QCTools 0.9.0 Release

Published On: August 15, 2017 |

San Francisco, CA – Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC Media) and the QCTools development team are proud to announce the release of QCTools Version 0.9.0! QCTools is an open-source application developed to help media archivists in assess and analyze the quality of digitized video content. This version has a number of new features, usability updates, and bug fixes that help increase the overall utility of the application in quality control workflows.

One of the many updates in the new release is the addition of a comments track, which allows users to place timestamped comments in the timeline. These comments are embedded into the report files, which means other users can open the reports and review the comments.

Here’s a quick rundown of all the updates in version 0.9.0:

New Features
- Graph Layout
  - Updated graph selection from checkboxes to toggle buttons
  - Support for a comments track for temporal annotations
  - Deflicker graph
  - Keyboard shortcut to copy the active timestamp
- Filter Layout
  - Scaling options for players (now with 100%, fit to window, and free scale)
  - Support for horizontal offset variable in 10 column Bit Plane player
  - New Playsers (Oscilloscope, Chroma Delay, Luma Adjust, Limiter, Vectorscope High Low, and Phase Meter)
  - Improved support for Broadcast Illegal Focus
- Refactored, deduplicated, and cleaned up player code
- Expanded–debug mode
- Updated documentation
Bug Fixes
- Frame Tile player
- Fixed Value Highlight player
- Fixed scaling issues when there is a selection box
- Fixed loading pkt_size and pkt_duration from xml.gz files
- Fixed use of VREP player with field split

The continued development of QCTools is possible due to generous financial support provided by National Endowment for the Humanities, Knight Foundation, and an international team of invested individuals from the audiovisual archiving community. With each new release QCTools becomes more powerful, stable and useful.

To make QCTools ever more impactful, BAVC Media eagerly solicits input from the community. Documenting issues or suggesting new features via GitHub’s Issue Tracker will help exponentially. Additionally, BAVC Media is looking for those with time and expertise to contribute to the project. If you’re interested, go to GitHub and fork the repo. Contributors do not need to know how to code to make a difference; updates and development on the documentation and use cases is just as important.

The Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC Media) was founded in 1976 to support freedom of expression by making advanced media technology accessible to independent media makers and nonprofits. We teach. We empower creative expression. We preserve the past. And we develop future media makers and innovators. BAVC Media’s mission is to be the nation’s most advanced noncommercial media access and training center. Visit BAVC Media online at https://avcompass.bavc.org.