Video Clarity ClearView plays key role in EBU 4K research

The European Broadcasting Union has adopted Video Clarity’s ClearView Extreme 4K video quality analyser. The EBU is using the analyser in interactive research forums, standards projects, seminars, and working meetings to advance the use of 4K video format processing in next-generation television formats.

ClearView Extreme 4K is claimed to be the only system that provides native, interactive visual comparison playback of two independent sequences that can be compared in multiple viewing modes such as side by side, A minus B, or split mirror on a single monitor.

“As broadcasters and service providers investigate next-generation services such as UHDTV, a critical success factor will be testing and analysis tools that can support emerging formats such as 4K. Therefore, much of our research efforts are focused on the quality testing required for 4K broadcasting, especially as it relates to new encoding technologies such as HEVC,” said Adi Kouadio, senior project manager, EBU.

“ClearView 4K’s ability to make visual comparisons and measure the quality of a source versus a processed version of any video type is essential to our research efforts and was of great use establishing the right contribution profiles for the FIFA World Cup 4K transmissions.”

The ClearView Extreme 4K analysers enable the EBU to perform visual and measured quality testing on new processing technologies and new IP infrastructure deployments for 4K resolution. The ClearView 4K logs and saves every test, enabling EBU engineers to recall every finding instantly for additional visual confirmation. The data also provides a historical record of the work that can be used in presentations at developer seminars and as background for study papers written by the EBU as it formulates technical standards.

One study paper example is titled ‘Ultra-High Definition (UHD) TV Over IP Networks’ and authored by Kouadio along with Felix Poulin of the EBU and Thomas Kernen of Cisco. The paper shares facts and learnings from a UHDTV-over-IP demonstration developed for an EBU workshop that proved the feasibility of using existing IP network infrastructures to carry UHDTV video streams. The ClearView 4K analyser provided side-by-side sequence playback of the video stream recordings to enable quality comparisons.

In addition, the ClearView 4K analyzer provided the basis for the EBU’s demonstration of UHD HEVC software encodings at different bit rates at IBC2013, and it will also play a role in a 4K playback system at IBC2014.