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.
10 November 2020, Alkmaar, Netherlands - 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 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.”
Watch the Video here!
IBC and MVP Accelerate Showcase - World's first combination of AI and 5G demo! from Mobile ViewPoint on Vimeo.
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Notes: Press Release - Mobile Viewpoint - 10 November 2020, Alkmaar, Netherlands
