Broadcast Tech Talks

This podcast is a recording of a speaker session from the AI Creative Summit, held at BFI Southbank, London, in November. The session, called Generative AI & the Art of Storytelling, looks at where Artificial Intelligence can push the boundaries of storytelling; how it disrupts traditional methods of conveying a narrative; and how the industry might harness generative AI and ChatGPT. The panellists talk about how AI will be the catalyst for new forms of storytelling – bringing illustrations to life, creating immersive theatre environments, adding the ability to speak to characters in a narrative context, and more.  Talking about their current use of AI, one of the panellists says their whole team has to use it every day, for everything from mundane tasks to generating short form video scripts, for which they say it does a great job. The panel's use of AI includes for creating post-production deep fakes to make someone speak in different languages and recording professional-sounding voiceover from a smartphone microphone. The panel also talks about the ability to monetise the use of AI by selling prompts to get the most out of GenAI for generating scripts, and how certain jobs in the industry including rotoscoping will likely to replaced by AI. More specifically, one panellist says AI will not steal your jobs but people who know how to use it may. Another panellist believes AI will eventually be better than us at making TV programmes and “might even kill us, but we might as well enjoy it while it lasts”. Speakers: Guy Gadney, Co-Founder & CEO - Charisma.ai Eline van der Velden, CEO & Founder - Particle6 Alex Hryniewicz, Director of Content - Little Dot Studios Chair: John Cassy, CEO & Founder - Factory 42

The Business of AI: Tools of the Trade - Where Artificial Intelligence Can Make a Real Difference Discover how much of a game-changer AI and machine learning is, and how it's benefitting broadcast businesses. Find out how the industry is looking to adapt, what technologies and AI tools have already been adopted, and how to keep on top of innovative technologies in such a rapidly evolving market place. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast is the full recording of a speaker session at the AI Creative Summit held at BFI Southbank, London on 16 November. The speakers:    Maria Ingold, Strategy & Innovation CTO - mireality Connagh Flynn, Senior Insights Manager - Formula E Asa Bailey, Writer & Director - BAILEY AI Film Company Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data & AI Officer - ITV Philippe Petitpont, CEO & Co-Founder - Newsbridge

In the first episode of the new series of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, Jake Bickerton talks to Trevor Back from Speechmatics and Mira Pelovska from Broadteam about large language models and the future of multilingual automatic speech recognition. The focus of the episode is about how AI-driven speech-to-text engines can more accurately and more effectively handle different dialects and accents, and what goes into the machine learning training to enable this to happen. Trevor and Mira explain in straightforward terms what's currently possible for applications such as live subtitling utilising speech recognition, and how highly trained AI from Speechmatics makes it possible to cope with different voices from around the world and produce highly accurate speech transcriptions in a matter of seconds. The podcast also covers what the future holds for AI-driven transcription and translation services as their accuracy and abilities continue to grow, especially with the introduction of genAI enabling a move from speech transcription to speech comprehension. What this means in practice is Speechmatics will, in the future, be able to understand what was said, how it was said and the context in which it was said, which will have a huge range of benefits and potential uses within the broadcast industry.

​For this week’s episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Warner Bros. Discovery’s director of graphics and innovation, Alex Dinnin, and Vizrt’s head of sport, Andy O’Neil, about the state of play and future of virtual studios. The pair reveal how Warner Bros. Discovery created the TNT Sports studios from scratch, and has managed to centralise its virtual studios for Eurosport across Europe – including innovative uses of space and technology. In addition, they discuss what’s next for virtual studios, and how advances in technology could see them become indistinguishable from real studios for viewers at home.

For this edition of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Azimuth head of audio Kate Davis and HHB CTO John Johnson about how AI is changing the way post-production is completed. AI, or machine learning, has long been used in post, but recent years have seen its use grow at an increasing rate. Audio post is one of the most talked about areas for AI, with new tools that can clean up poorly recorded audio, replace dubbing by replicating an actor’s voice in another language, and more meaning that it is a hotbed for innovation. Davis and Johnson reveal what they have already seen being done in the industry, and what could be coming in the next 12 months.

E-commerce business Must Have Ideas has launched an AI-powered TV channel, and Broadcast Tech speak to co-founder and director Amy Knight plus head of Broadcast Michael Wood about how they've done this. The channel aims to look live, while actually being 30 pre-recorded segments that were filmed in an NDI studio. These segments are automatically scheduled and stitched together by an in-house AI tool, which Must Have Ideas has named Spark, and the hope is that no two shows will look or feel the same. 

In this episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, senior reporter Max Miller speaks to Forever Audio’s senior sound engineer Alistair Bolt and ADR manager Gabriel Dutru about the present and future of ADR. Delving into the best techniques for the area, the pair speak about how to work with actors, directors, and producers, as well as how to prepare for ADR in production and when it works best. In addition, the conversation turns to the future of ADR, and the tech advances, such as automation and AI cleanup services, that could have an effect on it going forwards.

TikTok head of UK media partnerships, Normanno Pisani and BBC Studios VP commercial, digital, Matt Ford talk to Broadcast Tech & Sport Group editorial director, Jake Bickerton, about how BBC Studios is bringing high-profile properties, including Top Gear, Eastenders and Doctor Who to the TikTok platform. Pisani and Ford discuss how they have been working together to plan the content mix and editorial tone of the different BBC Studios' TikTok accounts, in advance of their launch on the short-form video giant. The podcast offers advice for all content creators on how to plan and roll out a successful TikTok account; how to create 'trends' on TikTok and utilise existing trends; and how to ensure your account complements your broader content strategy across social media. Pisani and Ford also talk about the rapid growth of vertical video and how to best present content in this format.

Outside broadcasts, post-production and studios provider Timeline CEO Dan McDonnell and head of operations Dave Harnett talk to Broadcast Tech reporter Max Miller about the company's recent expansion in Ealing. It has opened a 9,700 sq ft broadcast facility specifically designed for remote productions, and including a 2,000 sq ft virtual studio space. McDonnell and Harnett explain the thinking behind the facility, and how it's been designed to complement the company's existing range of live production services. They also discuss the future of live production, sustainability in production and the possibilities opened up by virtual studios. The podcast also covers the impact on the outside broadcast industry of the collapse of Arena TV, and why Timeline are continuing to invest in outside broadcast trucks despite the huge growth in remote production over the last few years.

Virtual production experts Final Pixel join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to provide invaluable insight into the burgeoning world of virtual production. Final Pixel's Monica Hinden, Chris McKenna and Michael McKenna talk in-depth about what virtual production offers producers; the long list of advantages for filmmaking in an LED Volume stage; and the planning and approach required to maximise the potential of virtual production. The Final Pixel team bring to life the world of virtual production through real-life examples, showcasing where they have worked with a wide range of clients across a variety of genres to create fully immersive environments that make great use of real-time, in-camera VFX. 

Fadi Radi, director of creative at Al Arabiya News Channel, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how an ambitious mix of state-of-the-art virtual studios and virtual production sets are being used to visualise the week's biggest news stories. Every week, Al Arabiya creates a new eye-catching virtual set, immersing the viewer in a virtual world related to the topic under discussion. The environments created in these extended reality (XR) sets are whatever the editorial requires, with the presenter seamlessly embedded into the scene. So far, they have included the Amazon rain forest, an underwater scene, a space scene, immersive 360-degree views of Afghanistan and Iran, and the blood stream. The quick-turnaround sets are created using a combination of Unreal engine and Vizrt for tracking the camera movement in real-time. Vizrt chief technology officer Gerhard Lang also joins the podcast to explain how Vizrt works in partnership with Al Arabiya News Channel to enable the broadcaster to fulfill its editorial vision.

Gareth Capon, CEO of 'video production, editing and publishing in the cloud' platform Grabyo talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how the sports production sector is transitioning to cloud-based working. Capon talks about how Grabyo evolved from a sole focus on live video clipping to full-scale live production in the cloud, with its product range now including tools for packaging and streaming live broadcasts, post-production editing and live clipping and distribution. He also reveals what he believes to be the future of live video production, with flexible, lightweight browser-based tools becoming the norm across all forms of sports production.

Cara Kotschy, the former managing director of leading post-production house Fifty Fifty talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about her decision to quit her role last year and how she’s been busy creating a new model for the post-production house of the future. Kotschy was only 28-years old when she became MD of current Broadcast Post-Production House of the Year, Fifty Fifty, and spent a decade in the role before she stepped down, to the surprise of the post-production community. Following a number of consultancy roles, Kotschy has spent her time devising a new type of post-production facility, which is dedicated to becoming best-of-breeds in a specific niche service, offers fully flexible working, recruits a diverse workforce from all areas of the community, and is based on a co-operative business model. She explains her vision and her timescales for rolling out her new take on the post-production facility during this enlightening episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast series.

BT Sport COO, Jamie Hindhaugh and BT Sport director of mobile strategy, Matt Stagg talk to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the broadcaster's Innovate 21 competition. Innovate 21 is the latest in a series of large-scale competitions run by BT Sport seeking ideas for forward-thinking new sports broadcast experiences. The previous incarnations of Innovate have resulted in BT Sport teaming up with two products – Sceenic (which won the 2018 BT Infinity Lab competition), and Seenit (the winner of the 2016 BT Infinity Lab competition). Sceenic has worked with BT Sport to support last year’s launch of Watch Together on the BT Sport App, and Seenit has enabled fans to send in short video reports and comments from stadia around the country as part of BT Sport’s Premier League Tonight show. Innovate 21 is looking for entrepreneurs, creatives and start-ups to pitch products and services that will play a significant role in BT Sport’s broadcasts and productions.

Mike Cronk, vice president of advanced technology for Grass Valley talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how to make the transition to the cloud as straightforward and cost-effective as possible for media companies. The bandwidth and technical requirements for media companies has made the move to cloud-based working more challenging than many other industries, and there’s also latency issues that come into play too. To address these issues, minimise latency, and enable true live cloud production, Grass Valley recently launched a cloud product that’s been specially designed for the production and broadcast industries – the Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP). It has also created something it calls the GV Media Universe that is attempting to bring the industry together to work on the next generation of cloud-based services. Cronk explains all this technology and talks about how it’s been used to enable seamless live high-quality cloud production on 20+ camera events, including the EA Sports FIFA 2021 European qualifiers. For this event, the camera feeds originated in the UK, the signals were processed in a data centre on the East coast of the US, and the vision mixer was 3,000 miles away in California.

Jamie Hindhaugh, COO at BT Sport and Sam Kemp, marketing technology director at EE join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to talk about an innovative new set of features on the BT Sport app called the Match Day Experience. It's a collection of complementary tools that enhance live matches with a series of immersive features. These include AR insights and behind-the-scenes stadium tours, a 'Watch Together' function, and a 360-degree 8K pitch view so you can watch a high quality image of the game from any angle of your choice. The real-time AR graphical insights offered by the Match Day Experience include team line-ups and formations; in-game stats and graphics augmented on the pitch; a mini-map tracking the positions of all players for a tactical viewpoint; player names; player speeds; and tracers marking the path of shots.

Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton talks with Daniel New, operations manager, BBC Global News; Byron Wijayawardena, strategic development manager, UK and Ireland, Adobe; and Ben Foakes, founder, Base Media Cloud, about how to create virtualised Adobe editing workstations to enable news editors to work from any location.

BBC Breakfast editor Richard 'Fredi' Frediani has been in his role for a year. And what a year it's been. It's fair to say coping with the pandemic and its impact on the 20 year old BBC show has been a key challenge he wasn't predicting when he took up the role. The programme is famously built around the red sofa, with guests dropping into the studio each day. With this no longer possible as lockdown hit, the whole look and feel of BBC Breakfast had to change, almost overnight. The changes were sweeping and affected everything going on in front of and behind the camera. This podcast explains what happened next, and how the show adapted to enable it to continue producing three hours of television every morning. Standing still was not an option, with Zoom, Skype and Facetime suddenly becoming a central part of the production. The podcast also covers how BBC Breakfast has managed to continue doing outside broadcasts, including the live broadcast of Captain Tom walking his 100th lap, which went out exclusively on BBC Breakfast.

This episode of Broadcast Tech Talks is with Greg Rochford, IT manager at Little Dot Studios and Michael Clayton, sales account executive at BASE Media Cloud. They talk with Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how they worked together to transition Little Dot Studios to the cloud. It's a journey that began five years ago, and has paid dividends during lockdown with everyone able to seamlessly work and access all production assets from any location. Little Dot has 1.4PB of data (and counting) in the cloud on accelerated secure cloud storage. An Iconik smart media management platform plugs into this cloud storage, and when new content is added it's automatically scanned, transcoded and made into proxies, ready for editors to work on. The setup is discussed during this podcast, as well as why Little Dot Studios still needs a big London office despite the cloud enabling all its staff to work remotely.

Sunset+Vine chairman Jeff Foulser talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the sports production company's successful bid to become the host broadcaster of the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham. Sunset+Vine will produce more than 2,000 hours of coverage from the games; a 12-part documentary series leading up to the games; and coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies. It is also creating a Host Broadcast Training Initiative to give under-represented groups in and around the Birmingham area the opportunity to receive training to work with the Sunset+Vine team on the Commonwealth Games.