EYEHEIGHT REPORTS SOARING DEMAND FOR BROADCASTSAFE COMPLIANCE PLUG-INS

“Soft legalisers are selling in ever increasing quantities to post-houses supporting broadcasters in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia and Asia-Pacific,” comments Eyeheight Sales Director Martin Moore. “Demand is particularly healthy among the leading facilities in the UK where broadcast signal conformance is understood in depth and taken very seriously. This is a market sector dominated quite strongly by Avid Media Composer so BroadcastSafeMC is proving the most popular of these plug-ins.

“Adobe and Apple editing software tends to be preferred by independent programme producers who buy our plug-ins on the basis of one-to-one downloads rather than as group licences. The recently-launched BroadcastSafeMC8 for Avid Media Composer is intended for broadcasters and the post-production market. BroadcastSafeMC8 is compatible with all recent versions of the Media Composer family including MC 7 and the new Version 8.

“Hardware legalisers such as our multi-standard LE-3G with audio leveling still have their place in the market, essentially for live signal streams going straight from studio to transmitter. Many of these are still being used very successfully, not least for mobile production vehicles where it is important to be sure the output feed is clean and legal.”

Eyeheight’s BroadcastSafe is a complete plug-in legaliser, safe-area generator and graphic measurement toolset. It allows users to verify and conform content prior to submission to any file-based quality control system. BroadcastSafe can perform composite, RGB, RGB-plus-Y and simultaneous composite-plus-RGB legalising, all with user-adjustable soft clipping at high and low thresholds. Precise chroma-space conversion and accurate limiting ensure compliance while keeping the full gamut available for creative use. Editors can select from an extensive range of presets, or work in custom mode which gives full access to 15 configurable parameters. Facility administrators can assign which built-in presets are available to users, create new presets or disable the custom option to ensure that only approved configurations are implemented.

BroadcastSafe incorporates a Broadcast Evaluate display indicating which parts of a video image require adjustment in order to be fully broadcast compliant. Non-compliant areas of content are displayed in a user-definable colour with the option of manual or automatic correction, giving editors greater choice in the way they work. BroadcastEvaluate supports all common compliance standards. Users can alternatively define their own compliance standard as an XML file.

Also integral to BroadcastSafe is BroadcastSafeArea. This allows a wide range of safe-area markers to be superimposed over the video monitor display. BroadcastSafeArea supports a multitude of standards including SMPTE, EBU and DPP, in 525/625 standard definition, 720/1080 high definition and 2K line formats. Also included is a centre marker plus a measurement utility to ensure minimum text height conformance in commercials. Any marker colour can be assigned by the operator.

Eyeheight (www.eyeheight.com) produces broadcast-standard technical compliance plug-ins for use with popular video editing software, including Adobe, Apple and Avid systems. Eyeheight also designs and manufactures rack-mountable 3G, 3D and HD-SDI processors for video and audio content origination, quality-assurance, post-production, playout and associated areas. This includes audio descriptors, audio loudness conformers, color correctors, emergency switchers, mixers and keyers, safe area generators, subtitling decoders, text and graphics generators, timecode equipment, video legalisers and widescreen signal generators. Eyeheight products are available worldwide.