BEAVERTON, Ore., March 2, 2015 – Tektronix, Inc., a leading worldwide provider of test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation, today announced it has expanded its file-based content analysis portfolio to include Aurora, a next generation automated file-based QC product; Hydra, a frame-accurate file-based player; and AutoFix, a suite of file-based correction tools. The new additions to the Tektronix family of file-based video and audio QC solutions is the result of a recent licensing agreement with Digimetrics that gives Tektronix exclusive rights to these products and associated intellectual property.

With the ongoing migration towards file-based workflows, as well as the increased adoption of multi-screen and Over-the-Top Media Services, broadcasters and video content providers face difficult challenges to ensure the quality of rapidly growing content volumes. This licensing agreement underscores Tektronix’ commitment to providing a comprehensive set of file-based QC solutions addressing the customer needs of faster test times, integrated video player, comprehensive codec support and easy integration with workflows. Aurora, Hydra and AutoFix will be marketed and supported alongside Tektronix current solutions, including the award- winning Cerify and QCloud offerings. Customers will benefit from the expanded features and functionality resulting from this agreement.

“By entering into a licensing agreement with Digimetrics, we are showing our ongoing commitment to supporting file-based QC technologies. More importantly, we remain steadfast in our promise to continue the level of support and service our current Cerify and Aurora customers have come to expect while delivering new and expanded capabilities in the future,” said Eben Jenkins, general manager, Video Product Line, Tektronix. “We see this agreement as a great opportunity to accelerate our development plans to provide the solutions and features our customers have been asking us for by combining the trusted accuracy of Cerify with the performance of Aurora.”

Aurora is a scalable, easy to use file-based QC tool. The product has been expertly architected to allocate guaranteed CPU and GPU bandwidth to the job at hand to ensure no drop in processing performance, even under load conditions, reducing production bottlenecks. Customers interact with Aurora through a fast, responsive UI, offering customizable themes and color schemes to suit the workflow in which it is being used. Multilingual support also allows easy localization for multinational operational environments. An optional analytics plug-in allows customers to compare results on the same content at different stages in the workflow, and can be used to provide trend reports on common errors and warnings from tested content. Using this data can improve operational efficiency and give valuable feedback to content providers. Aurora is easily integrated and supports a broad range of wrappers, and Video and Audio Codecs for fast, efficient testing of files, ranging from basic SD through high resolution 4K and complex ABR formats.

Hydra is a frame-accurate, file-based player that can reliably play out all the files used in the media industry. Scrub using keyboard short-cuts, a mouse or an external USB shuttle controller provides full playback control. HDMI and SDI playout can be achieved through selected third party interface cards and GPU acceleration can be used to give frame-accurate, real time 4K playout. When integrated with Aurora, overlays can be used to easily visualize and highlight content problem areas. This reduces the time needed for issue diagnosis and resolution.

AutoFix is a suite of file-based correction tools designed to ensure that files meet both international broadcast standards and pass human quality assessment. AutoFix provides confidence that the production workflow will deliver compliant files ready for playout and placement distribution. AutoFix includes an audio normalization product that measures and corrects audio loudness, and a gamut legalization product that measures and corrects gamut.

Tektronix Inc.