QC Player Tutorial

The Hybrik QC Player is a powerful tool that can be used to simply view a video file stored in AWS as well as perform a number of other useful functions that we’ll cover in this tutorial.

One of the problems we face when working with content in the cloud is how to view it. One option is to download content and play it locally but when working with multi-Gigabyte mezzanine files this is impractical. The QC Player is the solution to this problem as it allows you to view your content in realtime, at very high quality without any downloading.

Initial configuration

1. Log into your Hybrik account.
2. Navigate to your Machines/Configuration section.
3. At this point you can either use an existing machine group or create a new one. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll create a New Computing Group.
4. Click the New Computing Group option:
5. In the window that pops up configure a new group as per the instructions found in our Getting Started Tutorial, we recommend choosing c4.2xlarge as the Instance type as a starting point.
6. In the field, next to the Mandatory Tags field, in the Task Tags section, enter QC_Player, followed by clicking the Tab key on your keyboard.
7. Click Save
8. Back in the main Machine Configuration page, find the small gear icon towards the top right of the page and click it.
9. In the Columns Configuration window, make sure ‘Mandatory Tags’ is checked, optionally also check ‘Provided Tags.’
10. Click Save

Note: If you haven’t configured CORS on your bucket already, they need to be enabled to use QC Player. Follow the steps on our Player Setup Tutorial.

Launching the QC Player:

1. Navigate to the Storage section in your Hybrik account.
   
2. Browse to the file you wish to work with and click on it.
3. From the Action menu drop down, choose QC Play. A new window will open.
4. Initially you will see a blank screen with ‘No Live preview processors found”.
5. On the right-hand side, you will see some basic settings.
   • Background Processor settings
     • Make sure you have QC_Player in the job tags field.
     • Leave the other fields set to default unless advised otherwise.
   • Preview Settings
     • Cache Location
       • Using an suitable client such as S3 Browser (Windows), Cyberduck (MacOS & Windows), or Transmit (MacOS), create a new folder in a suitable location for the cache files that will be generated by the QC Player. Copy the link and paste that into the Cache Location.
     • Credentials
       • Click the drop down and select the relevant credentials from the list.
     • Proxy Size
       • Same as source cannot be changed
     • Proxy Data Rate
       • Choose a data rate that is suitable for your available bandwidth.
6. Click Save
7. A message saying ‘Waiting for live preview processors to come online’ should appear in the main window. This can take a few minutes to disappear as machines become available from the Spot Market.
8. Once the proxy file has loaded it will begin playing automatically and below the video will be a new player controls section

Player Controls:

• Starting on the left is the Start time value. This is displayed in either SMPTE format timecode, Media timecode, Frame number or Seconds. To choose with one is displayed, click the Timecode drop-down directly beneath.
• Next to the Timecode selection is Jump to. Enter in a specific time value or frame number to jump direct to that location.
• In the middle of this section, you will see the current time/frame value where the playback “head” is located.
• Below that is the play pause button. The Spacebar is the keyboard shortcut.
• Either side are -1 and +1 previous frame and next frame controls. The keyboard shortcuts for these are left arrow and right arrow. You can also “scrub” in forward and reverse by one second by holding down the shift key and pressing the left or right arrow key.
• Either side of these are the Trim in and Trim out buttons. These will allow you to set in and out points for your media.
• On the far right you will see a read out of the duration of the clip, and below that Mute/Volume, Fullscreen and an option to show just the media content window

You will also see that three new tabs have appeared at the top right of the window. These are Media Info, Audio Playback and Job Creator, along with a small gear icon.

• Media Info Tab
  • This provides a Summary of your file and below that, more details of each element of the asset.
• Audio Mapping Tab
  • Allows you to select specific channel to listen to. Click to select the desired channels to map to a stereo left and right output.
• Job Creator Tab
  • Please see below for a detailed explanation.
• The small gear icon
  • This gives you access to change the keyboard shortcuts as well as disable them.

Default keyboard shortcuts

• Play/Pause
  • spacebar
• Previous Frame
  • Left Arrow
• Next Frame
  • Right Arrow
• Scrub -1 second
  • shift+left arrow
• Scrub +1 second
  • shift+right arrow

The Job Creator

The concept behind the job creator is to correct any issues found after manually reviewing content using the QC player. The various fields and settings found in this tab allow you to manually override parameters present in the original job JSON file. Along with that, the Job creator offers analysis of the source content to automatically correct issues such as cadence and cropping.

1. Select Job JSON File allows you to navigate to the JSON you wish to correct.
2. In the Job name field, enter the new Job Name.
3. If you wish to change the destination path that’s in the Job JSON, click the Browse button and navigate to a suitable directory.
4. If you have seen problems with cadence, you can click the Detect Cadence button and the content will be analyzed in the background while you continue working. Once completed, you’ll see the results of the analysis. Progressive, Interlaced, etc.
5. If you have detected issues with the audio channel mapping, in the next section you can override these. Click on the Configure... button and a new window will open.
6. Follow the instructions and click submit at the top of the window.
7. Next, you can set Trim in point and Trim out point, in seconds.
8. Below that you can choose to manually set a crop, click Auto-Detect Crop. The media will then be analyzed in the background for any black borders.

Using the QC Player

• Under the main preview window, you will see some basic options that should be familiar to you including the ability to go to a specific Timecode location using either SMPTE, Media Timecode, frame number or number of seconds.
• Media Info tab. top right
  • Here you’ll see the expected media information for that file.
• Audio Playback Tab
  • Here you be able to remap the audio channels you wish to preview.
• Job Creator tab
  • Here you can choose an existing Job JSON file and amend a number of settings.
  • Select Job JSON File button
    • This will let you choose the job from your PC that you wish to apply the corrections to that you make in the Job Creator.
    • Once a Job JSON has been selected, the Job Name field should auto-complete for you, you can edit this as you wish.
    • Next, either manually enter an S3 path when you wish the new files to be written to or click the Browse button and navigate to a suitable location. At this point you can use the Recent drop down as well as create a new folder from the Action drop down.
  • Cadence detection analysis
    • This can be performed by clicking Detect Cadence. This can run in the backgroud while you continue working. Once complete, the result will be displayed where the button was.
  • The Target overrides section allows you to override parts of the Job JSON, or indeed add additional encoding parameters including:
    • Audio Channel mapping. See above under Player Controls
    • In-point & out-point Trimming.
    • Cropping
      • The Auto-Detect crop will look for letterbox or pillar-box black bars.
    • Frame Size.
    • Frame Rate.
    • Cadence Correction and De-interlacing,
      • Including: Motion Compensation, Decimate and Inverse Telecine.
    • PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) and DAR (Display Aspect Ratio).
    • Aspect Ratio Maximum Distortion.
    • EBU R128 Audio normalization and peak dBFS.
  • Finally, you have the option of submitting this job as-is or exporting the JSON for later use.