Context:
In QC, our goal is to alway observe and report on the technical quality of an asset entirely, or as close to entirety where possible. However, some video and/or audio issues can be so severe that they prevent playback or review of the content, thus stopping down QC work. We call these blocker issues. When this happens, it’s always important to flag the blocker in the QC report with a note of QC having stopped as a result, then alerting the Netflix Asset Management team via a support ticket submission.
There are cases however where a blocker issue may still be present, but QC can still be performed against the content. As long as video and/ or audio content can still be reviewed effectively to some capacity, QC should continue in order to help the content partner maximize the number of fixes per round of delivery.
Below are some examples of where QC work should not stop down after flagging a blocker issue:
- A major video dropout occurs, but playback can still resume before and after the affected shot(s)
- Printmaster, M&E or Atmos audio tracks are globally offset from picture, but maintain sync when aligned in a sequence
- Audio is corrupted or missing, but video can still be reviewed
- Metadata errors, such as incorrect trim value or color space are present but content can still be reviewed for other issues
As long as the content can be reviewed to some capacity, it is always worth doing so. Ultimately, we want to maximize the impact every QC pass has and aid our content partners with as much knowledge on the health of the content as possible.