With the emergence of new compression standards such as High-Efficiency Video Compression (HEVC), offering a potential bit-rate reduction of up to 50 percent over H.264, 4K services and UHD TV are looming on the horizon. Broadcasters and service providers are now researching the technology requirements of delivering 4K content to a wide range of IP-based multi-platform services. To maintain quality as compression standards change, everyone along the broadcast chain needs to constantly measure the performance of the compression engines on which day-to-day operations depend. Any operation, large or small, from hardware/software designers to end user-producers who work with any kind of compression in SD, HD, and now UHD, should subjectively and objectively analyze compression performance to gauge how their technical and aesthetic choices will look and sound to both a professional end-user or a home audience.
Since its founding in 2003, Video Clarity has proactively delivered video quality testing and analysis tools to support the current and emerging formats customers require, and 4K is no exception. The company’s core capabilities are based on the notion that testing and QC must take place not only after the content goes live, but before, with testing tools that can ingest video from any source and then play it back in every resolution for delivery to every screen. Video Clarity’s products form a testing and monitoring foundation that can handle a large array of original file formats, with the ability to record and play back content and provide a split-screen comparison of two video sequences up to 4K resolution at 60Hz.
The RTM series of real-time monitors and recorders for checking video and audio quality, A/V offset, loudness, and VANC data integrity. When quality drops, the system generates an alarm and saves both the source and comparison feed around the error.
The ClearView family of video analyzers for determining video and audio quality using either quantitative, repeatable measurements or the operator’s eyes and ears.
The ClearView Player, a video recorder/player that gives R&D and quality assurance labs a reliable solution with programmable playback operations for all formats of uncompressed video.