Assessing the quality of audio content

There are many application contexts in which the quality of audio material is critical for its further use. Media archives or providers of audio and video files, for example, need to validate digital content quickly and easily in terms of whether the content has been edited or encoded at some point in time. Such validation enables users to determine the quality of the material and optimize their own editing and encoding processes.  

Easy creation and linking of metadata

In the course of editing and encoding audio content, characteristic traces (i.e. metadata) are left in the material. The “Audio Forensics Toolbox” allows users to identify the devices and microphones used for a recording, detect cuts and splices in audio material, and find out whether certain segments have been reused in a new context. This helps content aggregators and broadcasters avoid redundancies and inconsistencies in the material they use.

A/V inspector

Alongside with the “Audio Forensics Toolbox”, Fraunhofer IDMT will be presenting an update of its “AV Analyzing Toolbox”, which can be used to optimize processes for broadcasting, distributing, and archiving digital content. This Toolbox comprises various components for automatic identification of flaws and quality deficiencies in digital audio and video content. In addition, the Toolbox comes with a video segment matching component, which recognizes identical video segments across different videos (even if the content has been edited or transcoded) and determines their exact position and length. Another component of the Toolbox allows automatic measurement of the exact amount of music in radio and TV programs, offering support in the context of accurate accounting and more efficient queries of programs.

The institute presents its tools for analyzing audio and video content at the Fraunhofer booth SU6716 in the South Upper Hall.