Fraunhofer IDMT will be presenting new tools for recording, production, rendering and analysis of audiovisual content at IBC2013.

Fraunhofer’s Microphone Manager enables quality checks of sound recordings during live performances or in the studio. “When concerts are recorded, usually quite a lot of microphones are used,” said Christoph Sladeczek, head of the Virtual Acoustics group at Fraunhofer IDMT. “Identifying sound quality problems has always been a very time-consuming endeavour, as sound engineers sometimes need to overview and handle up to one-hundred audio channels on their mixing consoles. Using the Microphone Manager, this complicated and arduous process can now be substantially simplified. You simply instal a virtual listener at a selected position within the digital sound scene. This allows you to check all audio channels easily and localise sound problems very quickly.”

Fraunhofer IDMT has developed SpatialSound Headphone, an interactive system that allows direction adequate 3D sound reproduction over headphones, based on the concept of audio objects. Unlike conventional surround sound technology, object oriented sound reproduction is not about saving headphones or loudspeaker signals. Instead, these signals are being produced in real time, enabling users to create 3D sound scenes (from as many as 32 sound objects) and to edit their properties interactively.

At IBC2013, Fraunhofer IDMT will also be presenting a new module of its A/V Analyzing Toolbox, which allows automatic recognition of speech, music, pieces of speech with background music, and silence in radio and TV programmes. While this tool can be used for content-based search in radio and TV archives or as an add-on for sound identification systems, it could also be an instrument for copyright collecting agencies or copyright licensing service providers in their efforts to protect copyrights and detect copyright infringements.

Fraunhofer’s A/V Analyzing Toolbox consists of a number of modules for analysis and management of audiovisual content, ranging from automated error analysis of audio and video files to recognition and composition of single scenes and representative keyframes in video clips. Another feature allows recognition and evaluation of camera movements (such as panning or zooming) in films and videos. Semantic video analysis enables users to categorise individual film sequences according to certain visual concepts (such as specific landscapes or times of the day).

Fraunhofer IDMT will be presenting its latest developments at this year’s IBC2013 at booth 8.B 80, hall 8.

www.idmt.fraunhofer.de