Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec Plug-in

Online music distribution is constantly growing. As an industry first, the Pro-Codec plug-in enables mix and mastering engineers to audition up to five codecs in real time within a DAW environment, produce an optimized mix and batch encode to multiple formats simultaneously. The entire process is accomplished ‘on the fly,’ and frees the engineer to focus on producing a compensated, optimized mix. All major codecs, including mp3, mp3 Surround, AAC-LC and HE-AAC are supported, as are lossless codecs such as mp3 HD and HD-AAC.

• More Information

Digital Broadcast Solutions

From transmission to the receiver, Fraunhofer IIS develops and implements all technologies and components needed to build and support radio systems, standards and devices for digital radio.
On the broadcast side, the DAB and DRM ContentServer family is a one-box-solution for audio encoding, data service management and ensemble multiplex generation. Fraunhofer IIS audio encoder and decoder offerings cover all major broadcast codecs available today such as MPEG Layer-2 for DAB Classic, MPEG HE-AACv2 for DAB+/DRM or MPEG Surround for high-quality multi-channel surround programs at stereo bit-rates. Broadcasters and receiver manufacturers can round up their services by integrating data applications such as Journaline.
See Fraunhofer’s digital radio technologies also at Thomson Broadcast (booth SU4917), Nautel Ltd. (booth C1314) and Continental Electronics (booth C2007).

CALM Act Solution

AAC Audio Metadata Technology

The CALM Act bill that is now in place in the U.S. requires broadcasters to regulate the audio of TV commercials to be broadcast at the same sound volumes than the TV program they accompany. Many other countries have similar legislation already in place or in process. At Fraunhofer’s NAB booth broadcasters get informed about the MPEG AAC formats, that natively support all required metadata parameters (e.g. for loudness control) included in professional audio codec and broadcast systems. Fraunhofer IIS also offers implementations for transcoding and generation of metadata.

Surround Audio Solutions for Digital Broadcast and IP Delivery

Fraunhofer IIS, the world's authoritative source of audio and multimedia technologies, provides high-quality audio codec and metadata solutions to the radio, TV and streaming industries. Those highly efficient products include the multi-channel audio codecs HE-AAC and MPEG Surround, which are available on a large variety of platforms. Both codecs enable superior surround broadcast- and Internet streaming services around the globe based on open, reliable standards.

SX Pro is the stereo-to-multi-channel upmix solution that enables a seamless transition from stereo to surround content distribution. The new SX Pro Version 2 offers significantly enhanced flexibility for broadcasters, including the ability to adjust the upmix to complement a station’s musical characteristics.

• More Information

Journaline

the new standard for digital radio information services

Journaline® is a text-based news service designed for digital broadcasting systems. It provides up-to-date textual information similar to teletext that can easily be accessed from mobile devices via a menu structure. The range of information can be manifold. Journaline is able to provide long news texts as well as automatically updated short news. Whether latest news or news related to the radio program, Journaline offers users immediate access to information according to his individual preferences. The data service is highly optimized for an efficient transmission in digital broadcasting systems and requires only very low transmission bit rates. Journaline became an international standard for digital radio in 2007. It is already featured on air by many international broadcasters and is now also available for digital radio in the US.

• More Information

easyDCP Creator+ und Player+

Mastering and Playback

For our new tools for DCP creation we concentrate on easy-to-use and comfortable handling. Accepted input formats are TIFF, DPX or JPEG2000 files and WAV-files. Within the easyDCP+ version we also provide the generation for stereoscopic and encrypted digital cinema packages DCPs. With the software tool easyDCP™ Creator+ Fraunhofer IIS presents a solutions for small-sized production companies or post houses that allows to create a complete SMPTE-compliant DCP (Digital Cinema Package) or a JPEG2000-INTEROP-format with only a few steps. The solution needs a standard-PC to make HD content ready for distribution to a digital movie theater. The version easyDCP+ enables the creation of 3D DCPs and supports a content encryption according to the DCI-specifications. For encryption we offer a KDM generator with a graphical user interface.

The easyDCP Player makes it possible to display a DCP on a standard PC. The decoding process of easyDCP Player can either run on the CPU or on the GPU. In order to accelerate the decoding up to real-time the use of an additional graphic card is necessary. With the easyDCP Player+ encrypted and stereoscopic DCPs can be played back. Using this technology, post processing facilities and art-house productions have now the opportunity to carry out the the final control of the DCP before delivering to a movie theater in their own office. The ideal solution to reduce cost and time-consuming tests.

Contact: Heiko Sparenberg, Moving Picture Technologies - Digital Cinema
email: easydcp (at) iis.fraunhofer.de

• More information and download

CURATOR Archiv Suite

The CURATOR Archive Suite is a special designed software suite for digital film archives, consisting of a creation tool, a player and a QuickTime component.. Based on the JPEG 2000 standardized profiles for digital archiving we provide tools to create a so called Master Archive Package MAP and Intermediate Access Package IAP. For a Master Archive Package lossless coding is preferred, for IAPs there are MXF-Container in 2K and 4K available. IAPs are an extension of a digital cinema package DCP which can be directly extracted without decoding. In addition to current image formats like DPX, J2K the import of *.MOV files is possible as well as the storage of technical and descriptive metadata in XML-format. We concentrated to make the handling of the CURATOR Archive Suite easy to use via a comfortable user-interface and a lot of standard-compliant presettings.

Contact:Heiko Sparenberg, Moving Picture Technologies - Digital Cinema
email: easydcp (at ) iis.fraunhofer.de

• More information (PDF) [ PDF 240KB ]

FlashBOX

On-board Rekorder für Digital Cinema, 3D und HDTV

FlashBox records and displays uncompressed and compressed HD sequences in YCbCr422 or RGB 444 or Dual Stream YCbCr. Its compact size of 175 x 115 x 74 mm and its light-weight of 1500 gramms makes it dockable to any camera or camera dolly. FlashBox records on SSD cartridges. Depending which mode is selected it can operate with two cartridges for Dual HD-SDI or with one for recording via Single Link HD-SDI. The cartridges can be connected to a server or PC for download of the takes by USB or SATA adapter. The power consumption is ca. 20 Watt so that the FlashBox can be feeded by the camera power supply.

Contact: Wolfgang Heppner, Moving Picture Technologies - Systems & Devices
email: moving-picture (at) iis.fraunhofer.de

• More information (PDF) [ PDF 155KB ]