Snell & Wilcox came away from IBC2008 with two Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit Awards, one honoring the company's QC Station automated quality assurance system and the other recognizing the new Mach HD HD/SD motion-compensated standards converter.
QC Station is an automated quality assurance system that leverages the intuitive algorithms of the company's advanced Hyperion content monitoring technology to provide alarms and on-screen display of faults or anomalies in audio, video and metadata. A stand-alone system that can be incorporated easily into any type of system infrastructure, QC Station reduces the burden of quality assurance in ingest and playout applications and streamlines distributed operations by enabling remote monitoring from a centralized location.
By monitoring content quality and makeup according to specific content and branding profiles, QC Station allows quality assurance staff to do more with less. Operators can handle additional video screens, oversee reliable ingest of more content or manage monitoring of remote playout. In addition to providing audio and video monitoring, the system features built-in metadata analysis that is valuable in ensuring compliance with the program schedule and with advertiser requirements.
Mach HD is a compact, low-cost motion-compensated HD and SD standards converter and format converter with synchronization capability. It offers multirate HD/SD inputs and outputs and is capable of providing up/down/crossconversion both within and between frame rates. In addition to motion-compensated conversion capabilities, the Mach HD handles embedded AES (balanced and unbalanced) and analog audio and offers a range of additional features such as aspect ratio conversion and color space conversion. The Mach HD has dual redundant PSU capability and is provided in 1RU housing with remote control capability via Ethernet.
For more information, visit www.snellwilcox.com.
