Install qctools with Homebrew Cask

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

No executable aliases were found in the local package database.

Project history

QCTools originated as an open-source video-preservation quality-control project led by the Bay Area Video Coalition. It was built to reduce the time required to inspect digitized and born-digital video and to direct expert attention toward actionable defects.

The project added the qcli command-line interface in the 0.8 series, reached 1.0 in 2018, redesigned its player for 1.1, and added panel tracks and QCVault in 1.2. MediaArea now maintains the official project site and repository.

Adoption history

QCTools was designed and led by Dave Rice and the Bay Area Video Coalition, with initial funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Knight Foundation and development contributions from MediaArea, Fabio Utzig, and Alexander Ivash.

Institutional support continued through releases sponsored by organizations including the New York Public Library, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and George Blood LP.

How it is used

Users open audiovisual files to graph frame-level measurements such as luma, chroma, temporal outliers, broadcast-range violations, and field differences, then inspect suspicious regions with analytical playback filters.

QCTools reports can be integrated into preservation metadata and batch workflows. Recent FFmpeg can generate compatible analysis data for later review in QCTools, while qcli supports command-line processing.

Why package nerds care

QCTools packages FFmpeg-based signal analysis into an approachable graphical preservation workflow while also supplying qcli for automation. It is valuable to archivists who need reproducible, inspectable quality-control reports rather than proprietary black-box analysis.

Its report format follows FFprobe metadata conventions, and the underlying signalstats analysis became part of FFmpeg. This connects a specialist archival application to the broader open-source multimedia toolchain.

Timeline

• 2017: QCTools 0.8 adds the qcli command-line interface.
• 2018: QCTools 1.0 is released.
• 2020: Version 1.1 introduces a redesigned player.
• 2020: Version 1.2 adds panel tracks and QCVault.
• 2023: Version 1.3 refactors analysis and playback around QtAVPlayer.

Related projects

• FFmpeg and FFprobe provide the codec, container, filtering, and metadata foundations used by QCTools.
• MediaArea maintains related preservation and media-inspection projects including MediaInfo, MediaConch, MediaTrace, DV Analyzer, and DVRescue.
• The A/V Artifact Atlas complements QCTools by documenting audiovisual defects and anomalies.

Sources

• https://github.com/MediaArea/QCTools
• https://github.com/MediaArea/QCTools/blob/master/History.txt
• https://mediaarea.net/QCTools
• https://mediaarea.net/QCTools/Getting_Started
• source_facts.package-manager.brew-cask