Streambox adds new real-time group Annotations capabilities

Streambox adds new real-time group Annotations capabilities to Streambox Chroma product line for remote color grading, editing and collaboration

As streaming becomes a common part of post-production processes, media professionals need tools to assist in marking up video content to expedite review workflows as well as improving and enhancing collaboration with project stakeholders.

The Annotations feature in Streambox Chroma provides a flexible method for group review of video content. Multiple stakeholders can be connected to a Chroma encoder system acting as an annotations server via a web interface to work on the same project. Annotations is a valuable tool for colorists, editors, and other production staff.

Annotations is meant for live video review where one or more of the reviewers can highlight the area of interest while describing the desired changes. Initially, the annotations function is comprised of drawing on-screen lines with a mouse or touchscreen on selected video frames. All the markups can be burned to the image and archived with a save screenshot feature that includes time-stamped file names.

The annotations feature works with Chroma and Chroma X systems. All reviewers log in to the same Chroma unit through a web browser network connection. Depending on the network connection speed, a viewer can choose resolution and frame rate. Other selections include clear, save, display list, burn-in, and output type.

Using a mouse or touchscreen a viewer draws a mark, object; line, or word to highlight the area for discussion. Each time a viewer does a save, a screenshot of the video frame with the markup is archived on the connected Chroma encoder system. From the archived list a viewer can see each saved image with an identification timestamp. All the archive files can be downloaded for other usages.

Remote reviewing for post-production saves considerable time and money. Providing audio commentary and taking notes is useful, but also being able to create visual cues that highlight specific areas of interest makes revisions faster and more effective.