Automating complex post-production audio workflows

All-Asian Satellite Television and Radio Operator, doing business as Astro, is a Malaysian satellite television and IPTV provider. It operates in Malaysia and Brunei from the All Asia Broadcast Centre in Kuala Lumpur and MEASAT in Cyberjaya.

Technology Involved:

Project

Contributing producers generally provide Astro with transmission-ready material, but most of this content is subject to editing by the broadcaster to remove offensive language and images. Astro has approximately twenty edit suites dedicated to editing content to comply with the cultural standards of their target audience. Given that most of this content is Dolby encoded, it needs to be normalized to 16 channels for editing.

Once the editing is complete, the content has to be prepared for transmission, which involves accommodating two sets of stereo 5.1 in an 8-channel package, necessitating Dolby E encoding. This adds another layer of complexity to the post-editing process, ensuring the content meets technical and cultural standards for broadcasting.

Astro faced a choice: either provide each edit suite with the necessary loudness and Dolby E encoding tools and plugins to handle these processes internally or source an external solution that could streamline and centralise these functions.

Introducing Engine

Emotion Systems provided Astro with two Engine systems, each running three Emotion Signal Processors. These systems are initially used to normalize contributed content, making it accessible to the post-production team. After editing, the content is passed back to the Engines for preparation for playout according to Astro's standard output configuration. The Engines are equipped with watch folders to automate the 60+ workflows implemented at Astro, and the Engine Eclient allows the audio tools to be shared across Astro’s twenty edit suites.

Each Engine system at Astro includes the following modules:

Loudness
Channel Mapping & Mute
Upmix
Downmix
Conditional Workflows
File manipulation
Dolby E Encode
Dolby E Decode

This complex setup includes watch folders, our Eclient and integrations running at the same time to process over 60 workflows across 20 edit suites a great example of Engine’s flexibility and how easy it is to integrate our software into other workflows and systems to deliver efficiencies.”

MC Patel
CEO

Summary

With twenty edit suites dedicated to removing offensive language and images from contributed material, Astro needed an efficient solution for normalizing content to 16 channels for editing and preparing it for transmission with Dolby E encoding. This necessitated either equipping each edit suite with the necessary tools or finding an external solution to streamline these processes.

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Emotion Systems addressed Astro's needs by providing two Engine systems, each running three Emotion Signal Processors. These systems were used to normalise contributed content, making it accessible for post-production, and then prepare it for playout according to Astro's standard output configuration. The integration of watch folders and the Engine Eclient allowed for the automation of over 60 workflows across 20 edit suites, ensuring efficient processing. The Engine systems included modules for loudness correction, channel mapping, conditional workflow, file manipulation, upmix and downmix, and Dolby E encoding and decoding, demonstrating the flexibility and efficiency of Emotion Systems' software in complex post-production audio workflows.