Nexidia QC v2.3 features caption retiming, expanded support for international formats
The latest release of Nexidia’s software tool for automating quality control of closed captions, video description and languages for broadcast and IP workflows – Nexidia QC v2.3 – adds caption retiming, additional caption formats, and more languages to meet the needs of international broadcasters and media outlets that are facing increased caption regulations.
“Closed captions and subtitles have long been a challenge for broadcasters, but recent and pending legislation in the US and throughout the world has created renewed motivation to tackle the complexities once and for all,” said Drew Lanham, senior vice president and general manager of Nexidia’s Media and Entertainment division. “We have added automated caption retiming for live captioned content to Nexidia QC, making it the first caption tool to automatically correct live caption-timing issues, ensuring that captions are synchronized with the speech in repurposed content. Also, we are implementing improvements to address the specific needs of international broadcasters with broader support for languages and caption file formats.”
Nexidia QC v2.3 can now test for and repair out-of-sync captions due to drift. Drift occurs when time codes are misinterpreted or changed as a result of a frame rate conversion to meet a delivery specification. For example, a frame rate mismatch of 29.97 DF (drop frame) versus 29.97 NDF (non-drop frame) will produce a caption drift of 3.6 seconds per program hour. This presents a problem for many organisations as the captions at the beginning of the video appear to be correctly timed, when in fact they are not. Nexidia QC compares the captions with speech throughout the entire audio file to detect and report these kinds of timing issues. Nexidia QC can now automatically correct the caption file timing preventing costly re-captioning.
As part of Nexidia QC’s language identification function, Nexidia QC v2.3 has an expanded library of languages and can now distinguish between dialects, such as Latin American Spanish versus Castilian Spanish.
Nexidia QC v2.3 has added support for STL and EBU-TT, the most widely used caption formats in Europe. It also fully supports the iTunes Timed Text (ITT) format used for distribution to iTunes, enabling it to accommodate all types of media organisations around the globe.
Nexidia QC v2.3 can also identify the language of the captions displayed on screen regardless of the audio track or any language metadata included in the caption file. At the same time, a spell-check function has been incorporated to test for the proper spelling of captions.
These enhancements serve to provide the most thorough automated caption QC tool available today, whether used as a stand-alone application or as part of a unified QC system such as Amberfin’s UQC platform and workflow automation tools such as Telestream Vantage.