Silver Trak Digital one of Australia’s largest digitisation, duplication and authoring companies have added yet another service to their industry leading Technical Assessment (QC) department; Harding FPA.
Silver Trak Digital can now offer program Flash Pattern Analysis (FPA), often referred to as a Harding Test, via the Harding FPA. FPA is currently required by broadcasters who adhere to strict Photo Sensitive Epilepsy guidelines (PSE)
Basically, flickering or intermittent images and certain types of regular patterns can cause problems for some viewers who are prone to the medical condition PSE.
Vince Brant, Technical Assessment Manager says; ‘Currently, all UK and Japanese broadcasters adhere to PSE guidelines. More broadcasters and distributors (eg Disney) are requiring program delivery to be accompanied by both a technical assessment and an FPA certificate that indicates that the program content has passed FPA. It’s important to note that currently no Australian broadcasters adhere to PSE guidelines but are expected to follow the current ITU Ofcom UK guidelines in the near future, as they did with the Loudness compliance specification’
Dr Mark Hodgetts from Harding FPA adds; “The Harding FPA is the culmination of 10 years of continual development and has become the gold standard for photosensitive epilepsy analysis both in the UK and Japan. With algorithms developed by an Oxford university engineer with a Cambridge university doctorate in signal processing, it has become the preferred choice for the UK’s BBC and Japan’s NHK national broadcasting corporations. We pride ourselves on having created a system able to sift out motion and any other video activity which do not represent genuine flashing activity and only generate a PSE failure when the national guidelines have truly been exceeded.”
The reports generated by Silver Trak Digital clearly indicate if the program has passed or failed the test and also includes timecode points along with images/sequences that have failed the test. If the program passes the test, clients will receive a PASS certificate for the program.
Managing Director Christian Christiansen concludes; ‘We are delighted to offer this unique service in Australia. This is another example of Silver Trak Digital leading the market by evaluating and installing software essential to our client’s requirements, now and in the future’.
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