Dalet Applauds DPP’s Interoperability Agreement With Leading Broadcast Manufacturers

The Digital Production Partnership was successful in its work with the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and a large range of broadcast equipment manufacturers to formalise an AS-11 DPP Compliance Program. Dalet was pleased with the news.

“Dalet is proud to be part of The Digital Production Partnership’s (DPP) achievement in making the AS-11 DPP Compliance Program a reality. We feel that this is a much-needed industry initiative to encourage vendors (like Dalet) to meet the formalised needs of the customers defined in the DPP delivery specification,” comments Bruce Devlin, chief media scientist at Dalet.

The essence of the Compliance Program is that it will reduce interoperability issues when creating and using AS-11 DPP files, and it will provide industry assurance by enabling a consistent expectation of quality and reliability with AS-11 DPP products. Having determined a ‘Compliance Test’ that products would need to meet to be considered as ‘DPP Compliant’ will improve file-based testing knowledge and communication between the UK broadcasters and manufacturers.

“It’s all about creating a level playing field,” explains Devlin. “Vendors build generic products to service markets that are bigger than the DPP scope. Against this background, how do we ensure that the constraints that are placed on those generic products fall within the DPP delivery specification limits and meet the operational needs of the end user.”

The goal of the DPP – and of the Compliance Program – is to make sure that broadcasters and facilities always create files that are compliant, even after upgrades of underlying codecs. The partnership is also striving to ensure that equipment inter-operates, even when the specification does not cover every possible interpretation of creating a bitstream.

“Ten or 15 years ago, manufacturers would have laughed at me if I suggested that interoperability on this scale was possible, but now – thanks to the incredible work of the DPP and the ability of vendors to see the bigger picture – we have achieved it. As a founder member of the organization, it makes Dalet proud to be associated with DPP,” says Devlin.

Devlin, who has been involved with DPP ever since its inception, believes that the program might have more far-reaching implications. More generally, how do we ensure decoders behave consistently when faced with a broad range of inputs? And also, how do we ensure encoders create the narrowest range of variations in encoded file parameters to make life easy for the decoders under all operational circumstances?

If the DPP is to meet its self-imposed October deadline, then important decisions such as the Compliance Program need to be made. “Those manufacturers that have signed up to the Compliance Agreement have gone a long way toward achieving the original goals and objectives of the DPP, which were agreed almost three years ago,” concluded Bruce Devlin. “The UK’s ability to agree these principles puts it out in front of other regions. Could we see a blueprint here that could be adopted elsewhere – for the sake of our global industry, I hope so. Until that glorious time of international delivery standards, I look forward to Dalet AmberFin passing all the tests and receiving a DPP compliance certificate. I’m sure it will be the first of many.”