Line-up checker

Bars and tone, idents and leader timing

Drop a master and check the line-up at its head: the tone level, frequency and ident on every channel, whether each stereo pair is in phase, all against EBU R 68 and R 49 or SMPTE RP 155, and where the tone, sync plop and programme sound fall on the file’s timecode, to the frame. The file is checked in your browser, and only its first few minutes are read. Nothing is uploaded.

Drop a master with bars and tone at its head

MXF (OP1a, OP-Atom, D-10), MOV, MP4, WAV and AIFF, at any size: only the first few minutes are read. Checked in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Judge the tone against

Tone level, frequency, ident and phase are judged against the standard. The leader’s timing is read out on the file’s timecode, not judged: layouts are set by delivery specs.

−18 or −20 dBFS

Europe lines up at −18 dBFS (EBU R 68); SMPTE RP 155 sets −20 dBFS, used in the US. Both define the level by the sine’s peak: R 68 as peak codes 18 dB under full scale, RP 155 as peaks at 0CCD of 7FFF. So “−18 dBFS tone” is a sine whose peak is at −18 dBFS. Its RMS is 3 dB lower, and a tone generated to an RMS of −18 is 3 dB hot; the checker spots that and says so.

Idents

EBU stereo (EBU R 49): left interrupted for 250 ms every 3 s, right continuous. R 49 accepts hand-made breaks that are only roughly that, so other timings are recognised and noted.
GLITS: left interrupted once and right twice every 4 s. A convention, not a standard, so it’s recognised and noted, never failed against R 49.
BLITS (EBU Tech 3304) for 5.1: a burst per channel at its own frequency, the stereo ident on L/R, then 2 kHz on all six to check phase. A swapped C and LFE shows up as the wrong burst on each.

An ident on the right channel instead of the left means the pair is probably swapped, and an inverted leg reads as a correlation of −1: both are reported per pair.

The head as heard

The leader is read from the audio: tone, silence over the clock and black, a sync plop, and the first programme sound, each placed on the file’s own timecode (a MOV timecode track, or the MXF material package’s). It’s read out, not judged: where a leader’s parts must fall is set by each delivery spec. Picture isn’t read yet.