Telestream, a provider of digital video tools and workflow solutions today announced that the latest version of Switch now includes new professional visual inspection tools to create affordable QC workflows for post production and video professionals. New features include external preview to AJA video hardware products that turn any PC or Mac into a professional QC workstation; new professional Audio Meters with loudness monitoring; support for new export formats and extended caption support. Telestream is also announcing Switch Plus, an enhanced version of the award-winning media player that allows media professionals to play, inspect, and transcode their multi-format media for just $49.

“Switch is the industry’s only cross-platform player that includes extensive format support, full captioning playback, deep audio inspection (including loudness monitoring), as well as export, and distribution capabilities. It is a powerful and affordable visual QC tool that replaces the multitude of players, inspectors, analyzers and converters that broadcast and post-production professionals have been relying on to do their jobs,” says Barbara DeHart Vice President Desktop Business.

Switch is now available in 3 versions: Switch Player (free), includes basic player and inspection functionality; the all new Switch Plus ($49) for video editors and post-production professionals who need to play, inspect, and fix their media; and Switch Pro ($295) for professionals who need features to play, QC, fix and deliver their media. All 3 versions can be downloaded at www.telestream.net/switch.

The new Switch Plus includes all the features of Switch Player and adds playback support for HEVC and MPEG-2 on Windows, AC3 audio, as well as extensive caption and subtitle playback support, so that users can easily playback secondary caption files to verify timing and accuracy.  Caption support includes CEA-608 & CEA-708 captions, as well SCC, DVB, TTML (iTT and SMPTE-TT captions) and WebVTT, SRT and STL subtitle files. Switch Plus also includes Audio Meters to display true-peaks and momentary loudness values as well as the ability to make changes and export to a new file (MPEG-4, QuickTime MOV and MPEG-2 program streams and transport streams).

The latest version of Switch Pro includes all the features of Switch Plus and adds additional playback support for DNxHD, DNxHR and JPEG2000 files. Switch Pro also adds a loudness panel that calculates gated (BS1770-3) and ungated (BS1770-2) loudness; as well as external preview output enabling support for HDMI/SDI hardware output via AJA devices to preview and quality check final files. This makes Switch Pro ideal for customers who are looking for an affordable option to visually QC their files on a professional calibrated broadcast monitor. AJA video hardware products supported include: KONA 4, KONA 3G, T-TAP, Io 4K and Io XT.

“For content creators doing critical visual QC, the combination of Switch and AJA provides a powerful low-cost solution that turns any Mac or PC into a high-quality visual QC workstation,” says Nick Rashby, President at AJA.