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Verify Your Content with Our QC Solutions

  • No Long-Term Commitment
  • Personalized Services
  • Usage-Base Pricing
  • Quick Turn Around

No more Content QC headaches

Pulsar makes it incredibly simple!

  • Fastest Analysis Speed
  • Wide range of analysis parameters
  • Widely integrated

6x real-time HD Analysis

Fastest QC

Super charge your workflow

Get the “Rapid” Advantage

  • Quick Scanning & Sorting
  • Workflow Gatekeeper
  • Use for workflow optimization

Adaptive Bitrate QC without hassles

  • Integrated Analysis & Reporting
  • Auto template assignment per encoding
  • Work on on-premise & HTTP URL content

Overview

Pulsar is the fastest, most comprehensive and versatile file-based Automated QC system in the market. It automates quality check and control at every stage of the content life-cycle. With support for latest technologies such as HDR, IMF and 4K, Pulsar allows you to remain ahead of the curve by tackling the quality issues early and efficiently. What’s more, it’s incredibly simple to use! With support for all Broadcast/OTT formats along with wide range of checks, Pulsar is ready to be used in wide range of workflows including Broadcast, Production, Post Production, Media Services, Archiving and Over-the-Top.

Features & Benefits

Fast & Scalable

Fastest QC system in the market with up to 6x faster than real-time analysis speed for HD content and near real-time analysis for JPEG-2000 4K content. Faster QC results into lesser licenses for a given content volume with direct impact on investment in the QC system. It also improves the workflow throughput with quicker access to QC results. You can also easily setup a verification cluster with multiple QC verification units for higher system throughput.

High Dynamic Range

Perform QC of your Dolby-Vision, HDR-10 and HDR-10+ content. You can perform a variety of metadata validation checks along with detailed reporting of HDR parameters. You can also cross-check the video properties between the HDR metadata and the video essence. The HDR toolset in Pulsar is the most comprehensive and can significantly aid in setting up & managing your HDR workflows efficiently.

Interoperable Master Format (IMF)

Pulsar has the most comprehensive support for IMF packages. Some of the key capabilities include:

  • Support for Application# 2E and SMPTE TSP 2121
  • Package validation
  • Supplementary package support
  • CPL and OPL based validation
  • Sidecar composition map validation
  • Photon integration
VOD and Adaptive Bitrate

With built-in support for adaptive bitrate formats as well as fragmented MP4, Pulsar allows users to automate the QC of Video-on-demand assets. Key capabilities include:

  • Formats. MPEG-DASH, Apple HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming
  • Encrypted packages support.
  • Auto-assignment of different QC templates to different encoding profiles.
  • Adaptive bitrate package specific checks to help validate the integrity of ABR packages.
Compliance

Ensure that your content is compliant with country regulations as well as against your customer specifications.

  • Photosensitive Epilepsy using Harding PSE engine & get a Harding certificate for every job.
  • Compliance with Audio loudness against CALM act, EBU R128 and OP-59 recommendations.
  • Compliance with legal luminance & chrominance range or RGB Gamuts.
  • Compliance against presence of Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages in the content.
  • Compliance against Netflix, iTunes, DPP, ARD-ZDF and many other organizations using our ready-to-use factory templates.
Track Layout

Many content application such as Advertisement content delivery, requires certain content segments to be present at head and tail of the content. These content segments may include color bars, black frames, freeze frames, slates, audio mute, tones and silence. You can setup your custom track layouts and validate the overall structure. This can be done in conjunction with the template checks.

Wide range of checks

Quasar – file based QC on Cloud supports a wide range of checks. Small selection of checks are displayed here. Click here for the detailed list.
 Color Gamut

Color Gamut

Flash Frames

Flash Frames

Audio Loudness (Audio Waveform)

Audio Loudness

EAS

EAS

Active Region

Active Region

 Photosensitive Epilepsy

Photosensitive Epilepsy

Audio Peaks

Audio Peaks

Audio Test Tone

Audio Test Tone

Cadence

Cadence

Language ID

Language ID

Audio Clipping

Audio Clipping

Audio Drops

Audio Drops

 Color Gamut

Color Gamut

Active Region

Active Region

Cadence

Cadence

Flash Frames

Flash Frames

 Photosensitive Epilepsy

Photosensitive Epilepsy

Language ID

Language ID

Audio Loudness (Audio Waveform)

Audio Loudness

Audio Peaks

Audio Peaks

Audio Clipping

Audio Clipping

EAS

EAS

Audio Test Tone

Audio Test Tone

Audio Drops

Audio Drops

Formats & Verification Checks

Formats

Container: MXF, GXF, LXF, MOV, MP4, 3GPP, MPEG-2 TS, MPEG-2 PS, FLV, WMV, AVI, Matrox AVI, WAV, BWF, AIFF, DPX, JP2, Smooth Streaming, HLS, MPEG-DASH, IMF, DCP (encrypted and unencrypted), AS-02, AS-11, Elementary

Video: H.265, H.264 (incl. AVC-Intra 50/100 and SONY XAVC), MPEG-2 (incl. D10, XDCAM, HDCAM, IMX-30/50), VC-1, DV (incl. DVCPro25, DVCPro50, DVCPro100/HD), Avid DNxHD (VC-3), Avid DNxHR, Apple ProRes 422 (HQ, SD, LT, Proxy), ProRes 4444, Canopus HQ/HQX, JPEG-2000, Uncompressed (RGB, YUV)

Audio: LPCM, AES3, AC3 (DD), SMPTE 302M, E-AC3 (DD+), MPEG-1/2, AAC, HE-AAC, WMA (Standard & Pro), Dolby-E

HDR: HDR-10, HDR-10+, Dolby Vision

Verification Checks

General: Compliance, Factory templates – Netflix, DPP, ARD-ZDF, Loudness (R128, CALM, OP-59, ARIB), iTunes & CableLabs

IMF/DCP: CPL based analysis, Package validation, CPL cross checks, CPL checks, PKL cross checks, OPL checks, Assetmap check, IMSC checks, Sidecar checks, Netflix Photon validation

ABR: Playlist cross checks. Segment cross checks, Profile cross checks, Encrypted Packages

Video Parameters: Codec, Video Format, Color space, Chroma Format, Color Matrix, Color Primaries, Transfer Characteristics, Scan Mode, Duration, Frame Rate, Resolution, Display/Pixel Aspect Ratio, GOP Length, GOP Type, Field Order, Frame Sizes, Buffer Size, Bitrate (CBR/VBR), Profile/Level, Entropy Coding, Reference Pictures, MBAFF, Timecode Discontinuity, Timecode frame drop, 2020 Color Space, Progression Order, Wavelet Transform

Video Quality: Black Frames, Blockiness, Brightness, Cadence, Chroma Hits, Chroma Line, Clipping, Colored Frames, Color Bars, Color Gamut, Combing, Credit Roll, Camera Dead Pixels, Dead Pixels, Digital Hits, Field Dominance, Flash Frames, Freeze Frames, Luma/Chroma levels, Cadence, Half/Full lines, Bar Artefacts, Letter/Pillar Box, Framing Issue, Photosensitive Epilepsy (Harding)

HDR Parameters: HDR Formats, Reporting of HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision metadata

Static Metadata: Verify (display color primaries, mastering display luminance, content light level)

Dynamic Metadata: Compliance, Validate HDR10+ metadata (MaxSCL, Average Max RGB, Distribution values, Tone mapping information, Targeted system display maximum luminance), Validate Dolby Vision metadata (Metadata version, shot must not contain <0,0,0> in level 1 metadata, Detect duplicate dynamic metadata, Crosscheck canvas aspect ratio, Crosscheck Video track information, Crosscheck (Calculated/metadata) Image aspect ratio

Audio: Audio Codec, Sampling Frequency, Quantization Bits, Channels, Bitrate (CBR/VBR), Drops, Silence, Mute, Test Tones, Loudness (R128, CALM, AGCOM, ARIB, Speech Gated), Loudness Range, Dialnorm, Sample Peak (DBFS, PPM), True Peak, Dual Mono, Clipping, EAS tone, Phase Mismatch, Nielsen Watermarks, Language ID

Container: Conformance, Format, File Size, Media Info metadata dump, File name validation, MD5, SHA1 Hash, No of streams, Incorrect extension

MXF: Version, Operational pattern, Timecode presence/track count/mode/start value/source, Index table presence/location/completeness/correctness, Origin parameters, KLV alignment grid/fill elements, Partitions validity/Status/Completeness/Instance count/Index table presence/Essence presence/Max length, Essence wrapping/external check/referencing/partition strategy, Audio track numbers/element size/channel count/configurations, Descriptive metadata presence/scheme, Run-in sequence, Random index pack, Segmentation track, File package count, Index edit rate, Index duration, Audio/Video sample rate, Audio/Video stream type, Audio/Video edit rate, Video line map, System item presence, Block Align, Channel status mode, Fixed channel status data, Stored F2 offset, Display F2 offset, Sampled X/Y offset, Display X/Y offset, Identical GOP indicator, Edit unit byte count, Slice count, Dark metadata, Timecode frame drop, Audio locked/unlocked status, Audio ref level, Index start position, Single index location, Single essence location, Forward index direction, Image start/end offset, Color siting, Padding bits, Black ref level, White ref level, Color range, Constant B picture flag, Single sequence, Low delay

Transport Streams: SCTE35, Program count, PCR Jitter, Packet Length, PID Usage, PIDs, PID Bitrate, Packet Intervals, PAT checks, PMT checks, Stream checks, PES checks, Language Metadata Verification

QuickTime: Checks and correction for PASP, FIEL, GAMA, CLAP, COLR. Channel Configuration, Track properties, Movie properties, Language Metadata Verification, Check disabled tracks, Check multiple codec entries, Check Timecode properties

Cross Checks:
Video-Container:
Width, Height, Frame rate, Aspect ratio, Bitrate, Profile/Level, Scan mode, Field order, Chroma format, GOP type, GOP length, B-pictures, Low delay, Duration, Component depth

Audio-Container: Sampling frequency, Bit depth, Channels, Bitrate, Duration

Rapid Checks

File Rules Incorrect extension, File Size, Invalid file characters

Video Codec, Video Format, Chroma Format, Colour Matrix, Scan Mode, Duration, Frame Rate, Resolution, Display Aspect Ratio, Pixel Aspect Ratio, Profile/Level, Bit Depth, Buffer Size, Entropy Coding, Reference Pictures, MBAFF

Audio Codec, Sampling Frequency, Quantization Bits, Channels, Profile

Container Format, No of Video/Audio streams, Track Duration, PASP, GAMA, CLAP, FIEL, COLR, Channel Configuration

Workflow Integration

Pulsar is based on SOA architecture and exposes XML/SOAP APIs for integration. Pulsar has been integrated with multiple leading suppliers in the industry. SDK is available for free with access to sample codes, WSDL and documentation, using which you can easily integrate Pulsar with your workflow management system. Check out our technology partners or write to us for more details.

Customer Testimonials

Estonian Public Broadcasting

Pulsar is an important addition to our infrastructure and will help us obtain higher operational efficiencies from our content workflows. We looked at major QC players in the market and selected Pulsar because of its high performance and accuracy of results. As Public Broadcaster, we verify new material coming daily from production and will use Pulsar for that but even more important role of Pulsar would be to keep an eye on large volumes of old archive material being mass-digitized from analogue tapes with its QC reports

Heiki Mannik
Coordinator of Digital Archiving, Estonian Public Broadcasting

Heiki Mannik
Coordinator of Digital Archiving, Estonian Public Broadcasting
AMC Network

Given our positive experience with our initial Pulsar installation in improving the quality of the content in our file-based workflow, as well as Venera’s ongoing support and responsiveness to our requests since our first Pulsar installation in 2013, we chose to expand our QC operations with additional Pulsar systems, which we have found provide us the best value and ROI.

Michael Mallozzi
VP of Broadcast Engineering & System Design, AMC Networks

Michael Mallozzi
VP of Broadcast Engineering & System Design, AMC Networks
encompass

In Pulsar we have found the combination of simplicity, performance and features that we have been looking for in a media file QC software

Vincent S. Lyons
Vice President of Digital Media Services, Encompass Digital Media

Vincent S. Lyons
Vice President of Digital Media Services, Encompass Digital Media
Evan Anthony Testimony

"Pulsar QC is a great addition to my services. It also did find a hard to find dead pixels."

Evan Anthony
CSI, DI Colorist/Post Finishing Editor

Evan Anthony
CSI, DI Colorist/Post Finishing Editor

Pulsar Editions

  Professional Standard Basic Pay-Per-Use
No of simultaneous files 4 1 1 1
Maximum cores 32 8 4 4
Verification Unit cluster Yes No No No
Watch Folders Yes Yes Yes No
Web Service API Yes Yes No No
Media Player * * * * *
Controller Plus * * No No No
DD/DD+ * * * * No
Dolby-E * * * * No
Nielsen watermark * * * No No
Loudness correction * * * * *
VC-1, WMA Yes Yes No No
JPEG-2000 Yes Yes No Yes
Fast JPEG-2000 * * No Yes
HEVC Yes Yes No Yes
Adaptive Bitrate Formats Yes Yes No No
Harding PSE * * * * *
IMF/DCP Yes Yes No Yes
Image sequence Yes Yes No Yes
HDR Yes Yes No Yes
Track Layout Yes Yes No Yes
Audio Language Identification * * * No

* Optional feature

Verification Unit Cluster: Ability to cluster multiple Verification Units together to process a larger number of files simultaneously.
Controller Plus: Ability to provide automatic fail-over redundancy for the Pulsar Controller.
Media Player: Media player linked with Pulsar reports for visual review.
Audio Language Identification: Auto-identification of audio language from audio media data.

Pulsar Professional
  • Perpetual license
  • Ability to process four files at a time
  • Can use up to 32 Cores
  • Fastest Edition of Pulsar
  • Ideal for high volume operations
Pulsar Standard
  • Perpetual license
  • Ability to process one file at a time
  • Can use up to 8 cores
  • Ideal for normal operations
Pulsar Basic
  • Perpetual license
  • Ability to process one file at a time
  • Can use up to 4 cores
  • Ideal for low content volume operations
Pulsar PPU
  • Usage-based pricing
  • No permanent license
  • Only solution of its kind in the market
  • Ability to process one file at a time
  • Capable of Harding PSE
  • Ideal for low volume occasional use

Recent Blog Post

Latest Post On Home Page
Media offline is a term used to describe the situation where a portion of a content is inaccessible or cannot be played due to a technical error, a missing media segment, or other reasons.   How does this happen? One of the most important steps during the post-production process for a content is ‘Editing’. A typical editing project comprises many media clips and segments that are stitched together in the timeline, in order to create the complete content. A professional editing solution keeps references to all these segments and allows publishing of the final render once the editing process is completed. These media segments can reside in various storage such as SD-Card, SAN, NAS, USB, HDD, etc. Imagine a scenario where a fresh piece of content is received on an SD card. The editor inserts this SD card into the Editing software and adds the media files on the SD card on to the editing timeline. It looks all good at preview and the editor saves the project. The editor comes the next day, removes the SD card while continuing to work on the editing project. On previewing the file, the editor suddenly sees “Media Offline” image in the video. This “Media offline” image is inserted by the Editing solution when the referenced media is not accessible due to the removal of the SD card. This can also happen if a media file is deleted, moved, renamed or simply becomes inaccessible in a network storage. It can also happen due to slow access to the storage. The actual “Media Offline” image also varies across different editing solutions. Here are some examples:     Unfortunately, human mistakes & network issues continue to happen in the editing environment and therefore, such a scenario is common. However, the presence of “Media Offline” segments in the final content delivered out of the post-production process is completely unacceptable. Its presence will lead to content rejection, thereby damaging the reputation of the post-production house. If the issue is detected in time before delivery, rectification is fairly easy as it is only a matter of providing correct reference to the missing media file inside the editing solution.   How to rectify “Media Offline”? Comprehensive rectification requires timely & accurate detection of “Media offline” issues in the content. There are two ways of detecting media offline: manual and automated.   Manual Method to Detect Media Offline The manual method involves an operator manually checking the content to determine if the “Media Offline” image is present in the content. The image can be present for a few frames or for a longer duration, depending on the length of missing content. This will require an operator to watch through the entire content, which can be a time-consuming process and is prone to human errors.   Automated Method to Detect Media Offline An Automated QC solution can detect “Media offline” in the content without any manual intervention. An operator just needs to configure the template in the video QC software and the rest is done automatically. This test by the video quality checker software is also accurate and therefore, can be relied upon without a need for a manual scan. Using an Automated File QC solution for this detection is faster and more efficient than manual methods, thereby helping optimize the content workflows.   Pros and Cons of Manual and Automatic Methods There are hardly any cons of using Automated methods, as the investment in QC software is easily offset by the cost savings by eliminating manual intervention. Venera offers a wide range of Automated QC solutions – both for on-premise (Pulsar) and Cloud deployment (Quasar). Quasar & Pulsar are perfect solutions for automated media offline detection, allowing you to detect and fix media offline issues quickly and efficiently. This helps minimize the impact of such QC issues on production timelines and budgets while retaining the reputation of the post-production company. By relying on Quasar & Pulsar, post-production houses can be certain that content delivered by them to their customers is free of “Media Offline” issues. Venera’s QC solutions are also highly customizable, allowing users to configure them to their specific needs and requirements. Users can choose to invest upfront in a QC software license or can pay on a usage basis. With these options available, using a QC solution to detect and eliminate Media Offline issues efficiently is easy & feasible for everyone.   We hope this article has been informative and helpful in understanding media offline and its implications on media production. We would love to hear about your experiences and tips for dealing with media offline. Please share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments section below. [...]
The presence of captions and subtitles with digital media files has become more prominent and nearly universal. We often see content creators and distributors contemplate the difference between a Caption Authoring system and a Caption/Subtitle QC system and whether they are both needed. So, we thought it is worthwhile to clarify and differentiate the role each software category provides. Caption/Subtitle Authoring and Caption/Subtitle QC remain two separate and distinct activities. While caption authoring is used to create captions and subtitles, caption QC is an increasingly important part of any caption/subtitle workflow in order to ensure the optimum end-user experience when viewing captions. The caption QC until recently, had remained a time-consuming and resource intensive manual process. The advent of advanced and automated caption QC software, such as CapMate from Venera Technologies, is now providing a logical alternative to the tedious manual caption QC process, allowing automation of a large portion of this process. To further clarify and differentiate between caption authoring tools and caption QC tools, we will examine some scenarios to help you appreciate the importance of specialized caption QC systems.   Caption/Subtitle Creation A common authoring system will let you generate raw captions using ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) technology that provides the first draft of the captions. An operator is required to then add the captions missed by the ASR technology and properly align/format all the captions as needed. Authoring systems may provide basic measurements such as CPS (Characters Per Second), WPM (Words Per Minutes) and CPL (Characters Per Line) that will allow you to rectify the basic ‘timing’ issues. Since the raw captions are generated by the tool itself, they are expected to be aligned with the converted audio. However, the responsibility of aligning any new captions you add lies with you. Authoring tools probably can not provide any analysis capabilities for sync issues on the user added segments. Another common requirement is to ensure that the captions are not placed on top of burnt-in text in the video. Again, you will have to manually ensure that no such overlapping sections exist in the video and an operator will have to watch the entire video content in order to ensure this. The full review of the caption/video is similarly required for many other common issues. So, while an authoring system allows you to create, edit and format your captions efficiently, it usually doesn’t provide rich analysis capabilities to QC the captions. The responsibility of detecting basic issues and correcting them lies with you.   Caption/Subtitle Compliance Let’s take this a step further. In today’s world, ensuring the basic sanity of captions is not enough. Every major broadcaster or OTT service provider or educational content provider has its own technical specifications for the captions it requires. There can be many such requirements, a few of which are as follows: – Max number of lines of caption per screen. – Minimum and Maximum duration of each caption. – Captions sync aligned with audio to a maximum specified sub-second threshold. – All captions to be placed at the bottom third of the screen, while avoiding burnt-in text overlay. In case of overlap, another position may be used. – Detection of profanity (words defined by the user to be unacceptable) – Spelling checks. Caption/Subtitle Editing So far, we have discussed only the Caption creation scenario. However, a lot of times, an existing caption file needs to be repurposed because of editing in the audio-visual content. Such changes can include the addition of certain video segments, removal of segments, changing caption location based on customer guidelines, or frame rate changes. We have encountered many cases where the customers have been trying to use the original captions with such edited content, which leads to a lot of issues. Detecting and correcting such issues manually can be time-consuming and resource intensive. Since authoring tools do not usually provide auto-analysis capabilities, they can’t help with the detection of such issues. The only way you can use caption authoring systems in this case is to use their user interface and detect/correct such issues manually. Any compromise in this manual process will lead to missed issues in the content delivered to the customers/content owner. This will effectively mean multiple iterations, causing further delays and affecting customer satisfaction before the captions are accepted by the customer. This is where the caption QC tools come in. Caption QC systems address these issues head-on by performing auto-detection (and in case of advanced systems like CapMate, auto-correction) for a wide-range of caption issues. With configurable QC templates, you can set up the checks you needed, define the acceptable thresholds, and let the system do its job. Since the aim of such systems is the analysis, the entire interface is designed to make the analysis and spotting quick & efficient. You only need to act upon the issues reported by the caption QC system. An intelligent caption QC system such as CapMate also provides features to automatically correct many of the issues found, as well as a rich review/editing tool, using which you can easily browse through the reported issues and make the appropriate manual corrections efficiently. They no longer need to watch the entire content.   Not using captions QC tools means that the responsibility of detecting and correcting all captions issues lies with you, which is time-consuming and resource intensive, not to mention error-prone. While it is understood that the concept of ‘Automated Captions QC & Correction’ is relatively new but adopting such a system can lead to significant business benefits. Our customers who have adopted the use of CapMate into their workflow are benefiting from the efficiencies gained in their caption QC operations from the insights provided by the tool along with its auto-correction abilities. In conclusion, Caption QC and Caption Authoring tools serve different and complimentary purposes in the caption workflow operation and do their respective jobs in an excellent manner. While Caption QC tools are not intended for caption authoring, Caption Authoring tools are also not well-suited, nor are they intended, for efficient caption QC process. Using both tools judiciously in a workflow can lead to higher quality caption deliveries with more efficient use of the experienced QC operators. About CapMate™ CapMate™ is a Cloud Native SaaS service for Captions/Subtitles QC and Correction. Whether you are a Captioning service provider, OTT service provider, Broadcaster or a Captioning platform, CapMate can significantly improve your workflow efficiency with its automatic analysis, rich review, spotting, and correction capabilities. Once completed, you can export the finished captions for direct use in production. Get in touch with us today and we would love to discuss with you how we can help you solve your content QC challenges efficiently! [...]
Many of our customers had been telling us that the process of validating and correcting closed caption files is tedious, time consuming and costly! And that they needed an innovative QC solution for caption and subtitle files, similar to what we have done for Audio/Video QC. We took that request to heart and have introduced CapMate, the first comprehensive cloud native caption QC software that provides verification and correction of captions and subtitle files. In fact, CapMate is so innovative and bleeding edge that many are not even aware of such a solution category! Of course, there are a large selection of capable programs in the ‘captioning’ category that allow for creation of caption and subtitle files. However, until CapMate came around, there was NO solution to address the dire need for an innovative automated software for caption QC that could find caption related issues, much less fix them! Before CapMate, caption verification and correction was a painfully slow, manual, and error prone process. And so starting with this blog post and following up with a series of short blogs, I would like to introduce you to this new category of software and tell you more about CapMate! Let me start by giving you the highlights! CapMate: Is a cloud-native solution that can work with your local content or those in the AWS cloud Has been in heavy production use for over a year and so it already is a robust and proven solution Helps drastically reduce the amount of time needed to verify and fix caption files, improving operational efficiency Supports all the major caption formats such as SCC, SRT, IMSC, EBU-STL, and many more Has usage-based pricing (monthly/annual/ad-hoc) so you only pay for what you use Can detect the most common and difficult caption issues, like Sync, Text Overlap, missing caption, and many more Can also correct these issues, in most cases automatically, and allow you to generate a new clean caption file And so much more…. You can see a short 1-min clip highlighting CapMate’s features here. Be on a look out for CapMate 102, the next blog in this series where I will write about one of the key features of CapMate, its ability to accurately detect and correct caption sync issues! At any time that you think CapMate may be the subtitle QC software solution you have been looking for, contact us (sales@stage.veneratech.com), and we are happy to give you a live demo of CapMate and set you up with a FREE trial account!     [...]

Video Resources

Interview with Jan Klier

MetalToad interview: Cloud QC

Pulsar file-based QC overview

Pulsar/Quasar at SMPTE 2016