It was not our first time at the International Broadcasting Convention, but the first time with a physical presence in the form of a demo pod. Since we knew that smaller booths are less attractive, our choice was to team up with one of our latest integrators and make a joint presentation. After three years of break, the expectations were quite high, and we were really pumped to meet old friends again and learn more about the latest trends and technologies in Media and Entertainment.
Prior to the show, we partly relaunched our website, resulting in quite stressful two weeks with the IBC as the grand finale. But thanks to our talented team, we somehow managed to arrive on time at the lengthy waiting queues at the RAI entrance. The newly implemented Google AI based Face Recognition worked fine for us, and we could finally meet the great team of Vidispine and Moovit, who hosted us at their booth.
The last time in 2019 we were with a small team at the IBC and had a handful of meetings, this year we were only two persons but fully booked. After our presence at Hamburg Open in June, this was the second big gig for this year. Our focus was on communicating our latest functionalities and working on new and existing partnerships.
One of these partnerships are the links to the Fraunhofer institutes. Not only we are currently setting sail for another scientific project with Fraunhofer FOKUS, but we just integrated algorithms by the Fraunhofer IDMT, which enable us more Audio-based functionalities.
DeepVA now can listen
We are now able to generate automated training data for speaker recognition, which enables you to create your custom speaker recognition in a minimum of time. We are now able to read out lower thirds during a video and store the audio track of the speaker together with its name and/or function into our dataset. This is not only interesting as a standalone service, but also helps us to improve the accuracy of our Diversity Analysis, with adding the results of an audio analysis. And our Speaker Dataset Creation is already in productive usage by a German broadcaster.
Knowledge Graph was presented
Another big innovation of our services is the implementation of our Knowledge Graph function, which was developed together with ProSieben during the last STADIEM round. This function enables you not only to recognize persons and items, but also tying links between them. Who was at the same school? Who had the same partner?
The Knowledge Graph is used to represent knowledge about entities (e.g., people, landmarks, objects) and the relationships between them. Data organized with semantic information described by relationships, allows for easier, more intuitive, and more scalable information retrieval. By implementing static knowledge (additional information via public sources like Wikidata) and dynamic knowledge (based on AI analysis) the use of knowledge graphs can significantly increase performance in AI-assisted image classification. As a consequence, it can improve information retrieval in MAM systems or add additional functionalities in various other services.
The Knowledge Graph was one of the most sought-after solutions at our Demo, and we are really looking forward to more users getting this tool productive in their workflows. After four days of explaining the same functions to various people, you are really exhausted in the evening, and I deeply respect all sales experts still being able to party after three days of IBC.
Zeeluft and Billy Joel
What the Logic Podcast does not tell you is, where the guys are staying during IBC. In search of a reasonably priced hotel, we decided to follow the idea of Jens and the team from Logic and book a hotel a bit more remote from the venue but on the seaside. The small town is a 20-min ride from RAI, has a little church in its center, a grocery store, five restaurants and dozens of kilometers of beach. Compared to the buzzing halls of RAI, it is pure relaxation to sit in a small cozy restaurant with only a few guests, quiet rock classics on the radio, Belgium beer and “northern Hollands best spare rib” on the table.
Of course, one is somewhat limited when it comes to partying with the client, but like many of our partners, those days are over. So we try to focus on having a nice dinner in the evening and preparing for the next day, instead of jumping into the Amsterdam nightlife like in the years before. And waking up with a fresh breeze of sea air, hearing the waves crashing on the shore and being able to take a little walk on the beach in the morning is really a 10/10.
Rising stars of AI
Our friends NVIDIA invited us into their “Rising stars of AI” Showcase, together with three other great AI Services (Move.ai, Mobius Labs and Rev). Luckily, it was no townhall meeting, which relieved some of the pressure behind putting together a presentation with this title. In a more familial setting, everyone introduced their services and had a little chat with the audience, which was entertaining. Not only because there were these two users, which already worked with two of the four services and publicly giving them a very positive review during the Q&A. It was real fun, and we thank NVIDIA for this opportunity. After this event, I think any of the AI services is implemented in any of the other AI services.
Wat was goed, wat zou ik anders doen?
If you asked me, we did many things right thanks to all the helpful input we got in advance. For the next time, we surely will have more team members to join the journey, since we failed to produce content and missed visit the interesting conference panels. And we need a second demo pod, since we were entirely overbooked – which is not that bad. In case someone has already plans for 2023 and wants us at their booth, feel free to reach out.
Together with Vidispine and Moovit we had great times. We could strengthen our partnership and spontaneously even educated their sales team in our solution and possibilities. With Vidispine Marketeer Brent and our friends from Van Rothe (who were hosted at the Seagate booth) we had good laughs and at max we had 12 visitors of a single broadcaster at our small demo pod. And also, our cooperation with Tanneliebe, another Start-up from Freiburg producing a lemonade out of fir branches, based on an old pharmacist recipe, was very popular by our guests at the booth. Chris’ idea of crowning the “World’s Best Media Tech Expert” with a headband was also in high demand, although some of our guests refused to wear it in public. (haha)
See you at IBC 2023!
Our next dates are the bw start-up summit in Stuttgart and the Swiss Innovation Forum Basel – in terms of media and entertainment, our next date will be most likely the Hamburg Open, this time back on its original slot in January instead of June, like last year.
