Spafax | The Hub chose Interra BATON for its cloud workflows and file-based quality control of SDR and HDR inflight entertainment content, supporting standards for quality and compliance.
Spafax Group is a worldwide travel media agency based in London that delivers content technology and media assets at scale for airlines. The company curates a very large international catalogue of movies, TV, audio and digital services across most entertainment markets. With clients including Lufthansa Group, Emirates, The IAG Group, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and others, Spafx reaches a global network of nearly a billion passengers across hundreds of business-to-customer touchpoints.
Spafax | The Hub technical lab in Hollywood plays a role in the inflight entertainment (IFE) supply chain by delivering media to airlines. TPN certified, The Hub operates and develops cloud-based workflows for transcoding, editing, subtitling and global file delivery. As well as airline clients, The Hub also works directly with studios and production companies, supplying media services that support broadcast, streaming and content distribution.
Automated QC Processes
The Hub has chosen Interra Systems’s BATON platform for file-based quality control. As well as checking the quality of its file-based SDR and HDR content, BATON is able to help Spafax achieve regulatory compliance in several areas.
“Spafax needs a high level of control over the media experiences we supply to airline passengers around the world,” said Arthur Cuyugan, senior vice president of technical services at Spafax | The Hub. “We chose BATON for the quality of its audio and video analysis, scalable architecture and set of feature that aligns with the standards we need to meet for content transformation and delivery.”
The BATON platform automates QC processes, supporting standards for quality and compliance. The most recent version 9.2 of BATON includes framework updates, better video quality checks for 4K files, support for RDD59 specifications for IMF and optimized MXF file verification. It also improves on the software’s diagnostic tools for system health monitoring and has an updated API.
Complete Stack Upgrade
BATON 9.2 has had a complete stack upgrade, with migration to Python 3.x and a new Postgres DB and Django web framework, resulting in a more responsive interface, increased scalability and optimized resource management. Interra has optimized BATON’s IMF analysis, and it now supports SONY 360 RA analysis.
More generally, BATON’s cloud support, video and audio quality checks and format support are all improved, including comprehensive Dolby Atmos support. It also features higher performance for UHD content QC.
Of special interest to Spafax, the BATON platform has been extended with BATON Captions to meet the wider industry demand for accurate, efficient captioning and subtitling, which is also critical for modern streaming platforms. BATON Captions not only delivers comprehensive tools simplifying caption workflows but also integrates QC features, maintaining levels of quality from content review to final delivery.
Interra Systems will demonstrate the latest evolution of its BATON for file-based QC and the company’s complete product portfolio at IBC2025 12 – 15 September in Amsterdam. www.interrasystems.com
