Tag Archive for: OASYS

New OASYS Release version 6.13.13

OASYS 6.13.13 Release

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A new version of OASYS, 6.13.13 has been released. It includes improvements in the following areas:

  • Media Manager
    • Added destination timestamp check for MXF files.
  • Multi-Channel Web Client
    • Playout shortcuts were added to match similar ones in Player.
    • Added a feature for custom played event status. The default is Done, Skipped and Missed.
    • Commercial Counter window now includes both primary and secondary (graphics, etc.) commercial and promo events calculation in Time Used Column.
    • An in-playlist note option has been added to the Event Editor. Color can be changed by editing the inner template properties of the playlist component.
    • Add column for Played Duration which shows the actual event played duration after it is played.
  • Player
    • Added a feature for custom played event status. The default is Done, Skipped and Missed.
    • Added an option to show substream commercial/promo time separately in commercial counter preferences
    • Commercial Counter window now includes both primary and secondary (graphics, etc.) commercial and promo events calculation in Time Used
    • In-playlist note option added to Event Editor -> Notes. It can be used to add one row comments on video events or groups and will be displayed in the playlist. Color of the text and background for these notes can be customized in Preferences -> Customize.
    • Hotkey buttons are now highlighted with yellow color when pressed. Button will stay highlighted for the whole scheduled duration of a hotkey event or until it is removed with other hotkey event.
    • An option to Color the currently playing event row was added to Preferences -> Options -> List.
    • Added option to Show selection duration in footer in Preferences -> Options -> General. It can be used in the same way as Tools -> Calculate Selection Duration, but the calculation will be displayed in the window footer immediately.
    • Added column for Played Duration, which shows actual played duration of the event after it’s played.
    • Active hour in Commercial Counter is now highlighted with the darker shade of originally present color, depending on the unused time status (green, orange, red).
    • MXF files with 9 audio streams can be played (files with 9 audio streams can be processed in LML, but Player has limitation of 8 audio streams and will play 8).
    • Added option to show a certain number of played events above the currently playing one when Current event on top option is enabled. The number of events can be set in Preferences -> Options -> List. Upper limit is 10 events.
    • Output streaming VBV buffer option was added in Configure and is now configurable. Default value is 0.5, but it can be set up to 10. Values over 4 are not recommended, as 4 is already considered a very large buffer by Nvidia.
    • Option for configurable timing calculation pause (in seconds) before switch was added to oachannel file. Tag is <PauseTimingCalculationBeforeSwitchS> and can be set to a value between 3 and 12 seconds. This feature briefly pauses timing calculations when switching between two events to avoid issued with lengthy playlists.
    • Added option to Allow pasting only once after Cut in playlist. It can be found in Preferences -> Options -> List. It is used to limit the Paste operation only once when cutting an event in the playlist, but for Copy it will continue to work normally (unlimited number of Paste available).
    • Added logging for automatically merging playlists.
    • Improved audio processing with Medialooks.
  • Redundancy Manager
    • Added option to Disable maintenance input in manual mode in standalone RM. If this option is enabled and RM is in manual mode, when connection to Players is lost, Player which is on-air will stay on-air and will not switch to maintenance input.
  • Schedule Importer
    • Improved handling of multiple notifications in automation mode.
    • Automatic audio shuffling rules were added. This option can be found in Edit -> Options -> Custom channel rules.

Defects were fixed in:

  • BXF Gateway
    • Fixed issue with handling xml lists which contain non-dropframe timecode.
  • Multi-Channel Web Client
    • Fixed issue with peak times being displayed incorrectly when daylight savings option is on in Windows settings.
  • Player
    • Fixed issue with scheduled empty audio tracks being filled with audio from video file when video instance is changed.
    • Fixed issue with animation in OASEQ blinking on Resubmit action when it’s scheduled on event level.
    • Fixed issue with updating Commercial Counter window on the fly when editing peak times.
    • Fixed issue with IP stream interruption which was happening in rare cases.
    • Fixed issue with events scheduled to Start at specific time not being ignored when found in the playlist above the currently playing event, therefore being considered “in the past”.
    • Fixed issue with past events in Clubland plugin not being deleted.
    • Fixed issue with events scheduled in Clubland plugin not being added one by one to the playlist.
    • Fixed issue where in some rare cases graphics would disappear from the screen before it was supposed to.
    • Fixed issue with every 256th outbound SCTE trigger failing.
    • Fixed issue with static graphics sometimes switching to crawl or roll up upon Resubmit
    • Fixed issue with Automatically resubmit current event after editing Now it works correctly and the event is automatically resubmitted only when this option is enabled.
    • Fixed issue with IP input stream sometimes getting stuck or not recovering correctly.
    • Fixed issue with promo events incorrectly being added to the commercial time, instead of just promo time when Split to Promo and Commercial Time option is enabled.
    • Fixed issue with Expand playlist on load and sync not working correctly when enabled.
    • Fixed issue with objects not being cleared correctly or not being displayed after Resubmit
  • Known Issues-Player
    • When using MXF files with 9 audio pairs in them with Matrox readers, files can be played, but not edited if Edit and preview output is used. They can still be edited without the preview output. This works correctly in Player with ML readers option on.

Should you have any questions or requests, please contact us at BroadStream Support.  To receive email notifications on releases please subscribe to our news updates.

KLRU Control Room

What’s the Impact of AI on Subtitling?

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Captioning and Subtitling are similar but different and rather than dive into the differences we’ll use the word subtitling generically for this article to reference both subtitles and captions.

The beginnings of a wave of change with subtitling are happening in television. You may not have felt the tremors yet, but you will.

Subtitles on television began in the early 1970’s. Live subtitling, however, did not begin until 1982 when it was developed by the National Captioning Institute using court reporters trained to write 225 words per minute using a Stenograph machine. This provided viewers with on-screen subtitles within two to three seconds of the word being spoken and it’s been that way ever since. But…

Stenography, as a profession, has been in decline since 2013. As senior professionals retire they are not being replaced by younger candidates who are passing on this field as a career in favor of other professions. One reason for this is the demanding requirements of the job. Candidates must be able to type at lease 225 – 250 words per minute with limited mistakes. This requires discipline and focus for many hours at a time. Schools that taught stenography typically had a graduation rate around 4% due to the high standards and have seen a gradual decline in enrollment that ultimately forced many schools to close. In the US alone, there are over 5,000 open stenography positions with limited candidates to fill those positions.

At the same time the Stenography profession began trending downward, the demands for live subtitling were rising. This increase was driven by new government mandates in multiple countries, the exponential growth of live and breaking news, 24-hour cable news cycles, and more live sports broadcasts. Additional competition for live captioners is also coming from corporate events, government briefings, meetings and increased usage from the legal system for depositions and trials that are creating resource issues and rising prices for human captioning.

So how do we fill the gap between a decline in human subtitling also facing an increase in market demand? Technology. Specifically, Artificial Intelligence (AI). The technology has been around for many years. In fact, voice recognition dates back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The technology began to show significant improvement beginning in 1971 and continued to evolve into 2014 when it became commercially available. Early efforts suffered from accuracy problems and limitations.

With the acquisition of Screen Subtitling Systems, BroadStream began working to incorporate AI speech engines to create an automated solution we call VoCaption. VoCaption delivers live subtitling for your live broadcast that is more accurate than previous AI implementations and in many cases equal to or better than humans.

VoCaption can be used in multiple applications including:

  1. Emergency Subtitling – for those occasions when subtitles are expected to be in a program but for some technical reason they are not. VoCaption can help reduce those angry viewer calls because it can be activated in just a matter of seconds.
  2. Supplemental Subtitling – your news may provide subtitles using a script and teleprompter but for weather, sports, traffic and un-scripted field reports, rather than use a human who must be available and “on the clock” for the entire time, VoCaption can be turned on and off as needed.

The two biggest benefits you can expect are:

  1. Improvements in accuracy – A frequent comment we hear is “we tried AI several years ago and it wasn’t very accurate.” That was true then, but the technology has made excellent progress and accuracy is up significantly depending on the program genre and the audio quality. In addition, it’s easy to regionalize or localize the technology by using custom dictionaries to import regional or local names, geography, schools, sports teams and more. Utilization of these dictionaries will substantially increase accuracy and improve pronunciations and we can help you with that process during commissioning.
  2. Substantial savings – Human subtitlers are expensive and as the shortage of qualified subtitlers continues to decline you will likely see an increase in rates. Current estimates range from a low of $60 per hour to a high of $900 per hour depending on your needs. VoCaption is available when you need it and it sleeps when you don’t. You only pay for the times you need it so you will experience a significant cost savings versus human captioners.
VoCaption 1RU Hardware

 

VoCaption is available in both hardware and software versions for 3rd party caption inserters or as part of OASYS Integrated Playout and Polistream our leading, subtitle inserter. For more information you can contact us here and a representative will be happy to answer any questions, arrange a demonstration or provide a quotation.