Modification
Automated audio processing for international content delivery at scale
Premiere Digital™
Media services & software solutions
Premiere Digital™ is a media services and software solutions partner for content owners, video distributors, digital retailers, broadcasters, subscription video and ad supported platforms. The distribution arm of the business partners with major digital, cable, satellite and broadcast platforms, reaching a global audience in more than 100 countries. The company claims to be the #1 distributor of independent content in the world.
Requirements
Premiere Digital™ approached Emotion Systems with a simple problem. They had a number of QuickTime files in their archive with stereo audio laid down on a single track and 5.1 surround sound across six mono streams.
They needed the stereo track on these files to be split into a left and right stream so that all their archive content had eight consistent tracks. The problem was that, of the 1,000,000 assets in their archive at the time, approximately 30% of these needed this fix to be applied. Premiere Digital™ needed an automated solution to manipulate the audio tracks of 300,000 assets to bring them in line with the rest of their archive library.
Challenges & Customisations
The challenge that this simple requirement presented was that, in order to split the stereo stream into two mono tracks, you have to reauthor the file. Doing so runs the risk of affecting the video tracks and compromising vital file metadata. While relabelling the stereo stream as a left and right track required some metadata editing, the other data needed to be protected from any changes.
To solve this, the Emotion Systems team worked closely with Premiere Digital™ to develop two new Engine modules. The File Manipulation Module enables the reauthoring of the audio content and the File Metadata Module allows users to relabel the tracks. These modules work together so that, no matter what the content’s incoming streams are, the outgoing streams can follow almost any predefined pattern.
Implementation
The new modules were developed based on Premiere Digital’s requirements and were tested extensively with their content before being formally released and rolled out. Premiere Digital™ is also using Engine’s loudness, downmix and a number of other modules to create different versions of content to meet international deliverable requirements.
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Comment from Emotion Systems
...meet the changing needs of the industry as a whole.
While we worked closely with the Premiere Digital™ team to develop and tested this solution, rather than building unique tools for this client only, we developed modules which can easily be reused by other clients and for other applications. This reflects our ethos of constant development to meet the changing needs of the industry as a whole.”