AbstractTM

Compliance Testing Framework

As long time active contributors to MPEG, we know that conformance is key to interoperability. We also know what it takes to deliver conformance solutions that offer both power without sacrificing usability.

For our needs, we have developed our own model-based conformance testing engine. We are now offering this engine, called Abstract, to the general public.

Abstract can be the basis for conformance checkers (ingest bitstreams from any i/o including file or network), monitoring tools (reporting and checking of key values) and procedural bitstreams generation based on custom specifications that can be fed to it. Thus Abstract can also be used to stress-test the robustness and security of your implementation.

Whether you look forward to testing conformance of an encoder or decoder implementation, or monitor conformance of ingested media streams, we deliver solutions tailored to your needs, raising the bar for your QA process, integrating seamlessly with your products.

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Abstract compliance testing framework

Tech Specs

  • supported platforms: Linux / Windows / Mac / Browsers (WebAssembly)
  • available standards: ATSC3 / MIAF / CMAF / AVIF
  • modular approach
  • compatible with hierarchical standards and recommandations
  • separated parsing and validation phases
  • test framework for both valid and invalid tests

Customers

After years in operation, DTS, a company famous for its audio technologies, had written the specifications of the bitstream format of their codecs. These specifications were based on their own software implementation. DTS also had a manually crafted test suite.
DTS mandated Motion Spell to evaluate both the compliance of the specification with their software and the coverage of their test suite. The result of this work allowed DTS to fix issues in their specifications, in their software, in their test suite, and to gain confidence when shipping new versions. As a bonus the modelization of their specification allowed them to generate parsers in any language with only minimal efforts.

As for every new standard, MPEG needed a reference software that would check conformance against the Application Format rules for the “Image File Format Application Format”, better known as MIAF. MIAF and its derivatives are now deployed by all major operating systems and Web browsers, making it available on billions of devices. Motion Spell delivered the compliance testing tool for MIAF.
We compiled it to webassembly, so that it can be used in any recent web browser. As a result the MPEG MIAF implentors and users have benefited from an increased interoperability. MIAF and its derivatives (HEIF, AVIF, …) are the fiercest competitors to replace JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The tool was considered so useful that it received complementary fundings from AOM for the AV1 File Format called AVIF.

ATSC3 marked a major milestone for the US broadcast market, introducing Internet IP elements and mixing them with the traditional broadcast signal. ATSC3 involves more than 40 specifications which makes interoperability tools utterly important. Our ATSC3 live analyzer won an NAB Award as part of the Convergence TV consortium.

By the end of 2020, this popular open-source conformance tool was implementing 8 combined standards. It was processing 200 requests per day from over 1000 unique visitors per year. As a result the service started to become unreliable, regressions were spotted, and adding new features became increasingly costly. The DASH-IF Test and Conformance Working Group assigned the refactoring of the DASH-IF Conformance Software to a consortium led by Motion Spell, in association with Fraunhofer FOKUS.
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