Engine with Telestream 

 

 

Telestream (www.telestream.net) have published a Connector to permit the usage of Engine from Emotion Systems within a Vantage workflow.

The Connector is available from normal Telestream suppliers. Engine is available directly from Emotion Systems, or from our Dealer network.

The functions available with Engine are determined by the options ordered as part of the Engine purchase. The following functions are available.

• Loudness Compliance to a range of standards included EBU R128, and ATSC A/85 (Calm). 
• Channel mapping and muting
• Channel replacement and extraction
• Channel growing and shrinking (altering the number of audio channels within media files
• Dolby E Encoding
• Dolby E Decoding
• Dolby E Guardband correction
• Insertion of language and channel position metadata tags
• Stereo to 5.1 upmix, and 5.1 to stereo downmix
• Audio Description (commentary) insertion

Engine contains scalable processing capabilities with between 1 and 8 independent parallel processors available, depending on what has been purchased.

Engine is compatible normal Professional media files in the following formats

• MXF
• Quicktime/MOV
• LXF
• GXF
• WAV
• AIFF

 

Reduced functionality is available for MPEG Program Stream files. Support for certain AVI types, and MPEG Transport Stream files will be added during 2017.

Engine can work with media files containing up to 64 channels of audio.

Engine for Vantage runs only on Windows 8, 8.1 and 10, and on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Server 2012.

Engine requires host computers containing Intel processors. A minimum hardware configuration containing a Quad core processor, 16 GB RAM, and two hard disks is required. Depending on Engine configuration increased hardware resources may be required.

Software supplied with Engine is used to create any number of named workflows. These workflow names are listed within the Vantage Workflow Designer. Engine workflows can have a single media file for source and destination, or can be configured to accept addition WAV files that are merged into the main media file, or alternatively to extract audio in WAV format from the processed media file.

Engine software can be configured to create a range of reports, including in XML and PDF format. Engine workflows typically run around 20% faster than real time for very complex workflows, up to many times faster than real time for more straight-forwards examples.

 

Installation

Vantage is installed following Telestream’s instructions. The Vantage Connector and the Engine software must be installed on to the same hardware. Engine software is available in evaluation form, and is installed in its entirety from a single installation package. Engine evaluation software uses a time limited licence, and activation details are only available from Emotion Systems. Full installations of Engine use a similar licence.

 

Usage

Using Engine within a Vantage system always starts by creating workflows using the Engine-Configurator. This provides extreme ease of configuration, with even complex workflows able to be created in a few minutes. Workflows are created using the following strategy.

• Define number of audio channels for input
• Specify if the main media file needs more or less channels on the output
• Configure the first stage of processing
• If required, configure a second stage of processing
• Continue adding processing steps until completed.

 

The example shown here contains four separate processing steps. Any file passed to Engine via the Vantage Connector will automatically have all four stages applied in turn, with the resultant file being handed back to Vantage for any additional work.

Once the Engine workflows are defined, use Vantage Workflow Designer to incorporate into a Vantage workflow. The following image shows a Vantage workflow being created that incorporates Engine processing.

 

 

Clicking the ‘I’ icon on the top left of the Emotion block opens the normal Vantage style configuration dialog.

 

 

The ‘Select plug-in’ drop-down is open in this screenshot, and shows the list of available workflows that have been created in Engine.

Once the Vantage workflow is saved and activated, files can be run in the normal way, with the configured actions being handled by Engine, and processing status included in the normal Vantage job management displays.