10 November 2020, Alkmaar, Netherlands – Mobile Viewpoint, a Dutch based developer and manufacturer of live streaming technology solutions for the streaming-media and broadcast market, have announced a world first combination of 5G and AI during a live remote tv production. As part of this year’s virtual IBC ‘Showcase’ event, they successfully demonstrated a live stream of a celebrity music act over 5G that included a camera setup driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) without the need of onsite camera people or a director.
The AI demonstration over 5G was part of IBC’s Media Innovation focused Accelerator programme. The Accelerator programme, which is championed by ten global broadcasters to promote innovation, is designed as a framework for multi-broadcasters to collaborate and to push the boundaries of new technologies, which in this case was focused on emerging 5G mobile connectivity capabilities. The project team was comprised of ‘Champions’ led by the BBC, together with Al Jazeera Media Network, BT Sport, EBU, ITV, Olympic Broadcasting Services, SVT, TV2, ViacomCBS Networks International (VCNI) and Yle, who worked with Mobile Viewpoint as a vendor participant in this ground breaking project. This culminated in a live stream of Emma Heesters, an MTV award winning rising music star, direct from a boat via 5G in Amsterdam back to a London production centre, where it was live streamed over the internet to a global audience as part of the IBC’s virtual ‘Showcase’ week.
Mobile Viewpoint has for over a decade been innovators of encoding and live streaming solutions for remote production and outside broadcast to a range of global broadcasters and TV production companies. What started out as H264 bonding solutions over multiple bonded 3G networks, has now evolved to H.265 solutions over bonded 5G solutions supporting 4K and multiple cameras on a single encoder. However, in the last two years Mobile Viewpoint have been investing additional development resource into AI driven production systems that includes automated camera control without the need of local camera personnel.
“The IBC Accelerator programme is a framework to support industry collaboration and innovation,” said Mark Smith, leading the programme at IBC. “Despite Covid-19 putting the brakes on this years IBC show, the team behind this unique collaboration of world leading broadcasting Champions were determined to showcase new 5G-enabled remote production capabilities produced and streamed live from Amsterdam and London. Mobile Viewpoint’s ever evolving AI platform gave an insight to what is possible today but also gave a glimpse into what will be shaping the broadcast world in the future. AI coupled with 5G is an exciting combination for potentially many outside broadcast and remote production set-ups of the future, at festivals, news, public events and in sport, for example.”
Project lead, Ian Wagdin, Senior Technology Transfer Manager at BBC R&D said: “Our challenge earlier this year was to explore and understand the ‘art of the possible’ in terms a 5G-powered broadcast system based on current and future use cases, and a series of production scenarios in the field. Seeing Emma Heesters as the culmination of all our hard-work being live streamed over the 5G network from Amsterdam, being driven by AI, was a major highlight of the whole event.”
Michel Bais, Managing Director at Mobile Viewpoint concludes “We are so privileged to be involved with such a range of esteemed broadcasters and major thanks to the people at IBC to give us the opportunity to showcase our AI and encoder technology working together in such a professional and celebrity studded environment. To achieve a world’s first of successfully mixing AI and 5G in TV broadcasting was something that up until now was unproven, and this was a massive boost for us. We really welcomed all the feedback from the champions and are looking forward to continue our innovation based on their future needs and requirements. We look forward to coming back again next year to showcase our next level of futuristic possibilities.”
The 5G Remote Production live stream is available to view on the IBC website www.ibc.org/ibcshowcase
About Mobile Viewpoint: With global customers including major broadcasters and TV production companies, Mobile Viewpoint are global innovators in mobile live streaming solutions for Outside Broadcast and surveillance solutions. With over 10 years of broadcast experience, they continue to innovate their WMT mobile encoders for live streaming over 4G and 5G, and continue as a world leader in developing AI solutions for automated news and sports productions for automated sports production. Based in the Netherlands, customers includes BBC, Sky News, Al-Arabiya and the Premier League as well as range of law enforcement and emergency first responders. https://www.vislink.com
About IBC: IBC empowers content everywhere through the world’s most influential media, entertainment and technology show, attracting thousands of attendees from more than 150 countries and combining a highly respected and peer-reviewed conference with an exhibition that showcases 1,700+ leading industry suppliers of state-of-the-art technology. In addition to the world-class exhibition and conference, IBC also encompasses the IBC Daily, IBCTV, IBC Showcase and IBC365.
About IBC’s Accelerator Programme: IBC’s Accelerator programme is a framework to foster agile, fast-track and collaborative innovation to support the media & entertainment technology ecosystem. Accelerators are projects that are created and led by broadcasters, studios and other content providers, who as ‘Champions’ set out their critical business or technology challenges. IBC facilitates POC management and team assembly, including the recruitment of Co-Champions that share similar challenges, and specialist Participant vendors, suppliers and solutions providers, who join forces and work together to solve the challenge within a short-sprint of 4-5 months, leading up to the IBC Showcase. More at
www.ibc.org/ibcshowcase/programmes/accelerator-programme
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