isovideo: GPU, file-based HD/4K/UHD Standards Conversion & SDR/HDR/HLG Automated Workflow

HDR Processing and Distribution

Challenge: HDR provides a more vivid image due to higher local contrast, higher brightness and increased dynamic range. However HDR requires high precision computation and higher distribution bitrates due to increased detail and noise. HDR production also need to be future proof in terms of maximum brightness and HFR. Furthermore, high quality backward-compatible HDR distribution to majority of current SDR displays, especially to mobile as well as HDR live event broadcast, remains a challenge, at least for a foreseeable future. Read more ...

Noise in HDR/SDR Digital Media & Online Distribution

Challenge: internet video traffic is exploding, due to higher demand, HFR, HDR, and UHD, but available bandwidth lags in comparison. Noise is an inherent property of most digital media, and may spoil viewing immersiveness, while also preventing HEVC/H.264 compression from achieving low bit-rates.
Common practice: intra-frame noise reduction and lowpass filtering prior to encoding, with heavy HEVC/AVC compression. These practices can significantly degrade picture quality.
Goal: bit-rate reduction without sacrificing picture quality.
Solution: Viarte GPU-accelerated, HDR/SDR detail-preserving motion-compensated (MC) noise reduction prior to lossy compression using HEVC/VP9/AVC.
Benefits: Provides an engaging & immersive viewing experience from noisy video, while significantly saving online distribution bandwidth for HEVC/H.264 compression upto 5x for the same or better PSNR.

Larger Displays – Ultra HD/4K and 8K

Challenge: provide an immersive viewing experience for all type of content, ranging from SD to 4K.
Problems: without excellent preprocessing, picture quality may look worse on large displays with increased brightness and dynamic range. These displays magnify and accentuate noise, blur, motion judder, as well as processing related artifacts due to deinterlacing, FRC, and crude noise reduction.
Goal & Benefits: to provide smoother, sharper, cleaner and smaller-footprint video from all sources, including different noise levels, frame rates, scan types, encoding types, etc. Viewers can then truly benefit from these vivid and larger/brighter displays, while distribution network bandwidth is reduced.
Solution: state-of-the-art, GPU accelerated Viarte i) deinterlacing/inverse telecine, ii) frame rate conversion, iii) scaling, iv) noise reduction, v) HDR to SDR Tone Mapping.

HFR Capture for Applications such as Sports & Film

Challenge: high quality frame rate conversion for re-distribution at different frame rates, such as at lower frame-rates at 24p/25p/30p from sources of 120p, or at higher and lower frame-rates such as 50p/60p and 24p/25p/30p (including fractional rates) from 48p.
Problems and common practice: Poor conversion methods or adhoc conversion (such as dropping or duplicating frames) often results in unpleasant visible visual artifacts (even at normal viewing speed) such as global ghosting, boiling effects, blur, and judder.
Solutions: Viarte/Legato fast, GPU accelerated, accurate any-to-any up/down-frame-rate and/or resolution conversion with optional simulated motion-blur to effectively reduce judder without visual artifacts while also reducing H.264/HEVC compressed bit-rates.

IP/file-based studio workflow

Challenge: reduce file-based video processing latency and increase throughput for standards conversion, digital remastering and HDR to SDR tone mapping.
Problem: file-based workflow requires subsequent processing to wait until up-stream processing completes. UHD, HFR, and HDR all combine to dramatically increase the amount of data to be processed.
Solutions: Viarte efficient splitting technology and 4k realtime lossless compression enables low-delay processing, efficient scalability and 4k realtime display/transmission over 10 Gbit IP.
Benefits: i) Fast turn-around IP-studio workflow, ii) New Applications: Live-feed and archive productions.

MC Deinterlacing/Inverse-telecine

Nearly 70% of existing video is marked as interlaced - it is still prevalent in many studio and distribution systems.
Interlacing is easy to achieve, but deinterlacing to high quality progressive is very challenging. Furthermore it can be shown mathematically that perfect deinterlacing is impossible to achieve.
Deinterlacing or inverse telecine, if needed, are the very first steps in a video processing chain. Since content transformation, often involves a chain of digital processing steps, errors at the start from poor deinterlacing / inverse telecine, may be further accumulated and magnified in subsequent processing steps involved in digital remastering/standards conversion (such as frame rate conversion, scaling, noise reduction, encoding, etc.), leading to unavoidable visual artifacts.
In addition, inferior deinterlacing often requires an output lowpass filter to reduce artifacts and flicker, resulting in a much blurrier image than its true potential.
Inverse telecine often is done incompletely due to noise, or poor handling of mixed/broken/random cadences. This not only gives interlaced-looking frames, but also results in many unnecessary duplicated and/or dropped frames, leading to severe visual artifacts and playback judder.
Viarte achieves the best quality MC deinterlacing results available today. It is the only technology offering 100% vertical resolution with very little or no visible flicker. Furthermore, at that resolution, it achieves a substantial 21% average bit-rate reduction in HEVC/H.264 versus compressed interlaced - a truly objective measure of deinterlacer quality.

MC Frame Rate Conversion (FRC)

Simple FRC approaches do frame dropping/duplication to achieve a new frame rate, which introduces objectionable motion judder. The next level up - linear blending converters - produce objectionable ghosting effects with visible motion judder on sharp edges in pans. More advanced motion-compensated converters commonly produce 'boiling'-type artifacts around edges.
Viarte MC FRC produces sharp, judder-free results for all input frame rates 24p and up, with no duplicated frames or visible artifacts at normal playback speeds.

Up/Down Scaling

Scaling, if done well, gives a much more immersive viewing experience on the same size displays. Scaling is often done poorly, introducing blur and ringing on edges.
Viarte scaling really 'pops' each frame out to the viewer, for a surprisingly immersive experience. Even older SD material looks noticeably sharper when upscaled.

MC Noise Reduction

Vivid HDR to SDR+ Tone Mapping

Stunning SDR to HDR Up-Conversion/Inverse Tone Mapping - New!

Savings on Time, Cost & Network Bandwidth

50 - 95% time savings due to
- Viarte low-latency splitting technology with efficient automated pipelined workflow,
- Viarte high quality conversion, which dramatically reduces the time for any redo or rotoscoping work.
Time savings apply whether using Viarte cluster or service.
up to 90% cost savings when using Viarte self service compared to other available in-house services for high quality HDR to SDR tone mapping - standards conversion - digital remastering - frame-rate conversion - inverse telecine - deinterlacing - noise reduction, etc.
Up to 80% online network bandwidth savings (beyond HEVC/AVC/VP9) due to combinations of Viarte high quality noise reduction, deinterlacing - inverse telecine - frame-rate conversion with simulated motion-blur when down-converting from HFR content.

Other Savings

Substantial capital savings on equipment and operation/maintenance when using Viarte self services. Pay only as needed.
Improved video quality leads to potentially higher advertising revenue due to a more engaging view experience. It has been shown that better picture quality correlates positively to channel loyalty and viewership.
Partnership savings and Volume discounts when using Viarte as services. Please contact us at info@isovideo.com for the latest details.