OOONA Simplifies Five-Point Localization Check With Syncheck

OOONA, a global provider of professional management and production facilities for the media localization industry, has launched a new tool to automate the quality assurance process of subtitle assets against videos at scale.

One of the most common operations performed by media localization staff and content owners ahead of the broadcast of subtitle or caption files is a technical check against the video source they are paired with to ensure the right file in the right language is being delivered or aired with the corresponding video. This is known as the “three-point” or “five-point” check, depending on how many instances of the file are checked against the video. As files get redelivered in different formats, for different platforms or to different video versions, such workflows account for a large volume of files undergoing a QC step.

“The OOONA Syncheck tool is designed to automatically check subtitle files against videos with corresponding file names when dropped in a folder or manually paired, and then to flag errors,” says Alex Yoffe, OOONA Toolkit product manager. “We’ve had many clients ask for such a tool as this is a very common use case for language service providers and broadcasters alike. We’ve built a tool that can be customized as always, for example to the number of points that need to be checked for a file to pass QC, so it can be tailored to the requirements of any client.

“The tool checks if a given subtitle file is in the appropriate language and in sync with the corresponding video by automatically examining a configurable number of check points. It compares the subtitle text against the audio at the specific checkpoints with the help of speech recognition and machine translation technologies, then calculates a fuzzy match score. If this score is lower than a given threshold, the file is failed and tagged with an error flag. Users get the option to open it in OOONA’s Create Tool to fix the errors identified. This works well with the Create Tool’s advanced QA functionality which automatically checks for a variety of customizable errors on the basis of presets. It also offers a bird’s eye view of multiple language streams simultaneously which is useful for project managers, plus a user-friendly feature for tracking file revisions.”

Wayne Garb, OOONA co-founder and CEO, adds: “Quality assurance is a critical aspect of the media industry – it is a natural area of focus for us. We are committed to providing our customers with innovative solutions that enable them to streamline their operations. Syncheck does just that.”