SkyLark has significantly expanded its content moderation workflow, adding automatic object tracking and a new marker-based approach to on-air censorship across video, audio, and captions.
Automatic Object Tracking for Blur and Pixelation
The NewsCut Blur effect can now automatically follow a moving object through the frame.
Instead of manually creating multiple keyframes to keep a blur mask over a face, logo, license plate, or other moving object, an editor can position the mask on the object and start tracking directly from the Effect Editor.
Tracking can continue until the next keyframe or until the object is lost. The generated tracking path remains separate from manually created keyframes, allowing editors to retain full control while using tracking to fill the movement between them.
The tracker works with both traditional blur and pixelation, as well as rectangular and elliptical masks. When possible, tracking analyzes the full-resolution source media for greater accuracy, while automatically falling back to proxy media if the original is unavailable.
Frame-Accurate Marker-Based On-Air Censoring
On-air moderation has also been redesigned around Profanity Start and Profanity End markers stored directly with the media.
Instead of triggering individual censoring effects at approximately the required moment through external commands, playout channels can now be armed in advance and apply moderation automatically when the corresponding markers are crossed during playback.
This provides frame-accurate and repeatable moderation every time the marked content is played.
Three independent moderation categories are supported:
- Video Censoring — blur, pixelation, black box, or freeze
- Audio Censoring — beep or mute
- Caption Replacement — suppression or replacement of captions and subtitles
The required behavior is defined in the media markers themselves, including the blur region, mask shape, strength, pixel size, tracking options, audio mode, and replacement caption content.
Per-Layer Content Moderation
Censoring can now be enabled independently for individual playout layers.
Video and audio processing is applied to the selected layer before final composition, allowing other elements — such as logos, lower thirds, graphics, or voice-over layers — to remain unaffected.
This makes moderation more precise in complex broadcast compositions and allows channels to remain armed for censorship without affecting normal playback until a marked range is encountered.
Consistent Preview and Playout
The same profanity markers used for on-air processing are also visible in the File Monitor and editing workflow, allowing operators to preview the intended moderation before transmission.
Combined markers can define several effects at once, for example applying video blur and audio mute over the same section. Moderation ranges can also continue across clip boundaries, providing consistent processing through programme edits.
With automatic tracking, frame-accurate media markers, and independent control of video, audio, and captions, SkyLark provides a more integrated workflow for preparing and delivering moderated broadcast content.