M+E Daily

Testronic Incorporates Tool from Deluxe Digital Studios into File-Based QC Lab

by Terence Keegan

Quality assurance services provider Testronic Labs is integrating a new testing tool designed by Deluxe Digital Studios into the workflow of its File-Based QC Lab, in efforts to improve production efficiencies for movie studios and other clients.

The addition of the Veristream automation software from Deluxe — a leading provider of creative, subtitling, compression, and authoring services for the home entertainment industry — follows beta trials of the tool at Testronic’s File-Based QC Lab.

The Veristream tool, Deluxe Digital executive vice president Rob Seidel explains in a statement, “analyzes source video masters and encoded streams, identifying potential corruption or processing issues that could have been introduced throughout the video production process.”

Most other quality assurance automation tools, Testronic chief executive Seth Hallen tells M&E Daily, provide “more of a spec check,” centering on aspects such as bit rate or the number of frames in the video. In contrast, Veristream looks for anomalies in the video “that the human eye would detect,” such as macroblocking and other compression/encoding errors.

That’s especially helpful, Testronic says, for flagging potential issues with projects that involve as many as 26 versions and numerous encodes — literally thousands of files to test.

While Veristream helps make the labor-intensive QC process more efficient and accurate, Hallen notes that “a human technician will still be involved to operate the tool and provide feedback for calibration and ongoing development of the tool.” As such, Hallen says, Testronic’s File-Based QC Lab staff serves as the “expert users” of Veristream for clients.