond simple translation. These future systems are expected to use contextual understanding to capture the subtleties of language — such as humor, sayings, and regional expressions — that are essential for truly authentic localization.

The aim is for these advanced solutions to one day adapt captions to align with local customs, regulatory requirements, and viewer expectations, ensuring content is not only accessible but also culturally relevant and accurate. This includes adjusting translations to preserve the original intent and tone, moving beyond literal word-for-word rendering.

As these more nuanced AI capabilities mature and become integrated into common tools, human expertise will remain indispensable. Human reviewers will play a vital role in guiding, validating, and finessing AI-generated captions, ensuring they accurately reflect the necessary subtle nuances and meet cultural appropriateness standards.

By combining the emerging power of AI for cultural adaptation with diligent human oversight, the next generation of captioning tools will be better equipped to help global audiences experience content as intended, fostering inclusion and engagement across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Conclusion
Advanced captioning tools enable providers to meet diverse audience needs, ensure accessibility, and deliver culturally relevant content efficiently and accurately for every viewer everywhere. They expand the reach of regional content and boost international connectivity through video, making them essential for success in the global streaming market.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has announced that Norway’s public service broadcaster, NRK, continues to see improvements in its operations as a result of its use of BATON, Interra Systems’ AI/ML-enabled QC platform for audio and video. NRK uses the solution for checking finished edited programs and analyzing file sets that the company transcodes and publishes.

NRK is a longtime user of BATON, and over the years, it has seen the solution evolve to accommodate customer feedback. “We have been using BATON successfully for many years,” said Kjell Ove Nordlien, senior engineer from the Technology Division of the Production Systems Department of NRK. “These days, we use BATON internally to check the high-res files of finished edited programs, and we’ve been using it externally for several years, to analyze the ABR MP4 file sets that we transcode and publish to our origin partner, and further, to our web service,” “Our engineering team depends on BATON a great deal for our video quality.”

BATON automates QC processes, supporting high standards for quality and compliance. NRK has deployed the most recent version of the solution, which includes framework updates, enhanced video quality checks for 4K files, support for RDD59 specifications, direct analysis of image sequence formats, optimized MXF file verification, advanced diagnostic tools for system health monitoring, and improved API. The technology stack operates on Python 3.x with a Postgres database and the Django web framework, resulting in a more responsive interface, increased scalability, and optimized resource management. It also features enhanced performance for UHD content QC, optimized IMF analysis, support for Sony 360 RA analysis, improved cloud support, advanced video and audio quality checks, comprehensive Dolby Atmos support, and expanded format support, Interra reported.

“NRK is a highly respected broadcaster in Europe; it was an early adopter of BATON among the preeminent members of the European Broadcasting Union. Over the years, we have seen NRK broaden its use of BATON,” said Ashish Basu, executive vice president of global sales and business development at Interra Systems. “We invest a lot of research and development effort into BATON based on customer feedback. NRK’s expanded BATON usage is a result of that customer orientation.”

Interra Systems will display the BATON QC platform, along with its full suite of compliance and content monitoring solutions, at the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 6-9, in booth W1921.

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com.

NRK’s web service can be found at tv.nrk.no.

Interra Systems will showcase new versions of its Orion monitoring and Baton QC platforms at the 2025 NAB Show, April 6-9 in Las Vegas.

The company will talk about new advances to its end-to-end video quality monitoring, content-aware quality control, advanced captioning, and in-depth video analysis tools. Harnessing the latest technologies, Interra Systems’ cutting-edge solutions enhance accuracy and efficiency, set new standards in QC and monitoring performance, and empower customers to optimize their workflows for peak video quality, the company said.

“We’ll be commemorating our 25-year anniversary at NAB 2025, where we'll present our latest innovations that enhance every aspect of media workflows,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “Our high-density, scalable solutions set industry benchmarks in media QC and monitoring, while our AI-driven tools demonstrate why global leaders in broadcasting and service provision rely on us to streamline workflows and deliver high-quality content faster."

Interra Systems will spotlight the Orion suite's latest capabilities, including a state-of-the-art multiviewer feature that transforms monitoring by enabling real-time visualization of multiple video and audio streams. This tool not only ensures seamless quality control and efficient workflow management but also allows operators to quickly verify alerts and resolve issues, thereby maintaining high broadcast integrity with greater accuracy and efficiency.

Alongside the multiviewer, Orion-OTT offers real-time monitoring of both linear and IP-based infrastructures and a comprehensive monitoring solution for live and VOD assets. Designed for flexible deployment across various environments and supporting an array of formats and protocols, the solution now features industry-first, all-frame decoding and deep-dive analysis for critical channels — significantly improving video quality checks and service playback.

In addition, the Orion suite now includes support for RHEL 8.10, Rocky 8.10, Dolby Atmos, IPv6, and more. The suite also boasts end-to-end ad insertion monitoring, which enhances workflow visibility from pretranscode to edge by comparing externally supplied ad scheduling information with actual DAI markers. Updates include closed caption availability reports, enhanced QoS and QoE scoring, comprehensive DRM integration, and flexibility in deployment models.

OCM, Interra Systems’ flagship video monitoring and management solution, provides quality tracing that monitors service quality and pinpoints issues across various stages of the video workflow. New features at the 2025 NAB Show will include advanced probe management and improved user group permissions, ensuring both efficient and secure video operations.

Interra Systems will also showcase Baton 9.2, now with enhanced autoscaling, enhanced video quality checks for 4K files, and new support for video quality, such as blank bars check and CIE color gamut check. It accommodates ITU-R BT.1702 2023 PSE video flash guidelines and contains algorithm improvements in QR code, freeze frames, duplicate frames, media offline, blockiness, defective pixels, video dropout, burnt-in text, shot transition, and more.

Baton 9.2 also supports Sony 360 Reality Audio, LZW compression in TIFF files, AV1 video format, BW64 audio, 24-bit LPCM audio in an MP4 container, sidecar Dolby Vision metadata files, an integrated Whisper model for audio language identification, and more. The latest Baton release also features significant installation process improvements for enhanced usability and resilience, along with UI support for dark/light themes, a new database manager tool, and enhanced diagnostics and alerts.

Interra Systems will also demonstrate advanced new updates to its award-winning Baton Captions solution — including caption placement as per scene change guidelines to avoid burnt-in text overlap and a host of QC and correction features. All of the updates take advantage of cutting-edge machine learning, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing technology.

A new UI layout comes with many new features, including an integrated relay workflow service; vertical zoom on audio waveform; and intelligent caption segmentation during review, which enables automatic splitting, merging, and resegmentation based on properties such as row count and character count while adhering to clause boundaries and natural pauses.

Interra Systems will also demo its Vega platform for standards compliance, debugging, and stream interoperability assurance. The platform has been enhanced to support an extensive range of compression standards, including the latest in VVC, AV1, HEVC, MV-HEVC, AVS3, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, ATSC 3.0, and more.

This broad compatibility reinforces Vega's role as a critical industry tool, Interra said. The platform's comprehensive capabilities enable media professionals to navigate the complexities of various video formats and standards with ease, ensuring high-quality content delivery across different platforms and devices.

Interra Systems will be in Booth W1921 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has integrated Netflix's Video Multi-Method Assessment Fusion (VMAF) algorithm—a widely-trusted standard for video quality assessment—into its industry-leading VEGA Media Analyzer solution.

This integration makes it easier for media companies, broadcasters, and streaming services to assess video quality with increased precision and efficiency, meeting the growing demand for perceptually accurate quality control across high-stakes streaming environments.

Developed by Netflix, VMAF has become a benchmark for perceptual video-quality assessment, offering reliable measurements of video quality as experienced by viewers. Combining this with VEGA’s in-depth video analysis provides users with a powerful platform for evaluating and optimizing video quality, ensuring seamless and engaging streaming experiences for audiences worldwide.

“Today, media companies face the critical challenge of delivering high-quality video across a range of resolutions to meet diverse OTT streaming demands,” Anupama Anantharaman, VP of product management at Interra Systems, said. “By integrating VMAF into VEGA Media Analyzer, we enable encoder and transcoder developers to assess video quality more efficiently. This integration provides actionable insights for encoding decisions that enhance viewer experience while maintaining operational efficiency.”

Anantharaman added: “For streaming companies, delivering high-quality video is paramount. With this integration, they now have access to industry-standard quality benchmarks, allowing video engineers to optimize compression, reduce artifacts, and provide a viewing experience that meets the highest quality standards.”

More specifically, Interra said adding VMAF support to VEGA Media Analyzer offers significant benefits for media companies, broadcasters and service providers, including enhanced perceptual accuracy, efficient quality control and optimized streaming performance. VMAF scoring captures video quality as perceived by the human eye, ensuring assessments are viewer-centric. This integration also automates quality assessments, enabling faster and more-consistent results across a wide range of content. VMAF scores guide encoding and bitrate decisions, helping achieve the best quality-to-bitrate ratio and improving overall streaming efficiency.

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has announced that its long-time customer Starz has upgraded its caption generation and quality control workflows to the latest version of the Interra’s BATON Captions solution.

Starz made the move as part of an effort to streamline its English-to-Spanish captioning process. The newest version of BATON Captions has enhanced caption quality and helped the network detect and correct shift and drift errors more efficiently, the two companies said.

“Interra Systems’ BATON Captions has been instrumental in streamlining our captioning workflow,” Dan Stowell, director of programming operations at Starz, said. “BATON Caption's speech-to-text feature significantly reduces the time and effort required for creating accurate captions, which helps us meet the growing demand for multi-language content.”

BATON Captions uses cutting-edge machine language (ML) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, allowing Starz to address caption-related requirements such as generation, postproduction editing and content localization. Harnessing the power of ML and ASR, BATON Captions ensures precise captioning every time. The automated solution includes a user-friendly web-based player and advanced reporting, with feedback on caption quality and more, Interra reported.

"For the past two years, we've proudly collaborated with Starz, delivering an innovative captioning solution that supports their global content strategy," said Ashish Basu, executive vice president of global sales and business development at Interra Systems. "Our BATON Captions solution, powered by machine learning and ASR technology, ensures high-quality captions and seamless audio compliance for Starz."

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at interrasystems.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has announced significant updates to its ORION content monitoring suite, which provides comprehensive monitoring of linear/IP and live/VOD streaming content. The latest enhancements, which are designed to meet the evolving needs of media companies, with a particular focus on improving the quality of OTT streaming, will be shown at IBC 2024. 

"Our passion for video quality, innovation, and responsiveness to industry needs drives us to continuously enhance the ORION family," said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president, product management at Interra Systems. "We have consistently improved the ORION monitoring platform by adding features and intelligence to ensure better monitoring status and provide root cause analysis for faster troubleshooting, and proactive measures that minimize quality-related issues. We're excited to show our customers at IBC2024 how these latest enhancements not only meet the evolving requirements of OTT content delivery but also set new standards for monitoring efficiency and reliability."

Interra reported that ORION now offers comprehensive support for the IPv6 protocol, ensuring robust and future-proof monitoring capabilities. 

Another standout feature is the ORION suite's smart framework that has been developed for efficient root-cause analysis, allowing faster identification and resolution of issues to ensure uninterrupted streaming quality. 

Additionally, the company said, ORION now includes end-to-end ad insertion monitoring, including a comparison of externally supplied ad scheduling information with dynamic ad insertion (DAI) markers received in the content and alerts for DAI marker propagation issues in the media workflow. The latest version of ORION also features the industry's first all-frame decoding and deep-dive analysis for high-priority channels.

ORION provides automated alerting and quality status reports for group-level KPIs, enabling valuable insights into overall performance. This feature allows media companies to maintain the highest standards of content delivery. Additional enhancements to ORION include support for Docker-based installations to simplify deployment and management. The product suite also offers checks for low latency affecting the viewer experience, along with improved combinational checks for detection of freeze/black with or without audio silence.

Interra explained that these updates significantly elevate the ORION Suite's monitoring capabilities. They are designed to help streaming service providers deliver a consistently high-quality user experience, which is critical in today's ultra-competitive video streaming landscape where quality is a key differentiator for success and viewer retention. ORION provides industry-leading monitoring density and is capable of managing both small and large numbers of streams. This is complemented by a flexible pay-as-you-go licensing model, offering media companies the adaptability they need to scale their operations efficiently. ORION's unparalleled reliability and advanced feature set makes it the go-to solution for major broadcasters and media companies worldwide.

Interra Systems will demonstrate the latest evolution of its ORION product suite at IBC2024 at stand 7.C11, Sept. 13-16, in Amsterdam. 

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com. 

In the high-stakes world of premium and sports event broadcasting, the expectation for quality viewing experiences is even higher, and the margin for error is minimal. Each live stream represents a pivotal moment where the success of the event hinges on flawless execution, presenting a technical challenge to video service providers to make sure this is achieved every time.

This is especially true at the contribution or ingest stages, where raw feeds are first encoded and transmitted using SDI, SDI over IP, or ST 2110 standards. Effectively monitoring these feeds ensures issues can be identified and resolved before they affect the viewer's experience. This is where rigorous quality assurance is a critical requirement — transforming potential pitfalls into standout successes.

The contribution stage is distinct from the later stages of production and distribution because it deals directly with the raw, original content. The effectiveness of the processes in the contribution stage plays a decisive role in maintaining the integrity and quality of the final broadcast, influencing everything from live TV broadcasts to live streamed events.

Why Monitoring at the Contribution Stage is Essential for Live Events
Monitoring video at the contribution stage is critical for several key reasons. First and foremost, it allows for the early detection of issues related to video quality, audio synchronization, and signal integrity. Catching and correcting these issues before they propagate through the distribution chain is crucial for ensuring the quality of the broadcast, especially for live events where there is no opportunity for post-production correction.

Furthermore, contribution feeds often need to adhere to strict broadcast standards and legal requirements. Monitoring helps ensure that the content meets the necessary specifications for aspect ratio, resolution, frame rate, and color space, as well as regulatory compliance for audio levels and closed captioning. In addition, identifying and resolving issues early in the broadcast chain reduces the need for costly corrections downstream or, worse, after distribution to end users. This protects broadcasters from reputation damage, and prevents a potential decline in viewership and subscribers.

New standards, technologies, and delivery platforms are also driving innovation in media streaming. Adopting standards such as SMPTE ST 2110, which allows for the separation of video, audio, and metadata in live production, provides more flexibility and efficiency in the handling and monitoring of broadcast feeds.

Additionally, high dynamic range (HDR) content has necessitated the evolution of monitoring solutions to support higher-quality video feeds. The shift from SDI to IP-based workflows in live production has been significant too. IP offers scalability and flexibility that SDI cannot match, enabling broadcasters to manage and monitor streams more effectively over large and geographically dispersed networks.

Additionally, cloud-based delivery and monitoring solutions have become popular due to their scalability and the ability to remotely monitor feeds from any location. Each of these new developments plays a crucial role in modern broadcasting, and requires diligent planning and monitoring for content readiness and delivery.

Guidelines and Steps for Monitoring Live Events at the Contribution Stage
Production and broadcast centers are the central points where the encoded streams are received from an event location, such as a sports venue or concert hall. This transmission often relies on high-quality, low-latency links because any delay or loss of data can degrade the live viewing experience.

Initial Setup and Requirements Definition
The monitoring process begins by establishing the core requirements critical to the success of live streaming. This includes ensuring high reliability and quality of the stream to prevent degradation under varying network conditions. Low latency is crucial for real-time broadcasts, especially during live events, to avoid delays. Modern viewers have little patience for delays and expect real-time action, particularly when engaging with social media during sports events.

During this stage, security measures are put in place to protect the stream from unauthorized access and maintain content integrity. Today, multi-platform streaming is standard, with content being broadcast simultaneously on various live streaming and video hosting platforms worldwide. Assuring compliance with regional and platform-specific broadcast standards is also critical.

System Configuration
Next, the monitoring probe and its management interface are integrated into the streaming infrastructure (e.g., a virtual private cloud (VPC), which is configured to monitor feeds that utilize JPEG-XS, SRT and RIST protocols for error recovery and security enhancement. These protocols are applied to contribution encoders and monitoring systems to synchronize operations, enhancing both security and latency.

The network settings are optimized for live streaming, including firewall configurations, bandwidth provisioning, and the establishment of failover mechanisms to ensure uninterrupted service. Monitoring for signal strength is important as weak signals can lead to pixelation, dropped frames, and an overall poor viewing experience.

Operational Monitoring
Once the system is live, the monitoring dashboard is used for real-time monitoring, providing insights into bitrates, packet loss, latency, and overall stream health. Continuous monitoring of the video and audio feeds for clarity, stability, and synchronization is key. This involves checking the resolution, frame rate, and bitrate against predetermined standards to ensure they meet the broadcast quality requirements.

Broadcasters can set up alerts to notify the technical team of any anomalies or security breaches, allowing for immediate response. In addition, they can conduct continuous compliance and quality checks to adjust settings and ensure the stream adheres to set standards.

If the infrastructure involves the new ST2110 standard, broadcasters should continuously check the stream presence, availability, and Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to monitor for correct timing across all media flows, ensuring that all elements play back in sync. In addition, it is equally important to monitor the network bandwidth and throughput to ensure the network can handle the high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed video and audio streams typical in ST 2110 workflows.

Network congestion can lead to packet loss or increased latency. Since ancillary data such as subtitles and metadata are sent as separate flows in ST 2110, monitoring their integrity and synchronization with the main audio/video streams is essential.

Error Management and Optimization
With a centralized dashboard that consolidates data from every point in the workflow, broadcasters can monitor video quality network-wide in real-time. If issues are detected, the monitoring system will help broadcasters identify and locate the error source, streamlining root cause analysis and troubleshooting.

Errors can be caused by network issues, encoding, or protocol failures. Detailed logging and reporting capabilities facilitate root cause analysis, helping to pinpoint the underlying issues affecting stream quality or security. Following these steps, broadcasters can make real-time adjustments to rectify any deviations, ensuring the stream returns to normal parameters.

Post-Event Analysis
After the event is over, the monitoring system collects the data and user feedback to evaluate the performance of the stream. This analysis helps identify any recurring issues and assesses the overall user experience, pinpointing areas of improvement.

Conclusion
Monitoring at the contribution stage is a critical requirement for live events, especially sports streaming. By implementing cloud-based monitoring solutions that support operational monitoring, error management and optimization, post-event analysis, and more, broadcasters and media companies can ensure high-quality, secure, and reliable streaming of live events. This proactive approach to quality assurance helps maintain a strong reputation in the competitive streaming market and ensures outstanding viewer satisfaction.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will show the latest developments in its content-aware quality control (QC), monitoring, captioning and analysts at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

"At IBC this year, we are excited to showcase our BATON Captions solution, which harnesses the power of machine learning, automatic speech recognition and NLP to significantly reduce the need for human intervention while providing accurate captioning enhanced with QC checks,” said Penny Westlake, senior director of Europe at Interra Systems. 

“Multi-language support is critical for broadcasters and service providers, especially in Europe, so we've improved our captioning product further to support a range of languages, including Spanish, French, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese and many others," she added. 

New features for BATON Captions include web-based player enhancements and new correction options like segmentation and shot boundary correction. Interra Systems also will show BATON Media Player, which simplifies how users play, inspect and verify audio and video content, the company said.

The company will also show BATON 9, the latest version of its QC solution, featuring advanced AI and machine learning capabilities. It employs automated QC to meet the highest standards for quality and compliance, the company said.

Interra Systems has updated the solution’s framework updates, enhanced the performance of video quality checks for 4K files and added support for RDD59 specifications as well as direct analysis of image sequence formats apart from optimized MXF file verification. The company also has enhanced advanced diagnostic tools to monitor system health and improved the API, it said.

"We will also demonstrate how our solutions are consistently being developed in response to key trends in the evolving media and entertainment environment. For example, our ORION suite of solutions addresses the monitoring needs of next-gen media workflows, driven by cloud infrastructure, automated error handling, ad-insertion checks, root cause analysis, and high-quality video output, and designed for compatibility with CMAF, SRT, and SMPTE's ST 2110 standard," said Westlake.

At IBC 2024, Interra Systems will show new capabilities for its ORION suite of solutions that support a wide range of deployment scenarios in hybrid and cloud environments. These enhancements cater to linear broadcast, IP-based delivery and live/VOD OTT content, the company said.

The company has enhanced its software-based ORION-OTT monitoring solution with the addition of localization support, certification for the latest OS releases and Dolby Atmos integration. ORION-OTT updates also improve dynamic ad insertion (DAI) and server-side ad monitoring as well as low-latency stream monitoring and support the latest DRM solutions, it said.

Interra Systems also will show it ORION 2110 Probe, which supports SMPTE ST 2110 monitoring, enhancements for ORION Central Manager (OCM) and VEGA Media Analyzer (VMA).

See Interra Systems at IBC 2024 Stand 7.C11.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Of all the new technologies offered to film and TV production in the last decade or two, HDR probably received the warmest immediate reception. While single-camera production has been an early adopter, the demands of producing legacy formats side by side—and in real time—has made HDR slower to grow into multicamera work.

Kevin Salvidge, Sales Engineering and Technical Marketing Manager at Leader/Phabrix referred to a recent EBU session on the subject, noting the complexities involved. “They are concerned that this is appearing too complicated, and that’s preventing HDR [from] becoming mainstream—the knowledge and the power is in the hands of a few people,” he said. “If you’ve got one of those people on your production, bingo, the world’s your oyster. If not, how do you do this?”

The answer, Salvidge goes on, will involve both new equipment and new techniques, but decisions made now are likely to be foundational. “We are currently defining the workflows for the next twenty years,” he said. “The workflows that now seem to be universally adopted are a single master production. The vision mixer is cutting UHD, wide color gamut HDR, so any sources that are not 4K, wide color gamut, high dynamic range are upconverted. That’s close to the workflow the BBC used for the coronation.”

Little Room for Error
As a supplier of test-and-measurement equipment, Phabrix might not ordinarily expect to be involved in that sort of signal processing. Salvidge describes a process of convergence: “The HDR supervisor is the only person who sees HDR Images, and is having to compare both of them. The camera will also output HDR and this is normally where a conversion product sits. And if you’ve got a production, let’s say the FIFA world cup final, with 42 cameras, that’s a lot of kit, a lot of potential to go wrong.”

With Leader and Phabrix now under the same umbrella, some efficiencies have been realized, Salvidge adds. “What we’ve done with the Leader product is the ability for a LUT to be loaded into the waveform monitor, so now you remove that conversion product,” Salvidge says. “You switch on the LUT and you can see the picture, waveform, vectorscope, and the CIE color chart, and the beauty of that is the same LUT is being applied on the output of the truck as well.”

That kind of technical consolidation helps everyone, though Salvidge tells us that the concerns of vision engineering for HDR has also provoked some changes in tools, too.

“The Leader and Phabrix products, in the old days, used to display one analysis tool, or a quad split with four of them,” Salvidge says. “If you’re doing HDR, you need the picture, the waveform, the vector, the CIE chart, and you may be monitoring other parameters as well. You need to have more than four tools.

“So now you’ve got this customizable layout, on both products, which allows you to save it for a particular operation you’re doing,” he added. “We have a lot of freelance people who walk around with their setup on a flash key.”

There will, however, always be considerations which are creative, and harder to characterize on a test-and-measurement display, as Salvidge points out. “They’ve changed the way they shoot. Originally they’d focus on, say, a skier. You have very skilled camera operators, three or 4 km away. They’ll pick up a stick man doing almost 100 kph and they’d have a fairly wide shot. The guys who did the HDR testing said 90% of the screen was white, but you now see them frame the shot so you get the forest in the side… it changed the way they thought about the production, how they framed the shot.”

‘We’re the Plumbers’
With HDR likely to coexist with conventional pictures for the foreseeable future, trucks will be producing two separate outputs—but production has long demanded different outputs for different distributors.

Ralph Bachofen, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Triveni says his company deals less with the picture content and more with the way it’s moved around.

“I’ll differentiate between quality of service and quality of experience,” Bachofen begins. “We’re focussing on the transport layer. We do monitor the experience, we look at black frames, but… we’re focussing on the signaling aspects of it. We’re the plumbers.”

Distribution to vastly different platforms can make things even more complicated, as Bachofen explains. “A lot of people do a number of streams or production environments for different formats. You have very country-specific encoding requirements. How do I hand off these requirements to my main broadcast? How do I hand it off to my channel partners? You see a lot of encoding going on, a lot of activity in this field.”

The move toward IP, Bachofen reflects, makes for a lot of rationalization, with entirely new features as well as new maintenance demands.

“Can you make a box that does all of it?” Bachofen muses. “The answer’s yes—our StreamScopes handle multiple simultaneous stream inputs. You don’t want a box per stream, you want a single box that does multiple ingest.

“We have a large engineering staff who work on these requirements, and it’s not just video,” he adds. “There’s the vast requirement you get for security patches on the OS. The minute you put a device on an intranet, their IT departments require you to have the latest and greatest security patches.”

That unity of purpose can stretch the definition of test and measurement to provide an overview of an entire operation, a market need Triveni addressed at the 2024 NAB Show with the launch of Station Manager.

“Say, at 3 a.m., you want to do some datacasting… you add this in the Station Manager and you want to push this down to individual devices,” Bachofen said. “We look at whether this is a valid configuration. We help the engineering staff in each station to ensure they have valid configurations of the whole broadcast chain.”

Customer Feedback
Interra Systems is another QA provider that focuses on monitoring the entire production chain as well. The range of issues that can arise are more numerous than ever, particularly when it comes to HDR.

“Working with UHD, HDR files involves managing multiple aspects, including resolution, wide color gamut, high dynamic range, and frame rates,” the company wrote in a recent blog. “Each of these factors can contribute to different quality issues. Potential problems could manifest as blurriness, digital ghosting, color banding, and tone mapping. These issues may arise from mishandling wide color gamut, HDR metadata, or improper frame rate adjustments. It is crucial to adopt tools to address these conditions and ensure a smooth transition between HD and UHD content.

Many media workflows involve up-converting 1080p HD content to 4K UHD and processing both standard dynamic range (SDR) and HDR outputs. However, mix-and-match scenarios introduce their own set of problems,” the company said. “Upscaling the resolution can introduce artifacts like blurriness, digital ghosting, etc. Likewise, frame rate up-conversion can lead to temporal artifacts for e.g., motion jerks. Upscaling the dynamic range and color can lead to color banding.

Most of these new features are already part of Interra’s BATON file QC solution, according to Interra.

“First and foremost, we have ensured that we have complete format support right from capture to delivery. This includes capture and distribution formats like TIFF, SonyRaw, DPX, ProRES, AVC, HEVC etc. On the QC side, we have already added support for Color Banding, Digital Ghosting, Aliasing, Motion Jerk, measurement of Light Levels for HDR and more. Feedback from the customers is key here.”

The technology for supplying that chain with HDR material, meanwhile, requires technology which is still growing in maturity. Charlie Dunn, senior vice president and general manager of Test & Measurement at Telestream, describes some new solutions to the vision engineering challenges of HDR.

As Dunn puts it, “a vectorscope in HDR space isn’t that useful. What’s more useful is a CIE chart [color space], but that’s a 1930s thing, and it’s not that great for determining if you're out of bounds. We’ve made a number of innovations—we’ve pitched a couple of papers at SMPTE, and we’re working on that toolset.”

Bringing the long-established competence of experienced people into such a new discipline requires some lateral thinking Dunn adds.

“People are so used to looking at a waveform and vectorscope to shade the camera. So, we’ve given them additional tools—one of them is a false color map. You can look at the greens on the pitch, the white lines, the reds of a jersey, so you can make sure they’re in bounds. If they’re not, they turn to a cyan or some unnatural color, so the operator can check the colors are right.”

The complexities of HDR have sometimes led to a degree of engineering conservatism, often with the result that color is limited to a range that’s actually somewhat less than could ideally be achieved.

“People are really interested in whether the CIE chart is going outside the P3 color space,” Dunn muses. “But that’s based on displays of 10 years ago. I have a feeling that’ll go by the wayside. I don’t see a lot of people doing that—I think it’s a problem they currently have and is not something they’ll constrain themselves to going forward.”

With that in mind, Dunn says, Telestream has sought advice from people who do this on a daily basis.

“Someone like Sky has some tremendous engineers, and we’ve worked really closely with them on adjusting our tools,” Dunn said. “They have a really long roadmap for us of things they’d like to see. They're looking at it from the point of view of how can I make things easy for the operator. That’s how false color came about, that’s how the luma-qualified CIE charts came about. I’d say on a scale of 1-10, we’re probably at a three. There’s a lot of ground for us to cover.”

The transition that’s in progress, Dunn says, is not quite like those which have come before.

“A lot of people are doing things in different ways. In the transition to UHD, nobody really had to do anything differently. Going to HDR, especially for people using test and measurement gear, I think over the next five years the best methodologies will find their way to the top. How people build their facilities, what they make remote, what they decide to put in the cloud, on the basis of having experience. We worry about the screen area which is ten inches across—we worry about how much information we can display in a small space!”

“But it’s good for us,” Dunn concludes. “It means they need more test equipment!”

The transition to cloud workflows in media QC and monitoring gained momentum around the mid-2010s, but at the start of 2020, the M&E industry began to accelerate its digital transformation efforts. Although cloud workflow adoption is steadily increasing, the industry is still in a transitional phase. 

The percentage of QC and monitoring performed in the cloud varies depending on factors like company size, budget, security, and technological expertise. Some major players have migrated significant portions of their workflows to the cloud, while others are still evaluating and implementing solutions.

While the media industry is increasingly embracing the cloud, this doesn’t render on-premises solutions obsolete. This article will explore the advantages of each, delve into how they complement each other, and explain the need to deploy a mix of both. By striking the right balance between the two, media companies can leverage the cloud’s advantages while addressing specific requirements and concerns that may require on-premises solutions.

Cloud Workflows vs. On-Premises Solutions
Cloud infrastructure offers several key advantages. Thanks to on-demand resources, media companies can scale their QC and monitoring processes up or down based on project needs, eliminating the need for upfront hardware and software investment. Cloud workflows also improve efficiency and agility with remote QC and monitoring, allowing geographically dispersed teams to access projects and collaborate seamlessly. 

Likewise, automated QC checks and standardized workflows reduce manual tasks and ensure consistency. Cloud platforms facilitate integration with other media production tools and provide access to valuable analytics, enabling data-driven decisions and improved insights. Finally, cloud providers offer robust security features and infrastructure redundancy, ensuring the safety and reliability of data and processes.

While cloud-based solutions are gaining traction, on-premises QC and monitoring systems still offer distinct advantages for certain scenarios. With on-prem solutions, users have complete control over their hardware and software, allowing for customized security protocols and data privacy measures — a crucial feature for media companies handling highly sensitive content or operating in geographically restrictive environments. 

Moreover, maintaining data on-premises gives users more control over data residency and compliance with specific regulations or internal security policies. Dependence on an external internet connection is minimized, potentially reducing vulnerability to service interruptions or bandwidth limitations.

Additionally, hardware and software resources are solely dedicated to users’ QC and monitoring tasks, potentially leading to higher performance and stability compared with shared cloud environments. Users can customize the system to their specific needs and integrate it seamlessly with existing infrastructure, offering greater flexibility and control over workflows. On-premises solutions can also be more suitable for applications requiring offline processing capabilities for sensitive content or security protocols.

The latency issues associated with streaming also warrant significant consideration. Despite advancements in streaming technology, latency issues remain a challenge when you compare cloud-based live streaming compared with traditional broadcast methods. Latency in live streaming may have an adverse impact on viewer experiences – especially for real-time events such as sports.

As for costs, the initial investment in hardware and software might be lower than ongoing subscription fees for cloud services — depending on the specific needs of users and usage patterns. Because users can avoid potential variable charges based on usage or resource scaling in cloud environments, costs become more predictable.

Seamless integration with existing on-premises systems and workflows might be easier with on-premises QC solutions. For these reasons, media companies may prefer on-premises solutions and avoid depending on external cloud providers for critical media operations.

The Benefits of a Hybrid Approach
Often, the most effective approach leverages the strengths of both cloud and on-premises solutions through a hybrid model. Cloud resources can seamlessly scale up to handle temporary bursts of processing needs (e.g., during peak seasons or large projects) while on-premises solutions handle core QC and monitoring tasks. 

This approach offers optimal resource utilization and cost savings. Highly sensitive content or data with strict compliance requirements can be processed on-premises, while less critical tasks or collaboration-focused QC can benefit from the cloud's accessibility and flexibility.

Specific stages of the workflow that require high performance or dedicated resources can be performed on-premises, while cloud-based solutions handle tasks like automated checks, reporting, and collaboration. A hybrid method streamlines the overall workflow and optimizes resource allocation. 

Moreover, cloud storage and processing capabilities can act as a backup for on-premises systems in case of hardware failures or natural disasters, ensuring operational continuity and data security. Companies can migrate specific workflows or departments to the cloud gradually, evaluating its effectiveness and feasibility before committing to a complete cloud transition. This reduces risks and allows for a more measured approach.

Striking the Right Balance
Implementing a hybrid model requires careful planning for seamless integration between cloud and on-premises systems to avoid workflow disruptions and data silos. Maintaining consistent security standards and data privacy controls across both environments is crucial. Additionally, reliable and high-bandwidth internet connectivity is essential for smooth data transfer between cloud and on-premises systems.

Media companies should carefully assess their specific needs, resources, and priorities to determine if a hybrid model offers the best balance of security, performance, and cost-effectiveness for their media QC and monitoring operations. This includes evaluating the existing workflow, technical infrastructure, team expertise, and budget. 

Consider the sensitivity of the data, scalability needs, performance requirements, collaboration needs, and compliance considerations. To assess the effectiveness and feasibility of the cloud within a work environment, start with a small pilot project using a cloud-based solution for a specific workflow.

It’s critical to partner with a media technology solution provider that is experienced in designing and implementing hybrid cloud models for media workflows. Their expertise can help users select the right cloud services, integrate them seamlessly with their on-premises environment, and ensure optimal performance and security.

Conclusion
Based on current trends and emerging technologies, it's unlikely that media workflows will ever be 100% cloud based. The media industry will likely see a continued shift toward the cloud, driven by its scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. However, on-premises solutions will remain relevant for specific security, compliance, performance, and customization needs. 

The future will likely be characterized by hybrid architectures, with media companies strategically utilizing both cloud and on-premises solutions based on their unique requirements. Depending on the pace of technological advancements, evolving industry needs, and unforeseen developments, the actual trajectory of cloud adoption and the future of on-premises solutions remains dynamic and subject to ongoing transformation.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will spotlight new features for media quality control and monitoring as well as captioning and in-depth video analysis at the 2024 NAB Show, April 13-17, in Las Vegas.

"Today's media industry demands solutions that are agile and easy-to-deploy and use. At Interra Systems, we've listened to our customers' needs and responded accordingly by enhancing our BATON, ORION, and VEGA platforms with features that make quality assurance easier, more efficient, and more accurate,” said company vice president of management Anupama Anantharaman.

“We stay committed to providing best-of-breed end-to-end solutions that deliver media quality excellence for all stages of IP and OTT workflows for file QC, real-time monitoring, captioning and in-depth video analysis." 

Interra Systems will show:

• BATON—enhanced with the new BATON 9.0 engine, which automates QC and addresses the most demanding standards for quality and compliance. The new engine features major framework updates, such as NGINX server, Python 3.x and Postgres, as well as optimized MXF file verification, an advanced diagnostic tool to monitor system health, API updates, including REST and XML-RPC support, and enhancements for the Auto-Expansion feature. The company also has enhanced video quality checks, including detection of unwanted frames and video dropouts, as well as checks for Nielsen watermarking and loudness.
• BATON Media Player—enhancements include a revamped user interface, keyboard shortcut options and enhanced real-time playback of UHD content.
• BATON Captions—upgrades to the ML- and automatic speed recognition (ASR)-driven captioning solution include support for web-based players with rich text editing, on-prem translation support for 108 languages, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) integration and support for timestamping.
• ORION linear content monitoring QoS/QoE solution—new support for localization, certification on the latest OS releases of Red Hat Enhanced Linux (RHEL 8.8) and Rocky Linux (Rocky 8.8), Dolby Atmos and options for SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO). 
• ORION OTT over-the-top QoS/QoE solution—new support for localization, certification on latest OS releases RHEL 8.8 and Rocky 8.8, and Dolby Atmos as well as enhancements for dynamic ad insertion (DAI), monitoring post server-side ad insertion (SSAI); support for monitoring of low-latency streams; and support for DRMtoday, Nagra and Comcast DRM. 
• ORION 2110 Probe –support for SMPTE ST 2110 with features for QoS/QoE monitoring of 2110 essence streams, 2110 main and redundancy signals and NMOS integration.
• ORION Central Manager (OCM)—enhanced with end-to-end ad insertion monitoring, including the ability to compare externally supplied ad scheduling information with DAI markers received in content and alerts for DAI marker propagation issues in the media workflow. New audio alerts and the ability to define user group permissions for control access will also be shown.

See Interra Systems at NAB Show booth W2720 (updated 4/3/2024).

More information is available on the company’s website.

Despite the cloud's popularity, in 2024 we anticipate the broadcast and streaming industries will continue investing in on-premises, virtualized hardware infrastructure. This is due to strict security and compliance regulations — particularly in content-intensive sectors like broadcasting and entertainment — driving media professionals’ preference for greater control over security and data governance.

 Furthermore, global expansion by video service providers will necessitate a strong consideration of localization strategy, which includes quality control and monitoring of content delivery, addressing challenges in network infrastructures, and accommodating cultural preferences in different regions.

Over the past year, there has been a significant rise in AI-/ML-powered automation deployed across production, output processes, and localization services in the media industry. The role of AI/ML as an essential tool for managing complex workflows and diverse formats has been emphasized, and we can expect this trend of automation to expand in 2024 — with advancements in metadata usage enhancing speed and efficiency in live productions. 

Augmented and assistive AI/ML technologies will be more targeted, with organizations specifying and re-evaluating where this should be applied. These operations will scale automated processes, allowing humans to focus on decision-making and skilled tasks, which is particularly valuable in localization with emerging standards for ancillary audio/video data.

With the advent of UHD workflows, ensuring a premium viewing experience for audiences has never been more important. This, coupled with the break-neck speed with which content creation and distribution technology is advancing, means media professionals are now facing both obstacles and exciting opportunities at the same time. 

This article delves into the challenges of an end-to-end UHD workflow and how they can be overcome with advanced QC solutions.

Video Quality Issues in UHD Workflows
UHD, including HDR, offers a premium and immersive experience to viewers.  However, as is the case with any new technology, it comes with its own set of challenges regarding adoption. Creating an end-to-end workflow that captures, edits, and transcodes in UHD may not be financially or operationally feasible for many content creators, especially those in their first few years of business. Therefore, such creators may resort to upconverting the resolution, framerate, dynamic range, bit depth, and color gamut of their content. 

However, if these aspects are not handled properly, the result could be a host of video quality issues, including blurriness, digital ghosting, color banding, and tone mapping. Furthermore, upconverting from HD to UHD, or poor UHD capture, may result in blurriness at the edges, as these processes may not be capable of maintaining sharpness in these areas. Therefore, blur detection is a critical requirement.

Likewise, frame rates much higher than 30 fps are required to achieve the natural feel of temporal variation on bigger and wider UHD screens. During the capture of large spatial data at a high temporal rate — 48 fps, 60 fps, or 120 fps — visual issues such as motion-blur, ghosting, grains, and dead/stuck pixels may occur. 

Furthermore, during the journey through transcoding, upconversion, and editing, perceptual temporal issues like motion jerks and flickering may also be introduced. It’s important that such quality issues are discovered before content is delivered to end-users, while corrective action can be taken to fix them.

Another challenging aspect of UHD content is the wide color gamut (WCG) specification (e.g., ITU-R BT. 2020, DCI-P3), which extends the range of colors beyond the standard color gamut. It is this extended range that provides the true, in-depth colors that make UHD scenes look more realistic on a big screen. 

During the transformation of content through editing, transcoding, and tone-mapping, the very fine and smooth variations of the content colors can be disturbed, leading to the formation of bands that are quite evident on wide screens. This color banding can ruin the overall viewing experience.

Furthermore, unlike SDR content, where display quality can be predicted by analyzing the loss resulting from compression, HDR content is much more complex. Due to the non-linear relationship between the decoded and displayed data, this perceived video quality analysis becomes much more cumbersome.

Again, this depends on the type of transfer characteristics that have been fixed while creating the HDR content, which involves the automated or manual process of defining the contrast at various scenes. The content needs to be specified with the average and maximum light levels (nits or cd/m2). For the analysis system, it is important to measure these light levels whenever there is any kind of transformation — such as editing or transcoding — of the originally toned content. 

A primary factor affecting HDR viewing performance is interoperability between the video and the display. When a legacy SDR display is used to view a picture created in a color palette with a WCG, contouring — rendering smooth gradient areas as a series of distinct bands — can be an issue if the conversion is not handled carefully. It can be caused by bit depth loss, which is a global issue, or by incorrect region-based tone mapping, a local problem. These conversions need to be appropriately handled in order to maintain a rich viewing experience. 

In addition, while guidelines for photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) have been long defined for SDR content, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and National Association for Commercial Broadcasters for Japan (NABJ) have now updated the guidelines for HDR content as well. This needs to be included as an additional component in the analysis of UHD content. 

The Need for Advanced QC Solutions
To address the above issues, media professionals must employ advanced QC solutions tailored to the UHD landscape. Such solutions must have comprehensive format support from capture to delivery, including ProRES, DNxHR, TIFF, SonyRAW, DPX, EXR, AVC, and HEVC.

Different metadata checks for parameters like resolution, bit depth, frame rate, WCG, and HDR transfer characteristics are also required for ensuring the quality of UHD packages. In the case of HDR, additional checks are available for parameters like MaxCLL, MaxFALL, and white point chromaticity. Due to bigger file sizes, there is also a potential issue of file corruption while transferring UHD content. Therefore, checking MD5 or SHA1 checksums may be important for certain workflows.

Owing to higher processing speeds, and increased hardware and storage requirements, multiple media organizations have shifted their UHD workflows to the cloud. For this reason, it’s imperative that a QC solution have both stable and optimized support for different cloud platforms like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. This will ensure seamless integration with various workflows.

As UHD becomes widespread, it is critical that providers deliver content in pristine quality to match viewers’ ever-increasing expectations. It is important that such content is free from different artifacts, has consistent quality, and meets UHD specifications. This can be achieved with advanced QC solutions tailored specifically for the UHD landscape. 

Such solutions, with comprehensive format support, metadata checks, and cloud integration capabilities, ensure that content retains its quality throughout its lifecycle, from capture to delivery — ensuring a premium viewing experience for audiences.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will make the U.S. debut of its BATON 9.0 engine show and highlight its AI-powered captioning solution, ORION monitoring suite and VEGA media analyzer during NAB Show New York, Oct. 24-26, at Javits Center in Manhattan.

The solution addresses the challenges of today’s media landscape, delivering high audio and video QoE and QoS, efficient metadata management, including captioning, and orchestration for cloud and hybrid deployments, the company said.

“Coping with the intensely competitive media landscape demands a keen focus on high-quality audio-video output and comprehensive video monitoring,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra. “Our efforts have been directed toward advancing our solutions, ensuring impeccable video quality and seamless delivery across evolving video delivery technologies and platforms, encompassing the cloud, virtual machines, and machine learning.

At its booth, Interra Systems will feature:

• BATON, the company’s AI-/ML-enabled automated QC platform. The new BATON 9.0 engine includes major framework updates, performance enhancements for QC and analysis of UHD content, optimized IMF analysis and enhanced video quality checks. 
• BATON Media Player enhancements and Dolby Atmos storage support for formats like AXS-R7, REDCODE audio, “dng” and additional options to review errors as well as recaptioning and subtitling tasks.
• BATON Captions, the company’s automated solution using ML and auto speech recognition technology to support caption generation, live-to-VOD repurposing, post-production editing and localization. New enhancements include RHEL support and the ability to browse and download log files from the web browser.
• ORION Content Monitoring for OTT and Linear/IP video; ORION 2110 probe for monitoring IP environments and ORION Central Manager (OCM) for end-to-end visibility of video.
• VEGA Media Analyzer (VMA) analysis for next-generation media workflows.

The company will also highlight its AI-/ML-based services for broadcasters and OTT providers offered on a custom basis.

See Interra Systems at NAB Show New York booth 518.

During IBC2023, Interra Systems has announced that it will be showing a long list of new enhancements to its solutions that will help clients optimize content delivery, streamline operations, and enhance audio-video quality.

Highlights at this year's IBC will include the latest upgrades to the company's industry-leading BATON solution – with a brand-new engine to enhance performance, an AI-powered captions solution, its award-winning ORION monitoring suite, and powerful VEGA media analyzer solution, the company said. 

Interra Systems reported that its comprehensive solutions are designed to address key challenges in meeting today's ever-increasing demand for quality – including audio/video QoE and QoS, metadata management, and orchestrating cloud and hybrid deployments – by automating media processing.

"Interra Systems' dedication to continuous innovation will be on full display at IBC2023," said Penny Westlake, senior director of Europe at Interra Systems. "Earlier this year we launched numerous updates to our world-class solutions that moved the needle forward in terms of QC, captioning, and monitoring of media content. At IBC this year, we're excited to present a host of new features, all of which build upon these recent improvements and align effectively with the changing media landscape. The evolution of our technology demonstrates our commitment to helping service providers and broadcasters elevate viewer experiences, while also ensuring optimal content monetization."

Specific highlights include: 

• Optimizing QC Workflows. At IBC2023, visitors will get to see the company's new, enhanced BATON 9.0 engine in action, which includes the most recent upgrades to Interra Systems' BATON solution – the company's award-winning AI-/ML-enabled automated QC platform, which addresses the most demanding QC standards for quality and compliance. New features added to BATON include major framework updates, performance enhancements for QC and analysis of UHD content, optimized IMF analysis, and optimized reading and downloads from S3 cloud. In addition, enhanced video quality checks enable the detection and decoding of QR codes, video dropout, logo detection, color banding for UHD content, and burnt-in-text recognition. BATON also offers complete support and checks for subtitles and transport stream formats, as well as Dolby Atmos, enhanced audio quality checks like Audio Silence, and enhanced support for formats including REDCODE audio, DPX, and TIFF.
• Enhancements to Interra Systems' BATON Media Player — which allows media professionals to play, inspect, and verify audio and video content — now enables optimized playback of 4K content and further support for Dolby Atmos storage formats like AXS-R7, REDCODE audio, ".dng", and more options to review errors along with recaptioning/subtitling tasks.
• BATON Captions is an automated solution utilizing cutting-edge ML and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, which allows broadcasters and media professionals to address caption-related requirements such as generation, live to VOD repurposing, post-production editing, and localization for different geographies for the global distribution of media.
• In addition to the upgrades made to BATON Captions earlier this year – which includes IAM-based S3 access, additional languages, project-based custom dictionaries, burnt-in-text detection, profane word detection, and more – new enhancements on display at IBC2023 will include RHEL support and the ability to browse and download log files from the web browser, export dictionaries, and perform a database backup before upgrading.
• ORION Content Monitoring for OTT and Linear/IP Video Ensures Better QoS/QoE. Interra Systems' ORION and ORION-OTT are comprehensive monitoring solutions addressing a variety of hybrid and cloud deployment scenarios for linear broadcast, IP-based delivery infrastructures, and live/VOD OTT content. In addition to upgrades made earlier this year — including improved support for localization, more HDR and ST2110 checks, enhancements in scheduled reports, usability improvements in live monitoring views, and support for scheduled monitoring — the latest updates to ORION on display will include support for Dolby Atmos.
• ORION-OTT's enhanced support for localization and Dolby Atmos audio will be showcased at IBC2023 alongside brand-new capabilities such as support for Nagra and Comcast DRM, and updates to dynamic ad insertion (DAI) monitoring post server-side ad insertion (SSAI). The other recent enhancements include monitoring of low-latency streams, more DASH compliance checks, improvements in freeze detection, and additional system alerts for third-party integration.
• ORION 2110 Probe Future-Proofs End-to-End Monitoring in IP Environments
• Interra Systems' ORION 2110 Probe supports the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and enables broadcasters to future-proof the end-to-end monitoring of video quality in IP environments. Features include QoS/QoE monitoring of ST 2110 essence streams, ST 2110 main and redundancy signals, and NMOS integration.
• OCM (ORION Central Manager) for End-to-End Visibility of Video. At the heart of Interra Systems' innovations lies the power of centralized management of IP and OTT probes, which provides seamless control and monitoring of all streams from a single, user-friendly interface. Whether content is being delivered to television, OTT, or streaming services, the company's advanced centralized management system ensures unrivaled efficiency and unmatched quality assurance. OCM makes error detection and isolation faster and more efficient and has recently been enhanced with multiple features, such as localization, end-to-end ad insertion monitoring, and RHEL 8.4, and options to schedule database backups for disaster recovery.
• VEGA Media Analyzer (VMA) — Powerful Analysis for Next-Generation Media Workflows. Interra Systems' VEGA is an industry-leading analysis platform for standards compliance, debugging, and interoperability of encoded streams. It offers support for the highest number of industry compression standards, such as AVS, HDR, AV1, VVC, Dolby Vision, ATSC 3.0, Dolby Atmos, DTS Audio, DolbyE Audio, Dolby AC4, Apple ProRes, JPEGXS, and HEIF.
• Further VMA enhancements include support for the JPEG XS image format and viewing HDR in the HEVC/H264 codecs. In addition, the platform now has the capability to show video frames with SCTE-35 markers, and pictures with digital video broadcasting (DVB) subtitles, in transport streams. For the VVC standard, VMA has received performance enhancements and offers support for intra-prediction, AU level graph, and residue views.
• Interra Systems will also showcase its most recent addition to the VMA platform: VEGA Vista. The innovative analyzer, which can be part of automated workflows, performs comprehensive analysis of MPEG-2 transport streams, providing reports with root-cause analysis for errors that can cause problems related to transmission or audio/video quality.

To book a meeting with Interra Systems and see all the latest demos on display at the company's IBC2023 booth (7.C09), visit interrasystems.com.

Over the years, the cost of good television equipment has bucked the general inflationary trend. For example, you can buy a camera and lens today that is far better than a camera and lens from 20 years ago, and today’s gear will cost just 50% or less of what the camera would have cost you in 2003.

When using that camera back in the day, you probably wanted to view its output on a waveform monitor to get the exposure right. Today’s camera is likely to have a waveform display capability built in that can be called up anytime to check the exposure. So today’s production equipment not only often costs less than ever, it does more than ever.

Of course, video networks are far more complex today, and this complexity means that test and measurement/quality control equipment today has to do much more at the network level than was needed for the simpler networks two decades ago. Much of today’s network-level test gear is evolving with new measurement and analysis techniques, as the video streaming environment gets more complicated and demanding over time.

“As delivery systems have become more complex, the demand for versatile and advanced digital monitoring and analysis solutions has increased,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president for product management at Interra Systems. “As a result, single-purpose monitoring gear has taken a backseat to more adaptable multifunctional tools. These tools leverage the power of new content creation and delivery standards—and computer networks—to provide comprehensive monitoring capabilities that cover various aspects of stream analysis and signal evaluation.”

The Impact of ST 2110
Signals that conform to the SMPTE ST 2110 standard have multiple components (video, audio and ancillary data) each transmitted as separate streams. An IP-based stream monitor can analyze, evaluate and route these streams and extract the metadata based on the user’s workflow, providing full flexibility.

“Software-based tools used on an IP network can efficiently extract and analyze this metadata, allowing broadcasters to monitor and verify critical information such as format, timing and identification,” Anantharaman said. “In the context of video, waveform monitors can sometimes fail to detect problems due to human error. However, by using IP-based probes, operators can automate the process of stream verification for today’s vast amount of content.”

Human error notwithstanding, standalone testing and QC devices still have value in many operations and workflows.

“Although the underlying infrastructure of how media is transported has changed, the overall tasks that need to be accomplished by operators and engineers are still fundamentally the same,” said Don Kianian, solutions marketing manager for Telestream. “The workload has increased and the need to manage these workflows efficiently is paramount. 

“Traditional, familiar waveform monitoring tools are still extremely useful to monitor and measure video and audio signals,” he added. “They may also be complemented by other software tools (such as quality control solutions) that can automatically QC content and alert users to media that does not meet spec.”

Telestream serves both OTT and broadcasters, and Kianian said the company is seeing a shift in how the two are evolving.

“We’re certainly seeing OTA adopting more and more OTT technologies and solutions [e.g., cloud workflows, remote collaboration, AI/ML] as part of a broadcaster/content provider’s overall strategy to reach broader audiences and go toe-to-toe with the increasing number of content providers in the market,” he said. “I expect this tug-of-war to continue well into this year and beyond.”

Upgrade to ATSC 3.0
Traditional broadcasters are in the early phases of a soft transition to the ATSC 3.0 standard, which is much more IP-friendly than the outgoing ATSC 1.0. What does this mean with respect to test and measurement equipment, and what lies ahead?

“As the transition to ATSC 3.0 heats up in the United States, we are seeing increased interest in test and measurement equipment,” said Ralph Bachofen, vice president of sales and marketing at Triveni Digital. “The transition to ATSC 3.0 is an opportunity for broadcasters to upgrade their T&M suite.

“With the latest T&M equipment, broadcasters can ensure outstanding-quality NextGen TV services, better understand the new standard, and simultaneously deliver ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 transmissions during the simulcast phase.”

Bachofen explained that single-purpose test gear is still in use, but it has an easily understood limiting factor.

“Single-purpose gear is still in use, especially in the RF realm,” he said. “The trend is to adopt multipurpose systems for service quality assurance and enterprise-wide monitoring. Single-purpose gear is much more expensive than having a solution from one vendor that can monitor multiple demarcation points at the same time.”

The sheer volume of production today means that more test, measurement and quality control gear than ever is needed. And yes, that means devices such as waveform monitors.

“The demands of operational television businesses are largely unchanged in that content has to meet in-house delivery standards as well as regulatory requirements,” said Prinyar Boon, product manager at Phabrix. “This remains the case regardless of how it’s been carried: file, streamed, broadcast, compressed, uncompressed, SDI, IP, MT2TS and so on.”

New Signal Types
Although production facilities need to measure and confirm the quality of signals, the relatively recent (and ongoing) industry transition from SDI to ST 2110 means new test gear is needed for the new signal types, according to Boon.

“To complicate the picture, many of these facilities will use both SDI- and IP-based systems,” Boon said. “We’ve been deeply involved for many years with the development of workflows for live HDR production, and measurement tools for ST 2110 systems using precision time protocol (PTP), while also retaining traditional SDI-based toolsets. 

“So yes, we’d agree very much that the era of standalone gear is over, and without doubt the long-term trend is to have operational and production tools evolve into on-prem and off-prem cloud-based systems.”

In the days when broadcast OTA was the only game in town, broadcasters could rely on knowing that the signal was properly received on a monitor TV in the studio. If the picture/sound were good on that TV, then all viewers were receiving a quality signal.

In the OTT world, it is much more difficult for a program provider to check what the user experience is—especially when dozens of network operators (Comcast, Verizon, Cox, etc.) actually take the signal from the program provider and deliver it to the customer. Ensuring a quality experience in this environment is complicated… but not impossible.

“Because of the user-centric technology in modern video streaming, measuring the quality of the video transmission sent out doesn’t necessarily offer insight into the quality of the video received by the customer,” said Mathieu Planche, CEO of Witbe. “Furthermore, true video service performance is now defined by many more elements than just the image quality alone. User-centric video services need to be tested with user-centric monitoring technology.”

Location, Location, Location
In other words, sensors from the test system must be placed as close to the user as possible to make sure the network delivers the expected quality to the customer.

“Checking that a FAST channel is available on Comcast NOW TV cannot be verified through simple packet loss,” Planche said. “It involves complex interactions between backend systems, cloud-to-cloud integration, device operating systems, content providers, ad providers and various DRM stacks. OTT providers need user-centric monitoring technology to understand the true quality delivered to their end-users.”

This is where artificial intelligence (AI) could play an important role in monitoring networks and responding to failures faster than a human can react. In the meantime, change and growth is constant in the program delivery process.

“As the weight shifts further to online content and live streaming, having a solid grip on the entire chain becomes more important,” said Rajesh Patel, vice president for sales & solutions EMEA at Mediaproxy. “With an ever-increasing scale of sources, using software-based tools and APIs to optimize monitoring workflows will help reduce overall cost and enhance quality-of-service. 

“Teaming up with partners with solutions that straddle multiple disciplines is something to look at as old equipment becomes obsolete,” he continued. “This also includes shifting the thinking towards what the cloud can offer to handle specific pressure points.”

Patel sees that there is still a need for hardware-specific test equipment, even as change is coming.

“Despite the ever-growing availability of software-based tools, traditional hardware-based monitoring equipment is certainly still relevant in today’s monitoring chain,” he said. “This is especially still true for ST 2022-2 as well as for the emerging SDI replacement, ST 2110.” 

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has announced that MySatGo, an online TV platform offering Arabic content to the Middle East, Australia, and Canada, has deployed Interra’s ORION and ORION-OTT systems as well the ORION Central Manager (OCM) solution.

MySatGo is using Interra Systems' ORION suite to efficiently and cost-effectively monitor its linear and OTT services across all locations to ensure exceptional audio-video quality while receiving centralized reports for its live and VOD channels, the companies reported. 

"Previously, we were manually monitoring content for our headend and OTT channels without any real way to quantitatively check audio-video quality," said Imad Alawawdeh, director of digital technologies at MySatGo. "To ensure delivery of the highest quality content for our customers, we required an end-to-end, automated monitoring solution for our entire delivery chain, from contribution feeds to the origin and edge servers. In addition, we wanted a solution with advanced features such as centralized reports, root cause identification, and more that would help us optimize the viewing experience. With its best-in-class monitoring and diagnostic tools, Interra Systems' ORION suite was an easy call."

Interra Systems' ORION and ORION-OTT provide real-time monitoring of IP and OTT streams for live and VOD content. Both offerings look at all aspects of video streams, allowing MySatGo to deliver error-free, superior-quality video. With ORION and ORION-OTT deployed in the Middle East, Australia, and Canada, the company now has a unified and consistent monitoring platform to check for QoS, QoE, closed captions, and ad-insertion verification across all locations it services. In addition, MySatGo is using ORION-OTT to verify QoS and QoE for ABR videos, including checking for inconsistencies related to ABR package compliance, manifest and playlist syntax, download errors, and content quality, the companies said. 

ORION performs critical monitoring functions on hundreds of services simultaneously, providing MySatGo with a single point of visibility and access to important information such as status, alerts, alarms, visible impairments, error reports, triggered captures, and more. ORION and ORION-OTT's quality checking includes macroblocking, freeze, and black frames, among others. The audio quality checks include loudness, silence, and levels, and they support all popular audio formats, including Dolby.

With Interra Systems' OCM deployed at MySatGo's Middle Eastern headquarters, the company has an aggregated view of its linear and OTT services based on monitoring data collected by the ORION and ORION-OTT platforms. OCM offers the company a rich feature set that includes near-real-time updates and the status of all channels across the network, channel performance trends, support for LDP-based authorization, executive reports, email notifications, alert aggregation and correlation across the workflow, and more.

"With over 80 premium live channels and an extensive VOD library, efficient monitoring is critical to delivering the viewing experience MySatGo's customers expect," said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president, product management at Interra Systems. "We are thrilled that MySatGo has chosen Interra Systems to provide this capability. Our ORION, ORION-OTT, and OCM have not only allowed the company to centrally monitor multiple points across its distribution chain for the quick identification and resolution of error and quality issues, but have also provided historical reports and diagnostics that have helped MySatGo identify trends to improve their offering."

Interra Systems will demonstrate the latest versions of its ORION, ORION-OTT, and ORION OCM solutions at the 2023 NAB Show, April 16-19 in Las Vegas (Booth N3159).

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com.  

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will show new features for its BATON Captions automated captioning solution, which is helping to drive globalization of content by supporting multiple languages and a large variety of subtitle and closed caption formats, at the 2023 NAB Show, April 15-19, in Las Vegas, the company said today.

The company has added support for Finnish and Polish to BATON Captions, increasing the solution’s extensive list of supported languages. BATON Captions also offers comprehensive QC checks, repurposing and features for subtitling and caption regeneration. The product makes it easy and cost-effective to manage creation and delivery of subtitles and captions that cater to audiences worldwide, it said.

"As broadcasters and service providers look to reach untapped audiences by globalizing their content — while ensuring compliance with strict regional and industry regulations — their ability to provide multi-language captions and subtitles has become increasingly crucial," said Sanjay Mittal, executive vice president of product development at Interra Systems.

"With support for a wide range of languages and services, backed by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, BATON Captions makes it quicker and easier to accurately deliver subtitles and captions to a variety of markets in different regions across the world."

The capabilities of BATON Captions include:

• QC of captioning and subtitles
• Repurposing captions from live content for VOD applications
• Creation of captions from transcribed audio
• Auto correction of errors
• Translation of captions from one to another language
• Regeneration of captions to match the different requirements of various video delivery platforms.

Among the product’s QC and repurposing capabilities supporting localizing content for different geographies are support for a wide range of QC and compliance checks, checks for shift and drift, accuracy, missing captions, burnt-in text overlap, duration mismatch with content, frame-rate mismatch with content, paint style, reading speed, display duration, character count, row count, frame gap, spelling and more, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

See Interra Systems at 2023 NAB Show booth N3159.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will showcase enhancements for its ORION content monitoring solution, including improved support for localization and more HDR and SMPTE ST 2110 checks at the 2023 NAB Show.

The company is also enhancing ORION with scheduled reports as well as support for scheduled monitoring that enables automated, time-based monitoring of feeds and improved usability for live monitoring, Interra Systems said.

Upgrades to ORION-OTT content monitoring will include enhanced support for localization as well as Dolby Atmos audio and monitoring of low-latency streams, more DASH compliance checks, improvements in freeze detection and more system alerts for third-party integration, it said.

Interra Systems will also show its ORION 2110 probe for end-to-end monitoring in IP environments. The product supports the SMPTE ST 2110 standard, providing comprehensive QoS/QoE monitoring of 2110 essence streams, including main and redundant signals. Offering NMOS integration, the probe can assist broadcasters through the complexities and challenges of SDIoIP, the company said.

The company will also show the Interra Systems OCM (ORION Central Manager), which provided enterprise-wide visibility of video for broadcasters and service providers by enabling central management of multiple ORION linear and ORION-OTT setups, it said.

Interra Systems also will highlight the latest additions to its BATON ML/AI-powered automated QC platform, including such quality checks as QR code detection and decoding, video dropout, logo detection, color banding for UHD content and burned-in text recognition, it said.

The company will also feature its BATON Media Player, which allows users to play, inspect and verify audio and video content. Its latest enhancements include optimized playback of 4K content and further support for Dolby Atmos storage formats and enhanced options to review errors.

See Interra Systems in 2023 NAB Show booth N3159.

More information is available on the company’ website.

Recent innovations in content QC and monitoring — designed to address needs as varied as content prep and delivery as well as audio/video quality checks and 24/7 monitoring needs — will be on display by Interra Systems at the 2022 NAB Show New York. 

The technology is designed to assist media companies in improving audio/video quality but also in managing metadata, deploying cloud and hybrid environments and automating media processing and verification.

The company plans to show off the latest enhancements to the ORION Content Monitoring Suite, which centers on a variety of cloud deployment scenarios for both live and VOD content. Enhancements on display at the show will include ad insertion monitoring, support for Dolby Vision and HDR, visual trending for QoS and QoE metrics, CPIX-based DRM integrations, and new audio/video quality checks. To address evolving bandwidth requirements or the need for daily service availability reports, the technology includes a new flexible licensing model.

At the show the company also plans to demonstrate the ORION solution for real-time monitoring of linear channels in an IP-based delivery environment. New features include support for the monitoring of contribution stream formats, additional audio quality checks like peak levels and audio clipping, enhanced video dropout detection, HDR and ad compliance and secure HTTPS-based access, among other features. 

As part of its ORION product suite, the company’s new ORION 2110 probe is designed to simplify IP monitoring. Key features of the system include redundancy and NMOS integration, monitoring of IP-related parameters and support for monitoring SCTE-104 ad signaling. 

Other solutions to be on display at the show include the ORION Central Manager, an enterprise-wide visibility management system that allows a media company to manage multiple ORION linear and ORION-OTT setups at different locations as needed; the BATON ML/AI-enabled automated QC platform including the BATON Captions automated captioning solution, BATON WINNOW, content classification and identification system, BATON LipSync system; and the VEGA media analysis platform. 

Interra will be in Stand 1035. 

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems will feature its content QC and monitoring solutions covering the gamut of content prep and delivery, including audio/video quality checks, 24/7 monitoring, captions, lip sync and deep-dive analysis, at IBC 2022, Sept. 9-12, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre, the company said today.

In addition to audio and video monitoring, the company’s solutions meet the industry’s needs when it comes to creation and management of metadata, cloud and hybrid deployments and automation of processing and verification, the company said.

With the dramatic growth in OTT video streaming, service providers are looking for solutions that enable the launch and monitoring of content in an easy, efficient manner, said Anupama Anantharaman, company vice president of product management.

"Linear and OTT consolidation, cloud infrastructure, scalabiliy, and centralized monitoring with customization, and sports media, especially in Europe, are driving our customers toward adopting new technologies and standards. Our new products and software updates address these new requirements and offer significant improvements in terms of content quality and efficiency to help our customers set themselves apart from the competition," he said.

At IBC 2022, the company will highlight:

• The ORION content monitoring suite for OTT and linear/IP video, supporting a variety of cloud deployment scenarios for live and VOD content streaming. Enhancements include ad insertion monitoring, Dolby Vision and HDR support, visual trending for QoS and QoE metrics, CPIX-based DRM integration and new audio/video quality checks.
• The ORION 2110 probe to simplify IP monitoring of SMPTE ST 2110 with support for redundancy, NMOS integrations and monitoring.
• The ORION Central Manager (OCM) for end-to-end visibility of video. Offering a single-screen view of both linear and OTT workflows at the same place or diverse geographic locations, OCM has been enhanced with the addition of smart tools and exportable reports for channel performance and alert trending; scheduled tasks to export reports; the ability to add comments regarding the root causes and resolution of alerts and more.
• BATON, QC workflow optimizer platform enhanced with enterprise-level hybrid deployments that include auto-scale, on-premises and cloud, 4K and MPEG enhancements and new audio/video checks for complex content.
• I-ML enabled solutions leveraging machine learning applications in compliance and classification to replace time-consuming manual processes.
• BATON Captions, an automated solution for all captioning needs.
• The BATON WINNOW content classification solution with new enhancements offering greater efficiency when preparing content for different target markets and geographies. New features include language detection of visual text in video, enhanced accuracy for detection of explicit scenes and a more concise display of text on PDF reports.
• BATON LipSync offering reports of all lip sync issues.
• EGA Media Analyzer (VMA) analysis tool for Next-Gen media workflows with support for compliance, debugging and interoperability of encoded streams. The company has added support for MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS).

See Interra Systems at IBC 2022 Stand 7.C05.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems this week revealed its BATON machine learning-, artificial intelligence-enabled automated quality control (QC) platform has successfully completed an AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) and that the company has joined the Amazon Web Services Partner Network.

The availability of Interra Systems’ solutions in the cloud offers media companies a way to take advantage of newer, faster processors to optimize performance and gives them the ability to streamline content production and delivery from anywhere, the company said.

"We are excited to join the AWS Partner Network and to further strengthen our commitment to the cloud," said Saurabh Jain, director of strategic partnerships at Interra Systems. "Being a part of the AWS Partner Network brings increased efficiencies and cost savings to customers using our quality control and monitoring solutions. Having our software solutions stamped with an FTR approval also means customers can expect world-class security, reliability and operational excellence when they are running on the AWS cloud."

Interra Systems' software-based and cloud-ready QC, captioning/subtitling, monitoring, and analysis solutions provide a complete set of tools for scalability, high performance and centralized management, the company said.

With the option for on-premises and cloud deployments, its solutions give media companies the flexibility to deliver premium live and video on demand assets to a global audience now and in the future, it said.

"As media companies transition to the cloud, they require solutions that can ensure content quality at cloud scale," said Ryan Broadwell, director of ISV Partnerships at AWS. "We're pleased to have Interra Systems join as a member of the AWS Partner Network to allow media companies to scale their content workflows."

As an AWS Partner, Interra Systems is positioned to help media companies take full advantage of all that AWS has to offer and accelerate their journey to the cloud. FTR helps AWS Partners to identify and remediate risks in their products or solutions.

Running BATON products on AWS allows media companies to perform content QC remotely in the cloud from anywhere in the world. BATON offers QC support for 4K, comprehensive audio-video quality checks for complex content, OAR watermark and enhanced Cinavia watermark checks, IMF Application 2 Extended, PSE for HDR, foreign languages, Dolby Atmos and FLAC audio.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems, a major provider of content QC, monitoring, and analysis solutions to the digital media industry, has announced that its BATON Captions automated captioning solution is now available to broadcasters and other media professionals as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution on the company's Interra Cloud Services (ICS) platform. 

"SaaS-based Captions allows media companies to perform the critical function of caption management in the cloud, simplifying the process while retaining the ability to accommodate constantly varying media workloads," said Sanjay Mittal, executive vice president — product development, at Interra Systems. "Our BATON solution, a leading ML- and AI-enabled automated QC platform, is already available in the cloud as SaaS, and now our SaaS-based BATON Captions is too. Interra is committed to making all its solutions available to customers in the cloud, providing multiple use models to adapt to customer needs. SaaS-based Captions is yet another step in this direction."

Designed to help drive the globalization of content, BATON Captions provides advanced capabilities that allow media professionals to QC captions and subtitles, auto-correct errors, translate captions from one language to another, and regenerate captions to match different video deliveries. 

The solution utilizes automatic speech recognition technology for faster and more efficient caption generation; provides multilingual support for QC, captioning, and subtitling of media files; and supports all embedded and sidecar formats, major text and document formats, and an array of content locations, the company said. 

On the QC side, the SaaS-based BATON solution allows critical QC tasks to be performed remotely from anywhere, offering multiple built-in test plans — such as Amazon, Hulu, DPP, and iTunes — for setting up QC checks based on industry standards. All customer data, including project folders, reports, and thumbnails, is preserved in the cloud for a specified period of time to simplify data management and provide protection against possible data loss.

Interra Systems will demonstrate its QC, monitoring, and AI-/ML-based solutions at the 2022 NAB Show, April 24-27, in Las Vegas at booth W5516. 

More information about Interra Systems demos at the 2022 NAB show can be found at: https://www.interrasystems.com/mailer/NAB2022/.

LAS VEGAS—At the 2022 NAB Show, April 23-27, Interra Systems will showcase its line of QC and monitoring solutions that cover the entire gamut of content preparation and delivery, from audio/video quality checks to 24/7 monitoring, captions, lip sync, and deep-dive analysis. 

Interra Systems says its QC and monitoring solutions allow media companies to address its most pressing needs, not just in terms of audio/video quality but also creation and management of metadata, cloud and hybrid deployment, and tools to automate media processing and verification.

"The COVID pandemic saw OTT video streaming explode, and since then, several important new trends and standards have emerged in the creation and delivery of media content. Our new products and software updates address these new requirements and show continued improvements in terms of better content quality and efficiency," said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. "We are excited that the NAB show will take place in-person again, and we are eager to meet our customers face to face and show them first-hand our latest set of solutions and features."

Interra’s booth will highlight the following updated products:

ORION Content Monitoring Suite for OTT and Linear/IP Video Ensures Better QoS/QoE, a comprehensive monitoring solution for live and VOD streaming that can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises. Recent enhancements to ORION-OTT include: ad insertion monitoring, support for Dolby Vision and HDR, visual trending for QoS and QoE metrics, CPIX-based DRM integrations, and new audio/video quality checks. 

Interra will demo its ORION solution for real-time monitoring of linear channels in an IP-based delivery infrastructure. New features include support for monitoring of contribution stream formats (SRT/RIST), enhanced video dropout detection, and new audio quality checks (i.e., audio jitter, true peak levels, audio clipping, and stereo pair absence)

ORION 2110 Probe supports the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and features redundancy and NMOS integration, monitoring of IP-related parameters such as jitter and packet loss, scrambling control checks, DAI custom checks for ad insertion monitoring, support for monitoring SCTE-104 ad signaling, and exportable reports and video thumbnails.

OCM (ORION Central Manager) for End-to-End Visibility of Video, provides enterprise-wide visibility by enabling central management of multiple ORION linear and ORION-OTT setups present at the same or diverse geographic locations. 

BATON is an ML- and AI-enabled automated QC platform that addresses the most rigorous QC standards for quality and compliance. Recent updates to the BATON platform include major 4K and MJPEG enhancements, new audio/video quality checks for complex content, OAR watermark and enhanced Cinavia watermark checks, IMF Application 2 Extended, PSE for HDR, enhanced foreign language support in the BATON UI, support for Dolby Atmos, FLAC audio, and more. In addition, Interra Systems' BATON Media Player offers improvements in loading and playback performance of 4K content. 

BATON Captions automated solution for all captioning-related has been updated with support for next-gen format-specific checks, subtitling, stand-alone subtitle files for QC, recaptioning, exporting captions in MCC (MacCaption Closed Caption) format, and adding tags for tasks. BATON Captions features cutting-edge machine learning and automatic speech recognition technology.

BATON WINNOW is a content preparation platform for different target markets and geographies. Powered by AI/ML technologies, WINNOW detects and tags content for violence, strong language, alcohol, guns, and more, based on user-defined rules. New features for WINNOW include language detection of visual text present in video, enhanced accuracy for detection of explicit scenes, and more concise display of text (i.e., speech, caption, and visual text) on PDF reports. 

BATON LipSync leverages image processing and deep neural networks to detect audio and video sync-related errors. Capable of performing facial detection, facial tracking, lip detection, lip activity detection, and speech identification, BATON LipSync provides a comprehensive report of all lip sync issues.

VEGA Media Analyzer (VMA) is an analysis platform for standards compliance, debugging, and interoperability of encoded streams. VMA supports new standards such as: Dolby Vision, Apple ProRes, VVC, HEIF, over and above AV1, HEVC, H.264, MMT, HLS, MXF, VP9, VP8, MPEG-2, MPEG-DASH, JPEG-2K, ISM, and PCAP. 

New at this year’s show is VEGA Vista, which enables media companies to receive or deliver video using the MPEG-2 transport stream format. The innovative analyzer can be part of automated workflows and offers granular level customization of parameters and checks. Comprehensive reports provide deep visibility into MPEG-2 TS streams and help with root-cause analysis for a few errors that can cause problems related to transmission or audio/video quality.

Interra Systems will be in Booth W5516.

For more information on the NAB Show, visit nabshow.com/2022.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has joined the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program and is now making its quality control (QC) and monitoring software BATON, BATON Captions and ORION-OTT available on Google Cloud.

The solutions help enable video service providers to adopt cloud workflows, launch traditional broadcast and video streaming services, reduce CapEx cost and eliminate infrastructure maintenance, Interra Systems said.

"A growing number of our customers are eager to transition to the cloud, and joining the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program gives us the opportunity to support those workflow requirements," said Saurabh Jain, director, strategic partnerships at Interra Systems. "The Google Cloud environment is incredibly flexible, scalable, and secure, enabling greater operational and cost efficiencies for our customers embracing the cloud transformation."

Interra Systems solutions can harness Google Cloud offerings like cloud storage, virtual servers for remote computing and advanced media services like translation and content security to enable efficient content monitoring and ensure high-quality audio and video on each screen, the company said.

Running Interra Systems' BATON Captions on Google Cloud simplifies automated subtitling workflows, reducing the need for manual intervention and language translation experts. The integration of Interra Systems' solutions with Google Cloud also enables service providers to monitor ABR feeds encrypted using Google Widevine DRM, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Content QC and monitoring technology provider Interra Systems has announced that ZOO Digital, a global provider of cloud software-based subtitling, dubbing, and media localization services, has expanded its deployment of Interra Systems' BATON automated QC solution. 

BATON enables ZOO Digital to perform comprehensive quality and compliance checks on VOD content, resulting in faster and more efficient delivery of globalized media content for its customers in the TV and film industries, the company said. 

"Given the recent explosion in video streaming, we are anticipating an increased workload from customers globally," said Andy Saldaña, vice president of media services and special projects at ZOO Digital. "As the volume of media content that we manage grows, Interra's BATON solution will enable us to address the QC needs of our customers swiftly. BATON expedites the creation of subtitles, audio dubbing, localized metadata, media compliance, and more, allowing our customers to reach new audiences and boost their revenues."

ZOO Digital has production facilities in the U.S., U.K., and Dubai. Being a software- and cloud-based solution, Interra Systems' BATON provides ZOO Digital with a highly scalable architecture that can easily be expanded as its QC needs grow. BATON supports a wide range of media formats and offers comprehensive quality checks, including extensive subtitles and closed-caption verification, audio language identification, PSE correction, and loudness detection and correction.

"ZOO Digital was an early adopter of BATON and continues to be a valued customer that understands the important role that automated QC plays in global media distribution," said Ashish Basu, executive vice president of worldwide sales and business development at Interra Systems. "With BATON powering its QC operations, ZOO Digital can ensure that the content being delivered by some of the biggest names in the media and entertainment industry always has exceptional quality."

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at www.interrasystems.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has introduced the ORION 2110 Probe, a future-proof, end-to-end monitoring solution for IP media workflows supporting the SMPTE ST 2110 standard.

"As the broadcast world transitions toward IP infrastructure to simplify content preparation and delivery operations, having the capability to monitor the new and complex ST 2110 workflow will become absolutely essential," said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. 

"We have developed the ORION 2110 Probe with a smart feature set that includes validation of individual essences, SDP protocol checks and monitoring density among others. Using the ORION 2110 Probe, our customers will be able to ensure high quality and performance for SDI-IP streams and take full advantage of the flexibility and benefits of the ST 2110 standard."

The ORION 2110 Probe monitors ST 2110 main and redundancy signals as well as NMOS-based ST 2110 feed discovery in the network. It addresses the complexities and challenges of the SDI and IP environment by enabling a simple, yet powerful means to monitor content, especially in production and contribution applications, the company said.

The probe offers a rich set of REST APIs to ensure seamless integration with third-party software, including most network management systems, it said.

With the probe, it is possible to detect video quality issues rapidly throughout the entire video workflow, regardless of whether it’s ingest, content preparation or delivery. With insights into video errors as early as ingest, broadcast can dramatically improve video quality of service and quality of experience, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

FREMONT, Calif.—Blackmagic Design has announced that Interra Systems, a global provider of software products and solutions to the digital media industry, has integrated Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture and playback card models and Video Assist recorder/monitors to support up to 8K playback with Interra's BATON Media Player (BMP).

BMP from Interra Systems is one of the most comprehensive media players in the market, the companies said, and the combined solution is being used by many of the world’s top broadcasters and post production houses.

Interra Systems’ BATON offers an AI enabled automated QC platform that provides comprehensive quality and compliance checks for VOD content for linear and streaming workflows, the companies said. 

Through Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink line of PCIe capture and playback cards, Interra Systems can offer its customers high quality control and monitoring by allowing them to view up to 8K video. Customers can monitor content using the DeckLink to playback in any video format and resolution needed, allowing them to monitor for macro blocking, freeze frames, black frames, and other problems, the companies explained. 

Interra Systems uses a wide variety of Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink cards along with the DeckLink Media Express media player, including the DeckLink Studio, DeckLink SDI 4K and DeckLink 8K Pro. The newest card used by Interra Systems is the DeckLink 8K Pro, which is an advanced Generation 3, eight lane PCI Express capture and playback card designed for high resolution 8K workflows that includes four 12G SDI connections and support for all SD, HD, Ultra HD, 4K DCI, 8K and 8K DCI formats.

“We have been using DeckLink cards with BATON Media Player for a number of years, and our customers enjoy the power and ability to view high resolution video, including 4K, from any broadcast quality monitor before going on air. The DeckLink's powerful SDK has made it easy to integrate and build new services with. We are pleased that our partnership allows media companies to view and manage 4K playback in real time, and provide high quality video,” said Saurabh Jain, director, strategic partnerships, Interra Systems.

Interra Systems also uses a number of DeckLink 8K Pros and a Blackmagic Video Assist 7” 12G HDR in their own research and development facilities as well as with customer workflows. The output from a DeckLink 8K Pro is fed directly into a Blackmagic Video Assist 7” 12G HDR.

“It is exciting to see Interra Systems’ BATON Media Player fully support the entire DeckLink family, and it will surely benefit our customers with BATON supporting all color space monitoring and inspection up to 4K DCI at 60p 12 Bit RGB. The combination of our Desktop Video and Video Assist 12G HDR gives high quality HDR QC at an affordable price,” said Dan May, president, Blackmagic Design.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has unveiled VEGA Vista, a software-based command line interface for quality assurance of transport systems.

Broadcasters and video equipment providers can verify MPEG-2 transport streams by running VEGA Vista software on-premise or in the cloud. Verification of the streams can be done against the MPEG standard at various points in the workflow for compressed video quality, compliance and interoperability, the company said.

The analyzer can check for buffer underflow or overflow conditions that can lead to problems in transmission, it said.

"The volume of content that broadcasters and video equipment providers are handling is increasing tremendously, making efficient video analysis imperative," said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems.

"VEGA Vista keeps in mind next-generation analysis requirements. Apart from providing a complete set of checks and analysis features to help media companies assure MPEG-2 compliance, the software can be deployed as a Docker-based application and fit into an automated workflow, making it an indispensable tool for quality assurance of MPEG streams," said Anantharaman.

Besides MPEG-2 transport stream validation and buffer analysis, the new product offers system interoperability assurance, debugging, troubleshooting and encoder compliance. Available with Linux, Windows and Mac support, VEGA Vista can be scaled with license upgrades. It also can be invoked through a script, making it suited to file-based workflows, Interra Systems said.

VEGA Vista can be used to extract elementary streams through the command line and quickly perform analysis on high-level video stream data. The product supports CableLabs DOCSIS 3.0 and elementary header level checks, as well as analysis based on error numbers, number of TS packets and buffer analysis of T-STD model, the company said.

More information can be found on the company’s website. 

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems announced its Baton Media Player (BMP) now offers a set of Netflix presets based on Netflix’s Licensed Delivery Specifications that allows media professionals to play, inspect and verify audio-video content.

Using the presets will make turnaround of high-quality content faster when working with content partners, it said

"We added Netflix delivery presets to BMP to save our customers time and to enable superior content quality and a consistent streaming experience for viewers all around the world," said Ashish Basu, executive vice president, worldwide sales and business development at Interra Systems.

The BMP media player supports a wide range of formats and can be integrated into broadcast workflows at any stage for in-depth examination of content, while facilitating collaboration across multiple teams and projects, it said.

Visual and technical information from BMP ensures content looks and plays exactly as intended. BMP supports SDI playout, playback support for IMF, HDR, sidecar and a wide range of audio, video, elementary and container formats, along with extensive support for closed captions and subtitle formats, the company said. It is available as a standalone and as an integrated part of Interra Systems’ Baton media QC solution.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Over the years, the complexity of video preparation and delivery has increased dramatically. First, the industry witnessed the move from tape to file-based workflows, followed by the transition from analog to digital. New formats and standards have also emerged, adding to the complexity of video delivery. 

Aside from these technology transformations, consumer viewing habits are shifting. Today’s viewers prefer OTT media services, with 76% of U.S. households subscribing to OTT services compared with 62% for traditional pay-TV, according to the latest research from Parks Associates. As broadcasters deliver a higher volume of content to a wider range of screens and global audiences, additional errors are being introduced into the workflow, potentially affecting video and audio quality.

Recent advancements in automated media quality control and monitoring systems are helping broadcasters deliver error-free video and audio on every screen. In particular, innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence are pushing media QC and monitoring to the next level, increasing the accuracy and consistency of certain media tasks, including content classification, content categorization, lip sync checks and more.

MEDIA QC AND MONITORING IS EVOLVING

In the early stages of media QC and monitoring, automated systems were limited to simple tasks, such as checking the correctness of audio/video technical parameters, including resolution, frame rate, bitrate, content structure and container parameters.

Since then, media QC and monitoring has evolved. Today, broadcasters can check for perceptual errors using computer vision and standard audio processing techniques. These checks include interlace artifacts, defective pixels, dropouts, visual text recognition, compression and ghosting artifacts, loudness and language detection. 

With the rise of ML and its success in completing tasks such as content classification and object detection, the scope of media QC and monitoring has expanded. Now broadcasters are using advanced ML techniques capable of semantically understanding content for the purpose of content moderation, content classification, indexing and description generation. Let’s look at a few of the specific media applications that can be optimized with ML and AI technologies.

SPEEDING UP CONTENT COMPLIANCE WITH ML 

Monitoring and altering content in order to conform to different rules and regulations is one application that can greatly benefit from ML. Broadcasters must comply with a wide range of rules and regulations, which can vary from one region to another. 

Traditionally, broadcasters have maintained a pool of human moderators to manually filter content for regulatory compliance. Under a typical manual workflow, content is passed through multiple stages of review. If a review fails at any stage, the content goes back for editing. Manual content QC and monitoring is expensive, time-consuming and inaccurate. With so many global and regional aspects of content moderation, it is almost impossible for humans to carry out the job with 100% accuracy.

By automating this process, broadcasters can eliminate the limitations of manual content moderation, including the inability for people to memorize a significant number of visual symbols and the possibility for human error. With an automated QC and monitoring workflow, broadcasters can more rapidly and accurately check content for the presence of brand names, hate symbols, alcohol, violence, celebrity faces, vulgar speech captions and religious symbols. 

When using an automated system powered by ML, computer vision techniques and computer algorithms, the benefits are even greater. ML-based systems can handle huge and multiple content classification check lists without any major performance limitations, driving broadcast workflow efficiencies. 

However, it’s important to note that while current ML solutions are sophisticated and may be combined to create broader applications, they lack the real-world knowledge and human experience needed to create valid and acceptable outcomes on their own. Human input is still required to confirm the validity of patterns and help machines refine the result. Such human interactions are likely to define ML uses in the media industry for the foreseeable future.

ENSURING SUPERIOR QUALITY CAPTIONS WITH ML

Checking for the presence and accuracy of captions is another application area where ML has proven to be very effective. ML can be used to automatically generate captions where they are not present in the content, check the alignment between captions and audio, and check the correctness of the captions against the spoken audio. In addition, ML simplifies the identification of speakers in audio, ensuring that the correct punctuations are placed in captions. 

Ultimately, with ML, broadcasters can expedite the caption creation and verification processes for both live and VOD content, while ensuring that when content is delivered in multiple video quality levels within OTT video streams, the captions maintain a high quality.

Over the last decade, automatic speech recognition engines have achieved extremely high accuracy, up to 85%, via ML. Still, automatic speech engines face several challenges, such as robustness issues in noisy environments, the ability to handle variable accents, problems when multiple speakers are talking at the same time, and difficulty with kids’ voices (due to a lack of data to train ML models).

Keeping humans in the loop is imperative to resolve these challenges. By combining cutting-edge ML and automatic speech recognition technology with a manual review process, broadcasters can bring increased simplicity and cost savings to the creation, management and delivery of captions for traditional TV and video streaming.

ELIMINATING AV LIP SYNC ISSUES WITH ML

Synchronization between audio and video is a common issue today. Leveraging image processing and ML technology and deep neural networks, broadcasters can automatically detect audio and video sync errors. ML offers a faster and more precise approach to detecting audio lead and lag issues in media content, compared with the traditional approach of manually checking for lip sync errors. This allows broadcasters to provide a high quality of experience to viewers (QoE).

Through the power of ML, broadcasters can perform facial detection, facial tracking, lip detection, lip activity detection and speech identification. With an ML-based lip sync solution, typically one module uses video to extract faces and track lip movement. A second module  uses audio to extract audio features and a third ML module matches the movements with the audio features. Using this technique, it is possible to detect even one frame of synchronization issues.

CONCLUSION

The amount of content that broadcasters are delivering across the globe is massive. Ensuring a high-quality video experience on every screen is essential if broadcasters want to keep viewers satisfied. With automated QC and monitoring solutions featuring ML and AI technology, broadcasters are better placed to quickly and more accurately comply with industry and government regulations, deliver high-quality captions, classify and categorize content and eliminate lip sync issues. 

Anupama Anantharaman is vice president, Product Management, at Interra Systems.

LAS VEGAS—The 2020 NAB Show will serve as an opportunity for Interra Systems to demonstrate its range of content quality control, monitoring, analysis and classification technology for the management and analysis of audio-video quality. The gear on display will show support for tasks that include lip syncing, speech-to-text caption alignment and content classification.

At the forefront of Interra Systems’ technology, and its 2020 NAB Show presentation, is its OTT solution that features Baton QC and the Orion monitoring suite. During the show, Interra will demonstrate how users can manage advanced quality control, ABR and HTTP checks for large volumes of VoD, live and linear monitoring of each stream from content creation to delivery.

Interra’s Baton technology has a number of new features set to be showcased during the show. One is Baton Captions, which assists with the creation, management and delivery of captions for traditional TV, DVDs and streaming with machine learning and automatic speech recognition technology. There is also Baton LipSync, an automated tool for lip sync detection and verification that uses machine learning tech and deep neural networks to automatically detect audio and video sync errors.

Some updates to other Baton aspects are also on tap, including boosts in IMF and HDC checks, usability and audio language detection. There is also a range of new audio-video checks and support for the latest formats, as well as Interra’s subscription-based service for automated quality control of file-based content. In addition, an updated version of the Baton Media Player will be displayed, featuring support to overlay timecode information on video, performance enhancements in J2K playback, an option to export a video clip without re-encoding, improvements in real-time playback and support for playback of growing Material eXchange Format.

A number of new features for the Orion suite also will get prominent attention at Interra’s booth. Interra has Orion-OTT for VoD and live-event streaming monitoring. Simply labeled Orion, this system works for IP-based delivery infrastructures as a real-time content monitoring platform that offers video analysis of linear channels. Then there is the Orion Central Manager for end-to-end monitoring of channels that now provides an aggregated view of linear and OTT services based on monitoring data collected by Orion and Orion-OTT.

Additional technology that will be at Interra’s NAB Show booth includes Winnow, a system for content classification and identification powered by AI/ML technologies; and the Vega Media Analyzer, an analysis platform for standards compliance, debugging and in-depth analysis of encoded streams that has new updates to support AV1, JPEG and ABR streams.

Interra Systems will be located at booth SU5510 during the 2020 NAB Show, which takes place from April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

For more information, visit www.interrasystems.com.  

We all enjoy audio books, but have you ever tried watching your favorite television program muted?

Audio is a very important ingredient of any audio visual media. It is that one ingredient that brings the entire content to life; otherwise it would be lifeless motion jpegs. But many times audio doesn’t get the full attention it deserves in the media workflow because of the misconception that delivering a superior consumer experience is driven by video only. While visuals are captivating, audio is also vital. If audio quality isn’t good, then even the best quality video will lead to a negative experience. Poor quality audio shifts consumer attention to noises and other types of distractions, impacting the overall experience.

AUDIO IN SPORTS

Looking exclusively at sports, content is generously interspersed with commentary—it’s a way to provide otherwise inaccessible information to viewers in a timely manner, enhancing their viewing experience. Viewers are generally interested in knowing important information not covered by the live camera angle, such as how the injured player is recovering, and whether the crowd is friendly or not. There are many things commentators can see and tell the audience besides sharing interesting facts and trivia in order to make experiences more memorable.

Further, the ability to hear clear game sounds makes fans feel as if they are viewing the game right in the stadium. Just imagine hearing the sounds of skates grinding into the ice in hockey or figure skating, the crack of a baseball bat hitting a homerun and a ping pong ball hitting a paddle. Audio quality in these situations is paramount. Not to forget, the sports sector is a big business, worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide. Digitization is further driving the revenue for global broadcast rights, but today’s digital consumers are spoiled with so many choices and susceptible to clicking away at a moment’s notice. Any slack in audio quality can lead to a loss of viewership and revenue. So it’s important now more than ever to understand how to uphold audio quality and create an immersive sports experience.

THE CHALLENGES

Unspoken guidelines exist for good audio quality. For instance, audio should be in sync with video and captions. It should be free of any artifact like noise, dropout, jitter and echo. It should follow the appropriate loudness guideline for that region. Some broadcasters would also require removing profanity from the audio. In the case of multilingual global delivery, correct audio language order needs to be ensured. To some extent these guidelines are easy to maintain for offline content, but sports—with all its frenzy and excitement—is broadcast live. The content is produced and broadcast simultaneously, leaving little room for quality control and correction. Knowing this, there are many different issues that can impact sports audio.

AUDIO QUALITY

• Sports broadcast experiences, by their very nature, feature high-intensity events like scoring a goal in a soccer match, which momentarily changes the loudness level. As the next generation of sports broadcasting experiences is being defined, it is important to ensure that high-quality audio experiences conform to loudness regulations:
• • Regional guidelines: Broadcasters should ensure content loudness complies with various regional regulatory standards like CALM in the U.S., EBU in Europe and ARIB in Japan.
  • Ad switching: When broadcasters insert advertisements in content for monetization purposes, it changes the context of the content and likely changes the loudness level. The broadcaster should ensure that the switch is seamless to ensure a smooth listening experience.

• Any noise in audio can distract viewers, thus degrading the overall viewer experience. There could be multiple sources for such noises.
• • To enhance viewer experiences, broadcasters want to simulate the sports-arena-like environment with the predominant sound components containing audience voice, reverberation and stadium music. To capture all of the important components, broadcasters typically use multiple microphones strategically placed all over the stadium and mix them along with the running commentary. During the mixing process, it is very important to ensure that channel layout is followed properly. For example, if the center channel contains dialog, it should remain the same even after the mixing process. Any glitch here can severely impact the audio quality.
  • The biggest challenge during commentary is clear audio. This is the stage where different noises such as background and echo can be introduced into the content. The scene of action is generally an outdoor area. Weather, wind, cheers from the audience and many other subtle factors can also allow various noises to creep into the content. These noises need to be suppressed before content is sent upstream. Data transmission over a slow network also causes multiple issues such as audio dropout and jittering noise. The advent of OTT resolves most of these issues, as viewers automatically switch to a lower bandwidth in the case of a slow network.

Broadcasters should ensure that sports workflows are efficient to avoid the above kind of noises.

• During live broadcasting, some audio segments may contain strong language, which can offend viewers and is especially unsuitable for children. These audio portions should be bleeped out before broadcasting, depending on the regulations. Broadcasters are required to integrate automatic speech recognition-based solutions to handle this scenario in a real-time manner and keep broadcasting delay to minimum.
• As content goes global, overcoming the language barrier has become very important. To meet this requirement, OTT companies are now providing content in multiple languages. Different language variations of content are stored as a separate audio track. Broadcasters should ensure that the correct language order is maintained during encoding and transmission.
• The latest smart TVs and digital media players support next-gen audio tech, such as Dolby Atmos, and raise consumer expectations. Streaming platform companies are also beginning to appreciate the need to invest in resources to improve audio quality and provide near-real-word experiences to consumers by leveraging the latest technologies.

AUDIO/VIDEO SYNCHRONIZATION

Synchronization is one of the most important aspects of the viewer experience. Imagine watching a basketball game, and the sound of the ball hitting the court arrives before the ball actually makes contact. This would be extremely annoying for the viewer and would detract from the overall consumer entertainment experience. Synchronization errors can happen because of video as well as multilingual audio tracks. Sync loss could be caused by the mixing/editing process, mic position or even signal processing delays between the mic and camera. To provide a seamless viewing experience, broadcasters should prevent these types of synchronization issues.

AUDIO AND CAPTION SYNCHRONIZATION

Captions are required by all major broadcasters and are legally regulated around the world. Captions need to be in sync with audio on all fronts. To meet regulations and assure a good consumer experience there is a four-point regulation from the Federal Communications Commission:

• Captions should be in perfect sync with audio (i.e., they should be displayed when the corresponding audio event occurs). Certain lag is allowed in real-time broadcast but if captions arrive too late they lose their merit and often become confusing to viewers.
• Captions should be free of spelling mistakes and other inaccuracies such as grammatical and syntactical mistakes. This requires captioners to be well versed with sports jargon, player names and have exceptionally good language and keyboard skills.
• Captions should be complete (i.e., complete audio needs to be captioned). This is very difficult, as with fast-paced sports sometimes the events take place at a speed that cannot be matched by captioners.
• While deciding screen placement for captions, care should be taken so that important statistics displayed on screen are not hidden.

Further, profanity might require some censorship. Some checks are required during encoding as well checking the correct language against the correct audio track and so on.

In a real-time sports broadcast there is a very small window between the words being spoken and relayed as captions. Audio needs to be transcribed, time stamped and screen positioned within this small window. Doing it manually may not lead to high quality. It calls for using the latest technology in speech recognition and burnt-in text recognition to aid captioners.

CONCLUSION

With huge global sporting events taking place in Tokyo and across Europe in the shape of the soccer championships in 2020, the choice for how and where viewers watch sports is going to be greater than ever. Broadcast rights are soaring and there is extensive competition among OTT services, so the pressure to retain viewers is monumental.

Much like the competition on the football pitch, the stakes are high for content producers and broadcasters to deliver exceptional quality—both visually and in terms of audio. A quality control system designed to address the challenges of real-time sports broadcasts can be a game-changer. One that enables service providers to perform comprehensive video and audio checks, including loudness, closed caption and subtitle checks, as well as audio language detection and AV sync, and one that features a flexible and scalable architecture that improves efficiencies and provides exceptional audio-video quality on every device.

Manik Gupta is associate director of engineering at Interra Systems.

PARIS—Interra Systems’ Baton platform will be integrated into the Ooyala Flex Media Platform as part of an expanded technology partnership established by Interra and Dalet.

The Baton machine-learning and AI-enabled automated file-based quality control platform will provide comprehensive quality and compliance checks for VOD content for linear and streaming workflows both in the cloud and on premises. The technology will be specifically integrated into the Ooyala Flex platform as well as Dalet Galaxy five, which previously utilized Interra technology.

Working with the Ooyala platform, this integration is designed to address QC throughout the supply chain, automating quality checks at various stages. Baton’s QC reports can be populated automatically to metadata fields for each asset within the workflow for users to view the results.

“The integration of our platforms with the industry-leading BATON QC platform provides an automated solution for accelerated delivery of high-quality, tested content, opening the door for media companies to increase their operational efficiency and better monetize their catalogs, no matter their business model,” said Bea Alonso, director of product marketing at Dalet

Paris, France - October 23, 2019 –Dalet, a leading provider of solutions and services for broadcasters and content professionals, today announced it has expanded integration of the Interra Systems’ BATON platform to include the Ooyala Flex Media Platform.

Cupertino, California-based Interra Systems' BATON is the media industry’s leading machine learning- and AI-enabled automated file-based quality control (QC) platform. It provides comprehensive quality and compliance checks for VOD content, in the cloud and on-premises, for linear and streaming workflows.

The expanded technology partnership enables Dalet Galaxy five and Ooyala Flex Media Platform customers to deploy advanced automated quality assurance and compliance workflows.

"Dalet and Interra have had a long, successful partnership. In the past five years alone, we have done over 50 joint Interra Baton and Dalet Galaxy projects, worldwide,” said Kevin Savina, director of product strategy, Dalet. “This has been a very fruitful relationship and we expect this success to continue with the support of Interra Baton to the Ooyala Flex Media Platform, with the next major deployment being in India.”

Dalet Galaxy five and Ooyala Flex Media Platform customers leveraging BATON integration include VDM, Telefe, Mediacorp, Bundesliga, MBC Dubai, National Archives of Singapore, BBC Wales, Mediaset, ABS-CBN and NOS Portugal.

Acquired by Dalet in July 2019, the Ooyala Flex Media Platform is an open and extensible asset management solution that simplifies and streamlines the entire content supply chain, from production to profit, significantly reducing clients’ costs and complexity while increasing their revenue. The new API-based integration is designed to address QC seamlessly throughout the supply chain, automating quality checks at various stages and powering today’s media factories from ingest through production and distribution. BATON’s QC reports can be populated automatically to metadata fields for each asset within the workflow, enabling users to see the results of the QC analysis.

“Interra Systems’ BATON integrates tightly with Ooyala Flex Media Platform and ensures content readiness throughout the value chain,” said Anupama Anantharaman, VP of Product Management, Interra Systems. “This collaboration will benefit clients of both our companies, while enabling content creators and distributors to deliver high quality content.”

“Video quality is increasingly crucial in today’s competitive M&E landscape,” said Bea Alonso, director of product marketing, Dalet. “The integration of our platforms with the industry-leading BATON QC platform provides an automated solution for accelerated delivery of high-quality, tested content, opening the door for media companies to increase their operational efficiency and better monetize their catalogs, no matter their business model.”

For more information on Dalet Galaxy five and the Ooyala Flex Media Platform, please visit https://www.dalet.com/partner/interra-systems.

About Interra Systems

Interra Systems is a global provider of enterprise-class solutions that streamline the classification, quality control (QC) process, and monitoring of media content across the entire creation and distribution chain. Relying on Interra Systems' comprehensive video insights, media businesses can deliver video with high quality of experience, address new market trends, and improve monetization.

Widely adopted by broadcast, cable, telco, satellite, IPTV, OTT, and post-production markets around the world, Interra Systems’ products enable better quality video, reduced exposure to regulatory issues, and higher customer satisfaction. Featuring AI- and machine learning-enabled algorithms, along with a flexible, software-defined architecture, Interra Systems’ solutions support a variety of deployment scenarios, including the cloud, for higher performance, scalability, and efficiency.

The company’s industry-leading solutions include BATON, a next-generation hybrid QC solution that delivers comprehensive capabilities way beyond standard automated QC; ORION and ORION-OTT real-time content monitors assuring high QoE; and VEGA media analyzers for compliance and debug of encoded streams.

About Dalet Digital Media Systems

Dalet solutions and services enable media organisations to create, manage and distribute content faster and more efficiently, fully maximising the value of assets. Based on an agile foundation, Dalet offers rich collaborative tools empowering end-to-end workflows for news, sports, program preparation, post-production, archives and enterprise content management, radio, education, governments and institutions.

Dalet platforms are scalable and modular. They offer targeted applications with key capabilities to address critical functions of small to large media operations - such as planning, workflow orchestration, ingest, cataloguing, editing, chat & notifications, transcoding, play out automation, multi-platform distribution and analytics.

In July 2019, Dalet announced the acquisition of the Ooyala Flex Media Platform business. An acceleration of the company’s mission, the move brings tremendous value to existing Dalet and Ooyala customers, opening vast opportunities for OTT & digital distribution.

Dalet solutions and services are used around the world at hundreds of content producers and distributors, including public broadcasters (BBC, CBC, France TV, RAI, TV2 Denmark, RFI, Russia Today, RT Malaysia, SBS Australia, VOA), commercial networks and operators (Canal+, FOX, MBC Dubai, Mediacorp, Fox Sports Australia, Turner Asia, Mediaset, Orange, Charter Spectrum, Warner Bros, Sirius XM Radio), sporting organisations (National Rugby League, FIVB, Bundesliga) and government organisations (UK Parliament, NATO, United Nations, Veterans Affairs, NASA).

Dalet is traded on the NYSE-EURONEXT stock exchange (Eurolist C): ISIN: FR0011026749, Bloomberg DLT:FP, Reuters: DALE.PA.

Dalet® is a registered trademark of Dalet Digital Media Systems. All other products and trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

For more information on Dalet, visit www.dalet.com.

Press Contact

Alex Molina

Zazil Media Group

(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (617) 834-9600

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Government regulation isn’t going away. Neither are legal battles over everything from proof of advertising to equal treatment and FCC programming requirements.

Fortunately, one of the great benefits of the computer revolution of the past 25 years is the ability for broadcasters to more easily monitor, log and preserve information regarding their technical signals and programming content. And in the current repack environment where broadcasters are being crammed more tightly together, accurate real-time (or near real-time) data regarding transmission quality is a necessity.

“‘Compliance’ generally means conforming to standards set by governments or regulators to ensure the quality of broadcasts,” said Erik Otto, CEO of Mediaproxy, a provider of compliance and analysis technology. “This applies as much to the content of programs and editorial policy as it does technical standards for distribution and transmission. To ensure consistent technical quality for TV and streaming distribution, regulators and broadcasters work with recommendations and rules drawn up by national or international industry bodies, such as the EBU, ITU and SMPTE.”

Each country and regulator will set its own requirements for compliance based on these standards or guidelines, according to Otto.

“Broadcasters have to care about compliance because it not only ensures their viewers get the best possible audio and video quality on whatever device they are watching—TV, laptop, streaming service or mobile—but that they protect themselves from regulatory action or fines if their output were to drop below standard.”

NO CENTRAL LOCATION

In this new world of compliance requirements, there is no one central location where a broadcaster gets to decide if the signal meets the appropriate standards.

The master control room at a playout center is no longer the final point for quality control, Otto said.

“Video and audio need to be scrutinized as they pass along the delivery path, through content delivery network (CDN) edge points and numerous processes such as targeted ad insertion, multilanguage selection and event-based transmission,” he said. “This means compliance systems need to have the flexibility to be implemented at any point in the distribution chain.”

Depending on the nature of your broadcasting operation, some of what you need to measure, log and analyze may be in physical locations, and some may be in the cloud.

“Compliance logging and monitoring has been changing and evolving for several years,” Otto said. “This is primarily due to the widespread adoption of file-based operations, which has allowed for a more comprehensive use of IP-based software programs to log and analyze the content of TV material in data form. The main change brought about by broadcasters and facilities storing more program files in the cloud relates to where the logging, monitoring and analysis processes take place—because the cloud is usually the closest location to a CDN edge point, packet-level inspection of the streams is most effectively carried out at this stage.”

However, broadcasters are looking around and using the cloud only when it makes sense for their operations and budgets.

“From what we’ve see in the last few years, TV broadcasters are more and more checking the option of using the cloud,” said Sima Levy, CEO of Actus Digital. “However, the change is slow for compliance systems. This is because compliance is recording a TV channel 24/7, which means lots of storage. Also, more and more TV broadcasters would like to save the recorded video in high resolution format for other purposes, such as exporting clips to social media. Higher resolution means more processing power, and these both affect cloud costs. We do see partial cloud solutions only for storage.”

Still, even for a smaller broadcaster, cloud services have some merit.

“There is a huge advantage for station groups as they can deploy localized probes to collect data and media recordings from each market, and then aggregate them to the cloud for centralized monitoring, logging and analysis to improve consistency and efficiency,” said Ted Korte, chief technology officer for Qligent. “Even for a single call-letter station, the cloud provides the scalability to log and archive as long as they wish, and the flexibility to quickly accommodate the evolution of compliance logging.”

COVER A LOT OF GROUND

Depending on the country you’re in and the regulating agency, compliance can cover a lot of ground—some of it occasionally shifting beneath your feet. In the United States, it seems like there is something new every year that makes complying with the regulations a challenge.

“Regulators typically decide on compliance requirements based on the viewing experience of people at large, public safety, changes in technology [e.g., ATSC 3.0], cultural/ religious sensitivity [e.g., broadcasters in Arab countries might have some special compliance requirements] and many other considerations,” said Ashish Basu, vice president of global sales and business development at Interra Systems. “Most broadcasters are expected to know the compliance requirements that are mandated in their markets, and prepare the facility and configure the technology infrastructure accordingly.

“The regulators have a supervisory responsibility, so if a broadcaster is found to be non-compliant, a regulator could take punitive measures such as fines,” Basu added. “For example, the FCC fined some U.S. broadcasters for being noncompliant on supporting Emergency Access Tones.”

On the subject of ATSC 3.0, this is one of the shifting compliance requirements that U.S. broadcasters face.

Compared to ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0 provides a lot more flexibility in broadcast systems, including the opportunity for broadcasters to send content to fixed and mobile receivers in a seamless manner, combining OTT and broadband deliveries, according to Basu.

“Another difference is the option of choosing among SD, HD and UHD resolutions. ATSC 3.0 comprises around 20 standards covering different aspects of the system,” he added. “The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies like HEVC video encoding for video channels of up to 4K resolution at 120 fps, HDR, Dolby AC4 and more robust mobile TV support. All these new technologies embedded in ATSC 3.0 have their compliance requirements; many of those would not have been required for ATSC 1.0.”

MEETING REQUIREMENTS

Keeping track of all this, especially for stations in smaller markets, is difficult. Of course, what is required today may be different in a year, but what are we looking at when it comes to meeting compliance requirements in the U.S.?

“The FCC has requirements that vary from station to station based on their market size and audience,” said Ken Rubin, vice president of sales for Vela Research. “For example, PBS and religious broadcasters with lower-powered transmitters have different regulations they must adhere to versus big stations in larger markets. Most [broadcasters] choose to retain a copy of their content for a minimum of 90 days, but many are maintaining it for years or in perpetuity—to make use of it beyond regulatory compliance.”

The drive to improve compliance has at least as much to do with the internet as it does with traditional over-the-air broadcasting.

“Regulatory compliance has been evolving in OTA broadcast for many decades, but OTT is still in its infancy,” Qligent’s Korte said. “Most OTA broadcasters also support OTT streaming services and, as more services are being outsourced, we are seeing many more service-level agreements coming into play to keep a good audit trail end-to-end.

“Quality and reliability of OTT is improving but not quite there yet, and there are too many moving parts to replace the robustness of a traditional linear broadcast,” Korte added. “Broadcasters have proven to provide the most reliable services and, by the nature of ‘public safety’ alone, should continue to use this as a driving force for viewership.”

Compliance is a complex topic, made more complex by the interplay between broadcasters’ main over-the-air feed and the growing numbers of OTT viewers they get for their valuable news content. OTT is still something of the “Wild West,” where just about anything goes, but broadcasters want to be sure that the quality they’re paying for is delivered to the viewer. After all, if there is a failure in OTT playback, the viewer will most likely blame the broadcaster and not the CDN operator.

At the same time, broadcasters have myriad regulations to follow, and need to maintain logs and records to prove they delivered content in the proper manner. Failure to do so can lead to serious fines and license renewal problems.

NEW YORK—With the ability to deliver multiscreen experiences critical to the market, Interra Systems will put its focus at the 2019 NAB Show New York on how it delivers that experience with its range of quality control, monitoring, analysis and classification products.

A couple of the products on display will be the Baton ABR QC and Orion-OTT monitoring systems. Baton provides comprehensive QC checks, including ABR-specific checks for large volumes of VOD files encoded at different bit rates.

With Orion-OTT, content providers can proactively perform HTTP checks and monitor the quality of each stream. Specifically at NAB Show New York, Interra will demonstrate Orion-OTT for VOD and live event streaming, as well as Orion for real-time content monitoring and video analysis of linear channels. Features of the Orion-OTT system include ABR manifest file validation, audio-video checks and real-time alerts. There is also support for the latest standards in closed captions and ad insertion.

The Orion Central Manager platform set to be at the booth provides an aggregated view of linear and OTT services based on monitoring data collected by Orion and Orion-OTT. Alerts and QoE information for each video appears on one screen. New features include an updated architecture for near-real-time updates, real-time status of all channels across the network, channel performance trends and executive reports.

Interra has also made updates to its Baton platform, including a new Baton automated tool for lip sync detection and will show verification of audio with captions, photosensitive epilepsy testing and correction. Baton also supports the VAST format, HDR quality checks and setup in Amazon cloud and on-premises, as well as improved audio language and caption detection capabilities.

The Baton system can also be integrated with Winnow, Interra’s content classification and identification platform. Powered by AI/machine learning technologies, Winnow detects and tags content for violence, strong language, alcohol, guns and more based on user-defined rules.

Lastly, Interra will have its Vega media analyzer, a tool for standards compliance, debugging and in-depth analysis of encoded streams. New updates include support for the AV1 format with buffer analysis, JPEG format and OGG streams.

All of this will be available at Interra Systems’ booth, N839, during the 2019 NAB Show New York, which takes place from Oct. 16-17 at the Javits Convention Center.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems is furthering its partnership with Dolby, announcing that it has integrated its Baton file-based quality control platform with Dolby Vision. Baton, which performs video, audio and closed caption checks, already support the Dolby Atmos audio format.

Dolby Vision is a next-generation standard designed to deliver high dynamic range and wide color gamut viewing experiences. By supporting Dolby Vision, Baton can decode and apply the metadata contained in Dolby Vision streams. With this, OTT video service providers have access to new functionalities like checking conformance against Dolby Vision, decoding Dolby Vision content and checking for the presence of Dolby Vision metadata.

“This latest expansion of our partnership will enable customers to perform QC and analyze Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos streams in production and delivery workflows, expediting the time to market oh high-quality HDR content,” said Vijeta Kashyap, vice president of operations at Interra Systems.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has debuted and is now shipping its new feature-rich media player, the BMP, which is designed with support for a range of formats and can be integrated with broadcast workflows at various stages. With BMP, media professionals can play, inspect and verify audio/video from various content locations.

The BMP supports SDI playout and a range of audio, video, elementary and container formats, as well as support for closed caption and subtitle formats. The media player features frame-accurate playback of high-quality video, playlist capabilities, mark-in mark-out specific sections, audio waveform, loudness and audio-level meters. There are also advanced tools to monitor the color intensity and range during playback.

Interra Systems offers BMP as a standalone media player and as an integrated part of it BATON system. For QC, BMP can be set up to play the detected errors in an automated manner. Other applications include fast navigation to different error locations, manual validation of error severity, error region marking, slow playback of the error and more.

Interra will features the BMP as part of its booth at the 2019 NAB Show.

LAS VEGAS—Looking to provide assistance for the needs of video streamers, Interra System’s 2019 NAB Show presentations will include its BATON ABR QC and ORION-OTT platforms that help deliver high-quality streamed video, provide quality control and monitor VOD and live content from ingest to distribution.

Interra’s newest version of BATON supports WINNOW, the company’s system for content compliance, classification and identification. Among BATON’s new features are REST API support for test plans, tasks and reports, video compression scores, HDR quality checks, auto-scaling of BATON setup in Amazon cloud/on-premises, support for DRM techniques and enhanced audio language detection capabilities. There is also new format support for VAST, P2 package, encrypted DCP content, AVC-Intra, WebM and Vorbis.

The ORION-OTT platform, meanwhile, is designed to monitor multiple streams for ABR compliance as well as audio-video quality checks in real time. The system also supports closed captions, ad verification/compliance and DRMs on Windows and Linux operating systems.

In relation to ORION-OTT and the ORION, ORION Central Manager is also expected to be part of Interra’s booth and provides a real-time view of linear and OTT services, alerts and QoE information for each video.

New updates to Interra’s VEGA Media Analyzer will also be featured during the show. These updates include support for Windows 10, the latest HEVC HM reference code, HEVC-interlaced streams, VP9 streams (4:2:2, 4:4:4), PCAP streams, WebM, ALS Audio, Dolby AC-4 audio and AVS Plus video.

Interra will be located in the South Upper hall during the NAB Show at booth SU7605.

To register for the NAB Show, visit www.nabshow.com.

Machine learning and deep learning-based solutions are making a significant impact on media QC thanks to the availability of large GPU computing power and datasets. Using these technologies, media companies can automatically verify if audiovisual content meets compliance requirements. In regions of the world where nudity, adult content, violence, prohibited objects, substance abuse, and strong language are outlawed, media companies can leverage these technologies to increase compliance reliability and streamline their QC workflows, saving both time and money.

This article will explain why the success of a learning-based system depends heavily on the quality and quantity of datasets used. While publicly available datasets are good for general development of learning-based systems, they are not adequate for the specific requirements of content compliance in the media industry. Significant efforts are needed to build well-annotated quality datasets for the specific requirements of content compliance. If the training dataset is not well designed, then it is easy for an object detector to confuse guns with cell phones, for example.

ADVANCEMENTS IN ML/DL TECHNOLOGY

Content compliance can be a rather intricate process that involves analyzing metadata gathered from a variety of fundamental tasks, such as detecting objects inside frames, recognizing actions over several frames, classifying scenery, detecting specific events in audio or video tracks, classifying videos into specific activities or themes, converting speech to text, and detecting and recognizing faces.

In a traditional machine learning system, the features extracted from images for content compliance purposes were made by humans. Recent advancements in ML and DL have automated this process. A huge breakthrough in deep learning occurred in 2012 when AlexNet was designed. AlexNet is a convolutional neural network trained on 1.2 million real world images from a dataset called ImageNet for classification purposes. Images are classified into 1000 different categories, five layers and 60 million parameters, making AlexNet one of the most intricate and low-error-rate networks.

After AlexNet there were several additional developments in between the years of 2012 and 2015. Faster R-CNN, a deep neural network for object detection tasks, is one network that was proposed. While AlexNet addresses image classification, Faster R-CNN is designed to resolve object detection problems; therefore, it is more complex since it involves locating the object inside an image. Faster R-CNN recommends possible regions in an image that might contain an object and checks whether the proposed regions contain an object among the list of supported categories or not. If they do, the network returns the bounding box of the region containing the object and the name of object.

There are two key parts involved with constructing an ML network for QC. First, a QC solutions provider has to train the network on datasets so that the network can start recognizing objects of interest (e.g., guns, alcohol, cigarettes, belly buttons, etc.). Transfer learning is a technique that can be useful when training a network. Transfer learning reuses a trained model as a starting point for training on another dataset. This aids in training a network quickly for new types of objects and with less number of examples. Second, the trained network is applied in the media QC environment to make predictions about the presence of these objects in media files.

A critical factor of success for deep learning has been the availability of huge well labeled datasets. If datasets are well labeled, they can outperform the accuracy of human visual recognition. In fact, the top-performing dataset model achieved in accuracy of 96 percent in 2017.

THREE WAYS TO APPLY ML/DL TO MEDIA QC

ML/DL can be used for a range of different quality and compliance purposes in media workflows. Aside from detecting objects, the technology is useful for recognizing activity in a video frame, onscreen visual text, audio events, and whether captions are aligned correctly. Let’s look at three key ways that operators can use these techniques to their advantage.

Identifying explicit content is one area where ML/DL technology can be useful in the media environment. Object detection, activity recognition, audio and visual cues can be utilized to determine if there is nudity or minimal covering, mild sexual situations, or explicit sexual situations. Additionally, activity recognition and object detection can be used to identify violence, including the presence of guns, killing, and car crashes. In some regions of the world, the presence of alcohol and smoking in video content is prohibited. Operators can use object detection ML technology to identify alcohol as well as cigarettes, cigars and other vaping devices. Activity recognition plays a role in detecting the actual physical act of smoking.

CONCLUSION

Accuracy is crucial when it comes to quality control for media operations. If an operator misses a video scene with violence or alcohol, they run the risk of not adhering to content compliance requirements. Over the years, learning-based systems have evolved to where datasets are richer and higher in quality, improving the automatic identification of content for compliance purposes. With the latest innovations in ML/DL technology, operators can significantly increase the efficiency and accuracy of their media workflows. 

Interra Systems’ software-based QC solution has been integrated with the latest advancements in ML and AI technology, allowing operators to deliver exceptional audio-video quality on every device and comply with all regional content guidelines.

Shailesh Kumar is Associate Director of Engineering at Interra Systems.

At IBC2018, Interra Systems will spotlight its Baton ABR and Orion-OTT solutions for delivering high-quality streamed video. Baton ABR and Orion-OTT perform quality control and monitoring for VOD content from ingest to NOC and other distribution points. The company says visitors will be able to see how Baton ABR’s checks at pre- and post-transcode stages, along with Orion-OTT's delivery-specific checks and features, assure QoE for every stream on every device. For live-event streaming, Orion-OTT offers a platform that can monitor a large number of streams for adaptive bitrate compliance along with audio-video quality checks in real time. The solution suite also supports closed captions, ad verification/compliance and DRMs.

Interra Systems’ OTT solutions can be deployed in the cloud or on premises, providing enhanced efficiency and flexibility for any workflow. When complemented by the company’s Orion system for real-time monitoring of IP-based infrastructures, Baton ABR and Orion-OTT provide broadcasters with a total solution for streaming superior-quality services. Orion looks at all aspects of video streams, such as QoS, QoE, closed captions, ad-insertion verification, reporting, and troubleshooting.

Interra Systems also will introduce Winnow, a machine-learning-driven add-on for its Baton QC solution. Enabled by artificial intelligence, Winnow offers broadcasters a compliance solution powered by machine-learning and computer vision technologies. The company says that integrated with Baton, this enhancement can be deployed in both cloud and on-premises environments. Relying on user-defined rule sets, Winnow checks compliance and identification of content against regulations in different countries, regions and organizations.

Baton also includes support for the VAST protocol, hybrid QC workflows, as well as enhanced support for HDR content and audio language-detection capabilities.

Demonstrations will be held in the Interra Systems’ Stand 7.C09. The IBC2018 show is Sept. 13–18, in Amsterdam. For more information or to register, visit www.ibc.org.

[Want more information like this? Subscribe to our newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox.]

LAS VEGAS—Interra Systems will use the 2018 NAB Show to display new auto-scaling features of BATON QC, which leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning-based advanced algorithms along with support for the VAST protocol, hybrid QC workflows, enhanced support for HDR content, audio language detection capabilities, among other capabilities.

With BATON's new auto-scaling feature, service providers can adjust their system to handle peaks in QC content. The system also supports a wide range of new codecs and formats, as well as multiple DRM systems. Also, BATON+ QC and the new data analysis features for BATON+ allow users to effectively track trends and anomalies in media content, optimizing decision-making and QC operations.

The company will also show the ORION-OTT Content Monitor for VOD and live delivery, the ORION Real-Time Content Monitoring and Video Analysis System and VEGA Media Analyzers.

As the first software-based OTT solution for real-time monitoring of adaptive bit rate (ABR) content, ORION-OTT is a monitoring platform that looks at all aspects of the video stream, such as QoS, QoE, closed captions and ad-insertion verification. New features include: extended checks for live monitoring, support for VANC closed captions (SMPTE-2038), as well as the capability to view and monitor VANC EIA-608 and VANC EIA-708 CC data.

VEGA Media Analyzers provide in-depth analysis of ABR formats, support for Windows 10, the latest HEVC HM reference code, HEVC-interlaced streams, VP9 streams (4:2:2, 4:4:4), PCAP streams, Dolby AC-4 audio and AVS Plus video.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. Interra Systems will be in booth SU7605. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.