LOS ANGELES—Beeble has unveiled the SwitchHDR, a new AI-driven model that reconstructs HDR imagery from conventional SDR video, producing scene-linear 16-bit EXR sequences for professional post-production. Designed for filmmakers, colorists and VFX artists, SwitchHDR is available through the Beeble web application.

SDR video captures only a fraction of the dynamic range present in a real scene. Once highlights clip or shadow detail is compressed or lost, traditional SDR-to-HDR methods can only redistribute the remaining signal, often introducing banding, noise and other artifacts. In contrast, SwitchHDR is trained on real HDR footage to reconstruct a plausible HDR representation rather than stretch the existing SDR signal. The result rebuilds highlight and shadow detail, suppresses shadow noise and preserves temporal consistency across entire video sequences.

Unlike automatic conversion tools, SwitchHDR offers direct artistic control over the process. Users can define highlight and shadow regions using luminance masks and guide the model with separate text prompts. HDR reconstruction is applied only to selected regions, while the remainder of the image is carried through without AI reconstruction.

Output is delivered as scene-linear 16-bit EXR sequences in ACES2065-1 (AP0), enabling seamless integration into professional grading, compositing and VFX pipelines.

SwitchHDR is designed for professional production and post-production workflows, including feature films, commercials, sports production, archival restoration and visual effects. The technology expands Beeble's suite of AI tools for production and post-production, building on its work in relighting, compositing and virtual production.

SwitchHDR is available through the Beeble web application.

More information is available on the company’s website.

The technology toolkit available to broadcasters has evolved dramatically over the past quarter-century.

During television’s digital and HD transition era, “future-proofing” became a favorite phrase among systems integrators designing 3G-SDI facilities. Yet television has never actually exceeded 1080i/720p over ATSC 1.0, which is effectively half-bandwidth HD, or 1.5G.

So why did Arizona Public Media (AZPM) choose to build a 4K facility, deploy virtual production capabilities and install 4K cameras in radio studios? The answer lies in understanding where content creation and distribution is headed.

Analyzing the Need
Recent industry research shows audiences are consuming streaming media at a greater rate than traditional broadcast-delivered content. Our own metrics at AZPM reflect the same trend. OTT consumption continues to grow while over-the-air viewership remains relatively flat.

As AZPM began planning the $65 million Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media (with a tech budget of about $10 million), we examined our current and future needs across TV, radio, streaming and digital media production. Our goal was to eliminate traditional silos and create technology-agnostic production spaces that support current workflows and can adapt to future requirements.

Quality was also a major consideration. AZPM already captures field content in 4K HDR using Sony FX6 and FX9 cameras and edits in DaVinci Resolve to leverage its advanced color-grading capabilities. Historically, however, field-acquired footage never fully matched in-house studio productions due to limitations in our 1080i SDR infrastructure.

While a migration to 3G HDR would have been the simpler path and would have produced solid results, we chose to push further by designing our internal production environment around 4K HDR. That decision naturally led to discussions about adding a dedicated color-correction suite and a Dolby Atmos mixing room.

We wanted to eliminate the traditional silos that often separate TV, radio, cable television and conference-room AV systems. Too often, these systems coexist without integrating effectively. We believed there had to be a better way.

Searching for the Answer
Because the AZPM facility was funded entirely through donor and member support, one of our earliest goals was to create a facility that donors would be proud to invest in while supporting our long-term mission.

Research became a critical part—the AZPM team visited numerous recently completed media facilities, observing operations and asking candid questions about what had worked well and what they would do differently.

Some organizations had committed to HD and 3G-SDI as their long-term strategy. Others aspired to deploy 12G infrastructures but were constrained by budget realities.

My vision for broadcasting’s future has always included both over-the-air and streaming delivery. Each platform offers distinct advantages. With ATSC 3.0 now approaching a decade of deployment, I remain hopeful that NextGen TV, coupled with integrated streaming experiences, can elevate OTA broadcasting by bringing content quality and user experiences closer to what audiences expect from streaming services.

AZPM currently broadcasts in ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 and chose to deploy a 1080p HDR NextGen TV signal. In doing so, we planted our flag firmly where we believe the industry must go to remain competitive and relevant.

Building the Team and the Plan
At AZPM, the transition began well before the move into the new facility. We migrated field-production equipment and editing systems to 4K HDR workflows while still operating from our existing location. Giving teams time to become comfortable with new tools and processes before introducing a completely new facility significantly reduced organizational friction.

My internal design team included leaders from engineering, information technology and production. Together, they transitioned to 4K acquisition, DaVinci Resolve workflows, LUT-based color management and enhanced audio production techniques.

The results were evident. This year, AZPM received eight regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in journalism. While great storytelling remains the most important factor, there is little doubt that improved production quality helped strengthen audience engagement and presentation.

As a result, when our production teams moved into the new facility, they encountered familiar workflows enhanced by better spaces, newer tools and expanded capabilities. The transition proved remarkably smooth.

Of course, adopting new technologies also introduces new support challenges. High-bandwidth IP-based production environments require expertise in software, networking, cybersecurity and systems integration that extends well beyond traditional broadcast engineering disciplines.

AZPM invested heavily in staff development while simultaneously upgrading portions of our existing facility to serve as a testing environment. Moving from HD to 4K requires more powerful editing systems, increased network capacity, improved monitoring and measurement tools, and significantly more storage.

Concept testing also played an important role in validating new operational models. One example was transforming a radio program into content that could simultaneously serve radio broadcast, podcast, vodcast, streaming and traditional television audiences.

To test the concept, we equipped an old radio studio with PTZ cameras, upgraded lighting and branded visual elements. A small flypack in an adjacent control room enabled student operators to produce the program efficiently with a much lighter operational footprint.

The experiment proved successful. Today, our new Press Room studio provides expanded space, dedicated cameras, planned lighting and digital signage capable of supporting a wide range of productions while maintaining operational efficiency.

Finding Partners
Successfully delivering a project of this scale while maintaining normal operations is an enormous challenge. Choosing the right partners was therefore one of the most important decisions we made.

We issued an RFP seeking a fully integrated design-build team capable of addressing construction, power, HVAC, acoustics and media facility requirements as a unified effort.

After selecting our construction partner, we completed a Phase 0 broadcast design study. I cannot overstate the importance of providing architects and builders with detailed requirements regarding space allocation, cable pathways, cooling capacity, power distribution and equipment density.

Our builder had recently completed a Meta data center and a film school production facility. Even so, assumptions can be dangerous.

For example, their initial studio-floor specification mirrored what had been used in film production environments. Television production places very different demands on floor surfaces. Pedestal-mounted cameras require strict flatness and levelness tolerances as defined by ASTM E1155-20. Without those standards, camera movements can become unstable and unlocked cameras can literally roll across the studio floor.

Perhaps the most important long-term partner in any facility project is the systems integrator. During installation, we routinely had 10 systems integration specialists on-site for six months to complete cabling, infrastructure deployment and equipment commissioning.

We ultimately selected a midsized systems integrator that demonstrated a willingness to innovate, collaborate and help us achieve our goals.

Building one of the region’s first fully IP-based media facilities—from VITEC-powered cable and digital signage systems to TAG multiviewers and an EVS-managed SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructure—is no small undertaking.

I must commend KCM (Key Code Media) for their collaborative approach and commitment to project success. On multiple occasions, we activated studio resources for live productions before formal project acceptance. KCM staff worked alongside our teams to ensure everything operated successfully, including complex 11-camera productions that occurred before final commissioning was complete.

From Skepticism to Enthusiasm
Few organizations are fortunate enough to build a greenfield media facility of this scale.

No project of this magnitude proceeds without challenges, compromises and occasional disappointments. Throughout the process, my goals remained straightforward: keep the team engaged, provide clear direction to our partners, maintain rigorous oversight and ensure that our staff remained healthy and focused.

One of the more amusing aspects of the transition was watching some of the strongest skeptics become enthusiastic advocates. Several longtime employees initially doubted that the new facility would improve their work, enhance quality or make their jobs more enjoyable.

Today, many of those same individuals enthusiastically explain to colleagues how they use the new tools, appreciate the new spaces and cannot imagine returning to the workflows of our previous facility.

In the end, most obstacles proved manageable and ultimately minor in the context of the overall project.

What I will carry forward from this experience is not only the accomplishment itself, but also the belief that the investment made by our donors, members, staff and partners has provided AZPM with a platform for innovation that will serve the organization for decades to come.

If we have done our jobs well, this facility will enable Arizona Public Media to create, innovate, educate and thrive for the next 75 years.

OBERKOCHEN, Germany—Zeiss has announced the launch of CinCraft LensCore, a novel solution for creating physically based cinematic lens looks for visual effects and animation.

Built on the Virtual Lens Technology introduced at FMX in 2025, this new Nuke plugin brings decades of Zeiss optical expertise into post-production, bridging the gap between on-set lens choices and the VFX pipeline.

With CinCraft LensCore, Zeiss offers compositing artists a toolset dedicated to achieving cinema-grade lens looks grounded in the characteristics and physics of real lenses. At its core is a unique GPU-accelerated, ray-traced rendering engine for The Foundry Nuke that simulates authentic lens behavior across every pixel and every frame, while far exceeding the capabilities of available digital lens effects.

“With CinCraft LensCore, Zeiss brings the effects of real-world optics to a 2D compositing environment,” explains Egor Nikitin, head of digital cinematography at Zeiss. “LensCore speaks the same language as the lenses on set, from the way light falls off at the edges of the frame to the nuance of out-of-focus highlights. That fidelity is made possible by Zeiss’ history and deep understanding of optical science.”

CinCraft LensCore combines accuracy with efficiency. With one click, a complete digital lens look can be applied to a shot, with realistic bokeh, defocus, distortion, vignetting, and other optical effects characteristic of a specific physical lens. Through the digital lens shelf, artists can instantly load lens profiles of a real cinema lens or of one their own custom presets and compare looks in seconds. This fluidly replaces time-consuming manual setups with repeatable, production-ready workflows to easily maintain consistency across sequences and teams.

Beyond replicating existing optics, LensCore also enables artists to generate entirely new, never-before-seen lenses that still behave with the physics of authentic glass. Artists can start from physically accurate Zeiss or custom lens profiles and manually adjust every key lens characteristic, pushing the look as far as the project vision requires, while remaining grounded in believable optical performance.

Zeiss stressed that every feature is driven by real optical parameters—focus, T-stop, focal length, and focus distance—keeping lens behavior physically coherent across the full range of adjustments. A built-in inpaint feature intelligently fills occluded areas behind defocused objects, reducing the need for complex 3D setups and speeding up compositing workflows.

“As a former VFX supervisor, I know firsthand how much time gets spent trying to match a specific lens look in post, even when it was properly documented during the shoot,” adds Joern Grosshans, product manager digital cinematography at Zeiss. “LensCore addresses that need at the source. This advance offers artists a virtual shelf of lenses with accurate, predictable behavior, accessible the same way a DoP pulls a lens from a rental house–to be implemented with just a click. That kind of workflow clarity is a gamechanger.”

CinCraft LensCore is being demonstrated at FMX 2026 in Stuttgart, Germany, by Joern Grosshans, Florian Hofmann, and Egor Nikitin from Zeiss on Tuesday, May 5, at 11:15 AM. Attendees can also experience a full demo at the Zeiss booth 2.1 in the FMX Marketplace.

Zeiss CinCraft LensCore will be available worldwide through the CinCraft webshop beginning June 1, 2026, with multiple licenses available.

For more information visit: zeiss.com/lenscore.

LAS VEGAS—Sony Electronics has announced its lineup of new and returning products and services that it will be showing at the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22 in Las Vegas, demonstrating the latest technologies designed to address emerging challenges and needs in broadcast and production.

“At this year’s NAB Show, Sony’s theme is ‘The Power Behind Your Story’ which demonstrates how our technologies are the driving force behind various forms of storytelling,” said Anthony Kable, CCS Group Manager, Sony Australia. “From products to workflows, and acquisition to delivery, Sony has the right people, tools and expertise to enable creators to capture their vision and communicate their truth with quality and authenticity.”

Sony says its new solutions address the entire production workflow, providing authenticity and provenance, creating more personalized and emotional viewing experiences, and supporting XR and spatial content creation.

At the Sony booth, the company will showcase its live production solutions including the evolution of Sony’s “Networked Live” ecosystem, as well as new system cameras, enhanced workflows for news production, the latest in virtual production tools and processes, and a comprehensive lineup of imaging solutions.

Cameras and Production Workflow
Sony will present its new “R Series” system camera range, which join the company’s existing HDC-5000 and HDC-3000 series camera lineup. The “R Series” significantly enhances image performance, allows system expansion through additional transmission pathways and infrastructure options, and usability that enables consistent color matching across models.

Additionally, the new series features an expanded dynamic range for enhanced details, and operation modes to address different lighting environments. Models include HDC-5500R, HDC-5500RV, HDC-3500R, HDC-3500RV, and HDC-3200R, along with related products such as the HDCU-3500R Camera Control Unit and the HKCU-LUT35 3D LUT option board. The models are expected to be available in mid-2026.

Sony will also demonstrate newly released firmware updates for the PTZ auto-framing cameras BRC-AM7 (Ver. 3.0), SRG-A40, and SRG-A12 (Ver. 4.0). Leveraging Sony’s latest AI technologies, these updates expand functionality to support increasingly diverse production needs, including sports broadcasting, education, and corporate content creation.

For the first time at NAB Show, Sony’s recently launched PXW-Z300 XDCAM handheld AI-powered camcorder—the world’s first to support the C2PA standard for video authenticity—will demonstrate the growing demand for trustworthy news reporting through authenticity and provenance.

Sony will also present an end-to-end workflow that leverages camera-originated authenticity files and metadata from the field through immediate production and editing. This workflow is achieved with the LiveU TX1, a compact IP bonding-capable data transmitter (announced in September 2025), the PDT-FP1 portable data transmitter, and the newly announced PWA-RXS Network RX Station.

In addition, LiveU has announced a further expansion of its integration with Sony’s PWA-RXS through an optional license. A reference demo will showcase a new workflow powered by Sony’s cellular connectivity management system, featuring real-time carrier optimization and seamless global connectivity for creators.

Sony will also show an expanded lineup of Alpha cameras and lenses, including the Alpha 7 V capable of 4K 60p capture without crop. The 33 MP (approx.) full-frame hybrid model incorporates a BIONZ XR2 processor with an integrated AI processing engine to facilitate subject recognition and Auto Framing. Additionally, the latest version (Ver. 2.6) of the Monitor & Control app, which enables video monitoring and remote control from smartphones, tablets, and Macs, will be showcased.

Sony’s diverse Cinema Line cameras will enhance their functionality. The FR7 cinematic PTZ camera recently added AI-based Auto Framing and support for OpenTrackIO protocol through a Ver. 4.0 firmware update, while the FX6 full-frame Cinema Line camera rolled out BIG 6 home screen display support for easy access to top functions.

Additionally, experience spatial content creation brought to life through the VENICE Extension System Mini (Rialto) combined with the glasses-free 3D Spatial Reality Display.

Media Processing
Sony will also demo MOXELA, a new software-based media processing platform running on COTS (commercial off the shelf) servers or in the cloud, designed to transform how broadcasters, production companies, and media organizations transport, process, and monitor live video, audio, and data.

Additionally, attendees will see demonstrations of new features for the MLS-X1 multi-format switcher, enabling efficient production by sharing input and output signals across multiple studios. Sony will also debut the ICP-X7000A, a control panel featuring a newly developed XPT operation panel that significantly improves visibility and operability and is planned to be available in late 2026.

Virtual Production and Spatial Content Creation
To manage its ecosystem of virtual production solutions that include cameras, camera tracking and LED walls, Sony will showcase firmware updates to its Virtual Production Tool Set Ver. 3.0.

Sony will also launch the XYN Spatial Capture Solution, which generates photorealistic 3DCG (3D Computer Graphics) assets from photographs taken with mirrorless cameras. This professional solution, which will be shown at NAB Show and is expected to be available mid-2026, is comprised of three tools designed for use across virtual production and a wide range of 3DCG content creation workflows. XYN Spatial Scan Navi is a smartphone app[5] that guides efficient image capture. XYN Spatial Scan is a web application that delivers studio-grade generation quality. Finally, the XYN Renderer Plugin, enables highly realistic rendering for virtual production studios.

Additionally, Sony will host many engaging presentations and talks on trending topics throughout the show featuring notable industry voices. For more details about the company’s presence, visit Sony’s NAB Show website.

Sony will be in Booth C8401 in the Central Hall of the LVCC.

LISBON, Portugal—wTVision, a global provider of real-time broadcast graphics and media workflow solutions, will unveil the R³ Engine running natively on macOS at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

With this release, wTVision introduces the first real-time on-air graphics rendering engine running natively on macOS, extending high-performance real-time graphics into Mac-based production environments. The milestone marks a significant step in the evolution of broadcast graphics workflows, the company said.

Developed as a native macOS implementation leveraging Apple Metal, the R³ Engine macOS edition is designed to operate alongside Macnica’s MEP100 SmartNIC 2110 I/O, enabling SMPTE ST 2110 connectivity within software-driven environments. Together, these technologies form a flexible Mac-based ecosystem supporting distributed live production architectures built on standard compute platforms.

“Our goal is to modernize the broadcast graphics stack,” said Flávio Maurício, CTO at wTVision. “By developing a Metal-based engine running natively on macOS, we deliver predictable real-time performance and low-latency rendering, deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem. This milestone brings broadcast graphics closer to the environment preferred by creative teams, while supporting the evolving demands of IP-based and distributed media workflows.”

By combining Apple’s graphics framework, broadcast-grade media I/O, and R³ Engine running natively on macOS, wTVision brings the Apple ecosystem into the center of modern live production.The joint showcase between wTVision and Macnica highlights how integrated hardware and software ecosystems can enable new performance benchmarks for real-time media production with Apple products.

“The future of live production is being built on open standards and software-defined infrastructure,” said Sebastien Dignard, CEO of Macnica Americas and EMEA. “By combining Metal-accelerated graphics on macOS, the wTVision real-time R³ Engine, and Macnica’s MEP100 SmartNIC for deterministic IP media transport, we are enabling a new class of scalable, high-performance production workflows aligned with how modern content teams operate.”

The R³ Engine enables end-to-end graphics workflows across news, sports, entertainment, and corporate media production. From lower thirds and full-screen graphics to virtual sets, augmented reality, LED wall productions, and data-driven sports graphics, the platform enables real-time visual storytelling across diverse broadcast environments.

At the show, wTVision will demonstrate a complete graphics production workflow running on macOS within a live IP media environment. The showcase demonstrates how software-defined production tools, accelerated media I/O, and modern compute platforms can be combined to deliver scalable and reliable broadcast-grade performance graphics.

wTVision will be in Booth N1223 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

Blackmagic Design announced a range of new products it will launch at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, led by its first immersive camera system for Apple Vision Pro.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G is being billed as the world’s first immersive cinema camera designed for live production with Apple Immersive Video. Featuring dual 8Kx8K RGBW sensors with 16 stops of dynamic range, URSA Cine Immersive 100G uses 100G Ethernet to deliver the bandwidth needed to output live immersive video for the first time.

Also new for the camera is the Blackmagic URSA Live Encoder, a live processor module that compresses live immersive video into Apple ProRes for output as SMPTE-2110-22 IP video, allowing customers to combine the stereo, high frame rate image streams into a single 100G Ethernet connection.

“Live immersive production is here, and it’s extraordinary,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “URSA Cine Immersive 100G makes it possible, and the images from this camera are just incredible to watch. It truly feels like you’ve been transported to the middle of the action. From sports to concerts, this opens up an entirely new world in live production!”

URSA Cine Immersive 100G features new sensors designed for incredible quality images at 8K x 8K per eye. Using the same revolutionary RGBW sensor design as URSA Cine, the new dual sensor layout features larger photo-sites, delivering 16 stops of dynamic range. The unique RGBW architecture provides equal amounts of red, green and blue pixels for incredible color super sampling. This means it is optimized to deliver incredibly rich colors and provide the ultimate in image quality and flexibility, even at the high frame rates live immersive video requires, the company said.

The Blackmagic URSA Live Encoder enables the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G to be used for live immersive production. It encodes live video into ProRes for output as SMPTE-2110 IP video via the high-speed 100G Ethernet port, creating an entirely new live immersive viewing experience. Plus, the camera data rate is under 50 Gb/s, so customers can combine two cameras into a single 100G Ethernet connection.

The URSA Cine Immersive 100G was recently used for Spectrum Front Row, a series of live Lakers games in Apple Immersive during the 2025-2026 season, which are now available to watch on demand using the Spectrum SportsNet and NBA apps for Apple Vision Pro.

Blackmagic’s first immersive camera, the URSA Cine Immersive has been used on a number of high-profile immersive productions, including MotoGP: Tour De Force, Debut at the BBC Proms, an upcoming documentary featuring Real Madrid, and NASA’s recent Artemis II launch.

Blackmagic will also debut its Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF 100G, with 100G Ethernet for high frame rate SMPTE-2110 live production output up to 440fps. Building on the digital film features of the URSA Cine 12K LF, including the large format RGBW 36x24mm sensor, the new model adds dramatically faster networking for cinematic live production workflows.

The camera will be available Q3 from US$8,995.

Software Updates
DaVinci Resolve 21 will be demo-ed at the Blackmagic booth, updated with a new Photo page,which enables colorists and photographers to use Hollywood’s most advanced color tools for still photos.

Other updates include new AI tools such as IntelliSearch for fast content searching, CineFocus for focal point adjustment, tools for facial refinement, and more. The Krokodove toolset adds over 70 new graphics to Fusion, Fairlight folders simplify audio track management, plus there are improvements to keyframing, MultiMaster trim passes, layer list node graphs and more.

DaVinci Resolve 21 public beta is available for download now from the Blackmagic Design website

Also new is Fairlight Live, a new software-based live audio mixer with spatial audio mixing and SMPTE-2110 broadcast workflows. Fairlight Live easily handles thousands of audio channels, working with standard computer audio or USB audio from ATEM live production switchers. Fully customizable, it has built-in effects and professional features such as a cue player, talkback busses, snapshots and more.

(Fairlight Live public beta is available immediately from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge)

Switchers
Two new additions to Blackmagic’s ATEM live production switchers platform, the ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP and ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP Plus are fully SMPTE-2110 native. They retain the features of the existing ATEM Constellation SDI based switchers, so they are familiar to users, allowing a seamless transition between SMPTE-2110 and SDI based switchers in facilities that have both.

Designed for high end broadcast and live production, the new design features front-to-back cooling, extensive redundancy, support for SMPTE-2022-7 on all 100G video ports, redundant PTP clock connections, 2 x 10G Ethernet for control ports and redundant AC power supplies.

The ATEM 4 M/E Constellation IP will be available in June from US$7,995.

Also new is the ATEM Monitoring Rack Panel, a new combination monitoring converter and control panel that can be used with ATEM Constellation IP live production switchers. It converts SMPTE 2110 IP to HDMI and 12G-SDI for connecting to monitors, however it also has front panel input buttons for controlling the switcher as well as an LCD and talkback connections.

It will be available in June from US$995.

Storage, Recording and Cloud
The new HyperDeck ISO Recorder 100G is a new SMPTE 2110 IP video recorder with 100G Ethernet that lets customers record all their cameras for live production. This means customers can also use DaVinci Resolve for live action replay. HyperDeck ISO Recorder 100G uses a single 100G Ethernet connection to connect all 8 video channels, plus it records high-quality Apple ProRes video to network storage via 100G Ethernet.

It will be available in June from US$4,995.

Blackmagic Cloud Store Ultra provides ultra-high performance flash storage with up to 48TB capacity and two independent 100G Ethernet connections that lets customers record and edit simultaneously without either workflow interfering with the other. Available in 24TB and 48TB models, it also features RAID 5 support, dual redundant power supplies and Blackmagic Cloud sync.

It will be available in June from US$8,835.

Conversion and Connectivity
The Blackmagic SDI Expander 8x12G converter lets customers connect all their 12G-SDI gear to the latest 100G Ethernet SMPTE-2110 IP systems. The converter supports 8 bi-directional 12G-SDI connections and has 2 separate 100G Ethernet connections allowing SMPTE-2022-7 redundancy.

It will be available in June from US$2,995.

The Blackmagic Media Dock Ultra is a new high performance dock for Blackmagic Media Modules with two fully independent 100G Ethernet ports. It also features SDI and HDMI status monitoring and Blackmagic Cloud sync that lets customers use Blackmagic Media Modules as extremely high performance removable storage.

It will available in June from US$2,995.

The new Blackmagic StudioBridge 10G PWR lets customers bridge eight separate 10G Ethernet SMPTE-2110 connections into modern 100G SMPTE-2022-7 redundant systems, allowing users to combine up to 8 separate cameras or converters into a 100G Ethernet IP video system. If the 10G Ethernet products use a single connection, then the Blackmagic StudioBridge 10G PWR will also bridge into the 2 x 100G Ethernet connections for a redundant broadcast system. Plus this converter has four separate internal power supplies so it can provide each of the 10G Ethernet connections with 90W PoE++ power.

It will be available in June from US$2,495.

The Blackmagic UpDownCross 100G standards converter lets customers simultaneously convert up to eight separate channels of SD, HD and Ultra HD video to any other standard. The new converter has redundant 100G Ethernet for full SMPTE 2022-7 compliance and a dedicated NMOS control port.

It will be available in June from US$2,435

The Blackmagic Ethernet Switch 820 is a new high performance, low latency model designed for advanced broadcast systems. It includes 8 x 100G and 2 x 10G Ethernet connections plus simple front panel SMPTE-2110 routing. Blackmagic Ethernet Switch 820 also has two redundant PTP clock Ethernet connections, a separate NMOS control port and a dedicated management port.

It will be available in June from US$2,295

Blackmagic Design will be in Booth N2502 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—At the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas, Avid will demo its new Avid Content Core running on AWS, providing a “cloud native” foundation for connected media workflows built on AWS for news organizations, broadcasters, studios, and streaming services.

At the same time, Avid said it is “renewing its focus” on Avid NEXIS and Avid Media Composer on AWS, which are already supporting large‑scale international productions, including working with Amazon MGM Studios to enable cloud-based Avid workflows on the global cloud platform.

Highlights will include:

• Cloud and hybrid production at scale – enabling teams to collaborate globally without compromising performance, location or security, powered by Avid NEXIS and Avid Content Core.
• Modern newsroom and post‑production workflows – delivering speed, flexibility, and resilience through Avid Content Core.
• A unified foundation for AI and automation – helping organizations extract greater value from their content via Avid Content Core.

Avid says its collaboration with AWS “reflects the MovieLabs 2030 Vision, where cloud, automation, security, and data form the backbone of modern storytelling.”

“Avid is the intelligence layer for professional media, combining proven workflow expertise with AI-powered automation and agentic capabilities,” said Wellford Dillard, Chief Executive Officer of Avid. “Through deep collaboration with AWS, we’re enabling organizations to connect their content, teams and workflows as one – driving faster production, greater creative flexibility, and more informed decision-making.”

Central to the strategic collaboration is a fresh emphasis on Avid NEXIS, the industry’s trusted shared media storage platform. Leveraging the Virtual File System (VFS), Avid NEXIS can expand from fixed, on-premises hardware into a software-defined, cloud-enabled environment that supports on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployment and access.

This flexibility allows teams to:

• Run Avid NEXIS Cloud and Media Composer directly in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for full cloud-enabled post-production.
• Unify cloud-based Avid NEXIS storage with on-premises environments using Avid NEXIS | Remote for hybrid workflows.
• Combine AWS with Avid’s proven controls for media workflows with a shared security foundation.

Building on this collaboration, Amazon MGM Studios has worked with Avid on AWS to deploy Avid Media Composer and Avid NEXIS on AWS, enabling production teams to launch editorial environments globally in minutes and support distributed creative teams working seamlessly across multiple locations.

Avid will be in Booth N2226 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

NOVATO, Calif.—JB&A, a leading value-added distributor of broadcast, AV and IP workflow solutions, has announced its highly anticipated Pre-NAB Technology Event, April 17-18, at the Flamingo Las Vegas.

“Pre-NAB has become the ultimate curtain-raiser, offering attendees and exhibiting partners the chance to get ahead of the curve before the pace of NAB kicks in,” said Greg Burgess, executive vice president, JB&A. “With this event, we’re creating a hub for previewing the technologies, trends and product launches set to define this year’s main show. Now at a fresh new venue, we look forward to welcoming visitors in a few weeks’ time.”

JB&A has already confirmed a strong first wave of exhibitors, including: Ashly Audio, Backblaze, Barco, Bitfocus, Bolin Technology, CAD Audio, Christie, Elgato, ENCO Systems, INFiLED, LiveU, Lumens, Matrox Video, Mark Roberts Motion Control, NETGEAR, On-Stage, PTZOptics, Quantum, VITEC and Vizrt.

Designed to maximize time and value in a busy show week, the company says Pre-NAB provides a focused, exhibition space where attendees can expect to get hands-on with technologies spanning the full broadcast and AV ecosystem, including video walls and projection, PTZ cameras, live production and graphics, AV over IP networking, contribution and encoding, captioning and accessibility workflows, storage, robotics and more.

Nicholas Smith, vice president of marketing and technology, says this year marks the company’s 20th annual pre-NAB Show event.

“It's one of the most pivotal events we do every year—this sets up probably the next six months of business in understanding what the channels are asking for, what are their needs,” Smith said. “It's also where we debut new products to market, because we can get so many eyeballs on it in a short amount of time.”

Launched out of Burgess’s garage 25 years ago, JB&A grew quickly to where it now works with nearly 75 professional media production technology brands, encompassing about 6,000 dealers in North America, according to Smith.

“We focus heavily in the areas of broadcast, Pro AV, storage and asset management for the post production market,” he said, adding that “the majority of our technology is broadcast centric, or post production centric.”

Smith added that with more demand for broadcast-quality technology from corporations, the customer base is shifting.

“We're seeing a massive pivot towards Infocomm and ISE and the more ad-centric shows, just because all that technology is moving towards corporate America,” he said. “I would say 80% of our sales go to the non-traditional broadcast markets,” he said, adding that corporate America is “probably the largest user of [our] broadcast tech.”

Smith says they want the two day event—which usually draws 800-1,000 attendees—to provide a more informal and less hectic atmosphere usually found in the halls of the LVCC during the main event.

“We've got food and beer flowing throughout the day, so no matter what time of the day you come, you'll be able to put your feet up and get a drink to soften the blow and relax and spend quality time with the vendors,” he said. “When you hit this show there's never more than a few hundred people in the room, because they're flowing through the whole day.

“So you get quality time with vendors that you wouldn't necessarily get on the show floor, and if it helps them then prepare meetings for the rest of the week, that's our goal,” Smith added.

It’s not just exhibits that have attendees returning every year either, according to Smith.

“We always do something fun so this year we have race car simulators—we built a couple of F1 race cars that people can come in and take turns driving,” he said. “We'll be doing time trials throughout the day and every hour or so, we'll be giving away prizes to those who hold the top time trials.”

On Saturday, there will be several informational keynotes, covering hot topics like AI as well as a presentation from Dr. NDI, Smith added.

"We want to add a level of intelligence and thought provocation into the mix,” Smith added. “So there's a little bit of something for everybody.”

Megan Zeller, Senior Director of Business Development, Peerless-AV, said the event “is an incredibly valuable opportunity for us to get in front of our customers and their customers in a more focused setting. As AV and broadcast continue to converge and evolve at pace, having dedicated time with integrators and consultants ahead of the scale and noise of NAB is essential. This preview event offers a more personal, boutique experience that really sets the tone for the week ahead.”

Mike Cavanagh, President, Key Code Media, commented, “This is an amazing event! JB&A represents leading manufacturers across post-production, AV and broadcast. The Pre-NAB event brings integrators and clients together for direct access to top vendors, meaningful conversations, and hands-on technology. It’s the perfect mix of innovation, networking, and insight - all before the NAB Show.”

Registration is now open, with additional exhibitors to be announced in the coming weeks. Register for free here.

For further information and opening hours, visit the JB&A Pre-NAB event website. Keep up to date with the latest news on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and via the JB&A YouTube channel.

Register for the NAB Show here.

A gold medal final lasts seconds. At Milano Cortina 2026, the short track speed skating final—in which Jordan Stolz and Femke Kok seemingly made short work of obliterating Olympic records—lasted just over half a minute. Britain, meanwhile, took a breathtaking gold in the mixed team snowboard cross by a narrow 0.43 seconds.

In this environment, when the starting gun fires, every framing decision must be locked in. As with all live sport broadcasting, the room for error is small, and there can be no second takes or resets to get a better shot. There’s a production risk that can’t be avoided; cameras can miss moments, angles can obstruct. While traditional broadcast innovation, like rail cameras and first-person view drones, has narrowed that risk and brought the viewer closer to the action, it still operates within a flat, fixed perspective.

How Volumetric Video is Changing Sports and Music
Volumetric video changes the capture model itself. By recording subjects from multiple viewpoints simultaneously, it preserves the spatial performance rather than committing to a single camera angle at the point of capture. Producers can then reposition the virtual camera in post-production, even if the final output is rendered in conventional 2D. The end result is a different relationship between time, perspective and editorial control.

This distinction matters in high-profile sporting arenas. Early deployments, most notably at Paris 2024, showed that volumetric replays could be successfully integrated into top level sports coverage. While often constrained to replay segments that required additional processing time, they showed clear editorial value.

Milano Cortina 2026 marked a further step forward for the technology. AI-powered replay systems built on volumetric capture delivered significantly improved visual fidelity, with some sequences approaching almost cinematic standards. The quality leap was immediately visible, signalling that volumetric workflows are evolving from experimental enhancements into credible broadcast tools.

The uneven pace of adoption across sectors, however, reflects differing priorities. In music and selective creative productions, volumetric capture has enabled directors to defer certain camera decisions until post-production. Artists from Radiohead to A$AP Rocky have captured music videos entirely volumetrically, demonstrating how the boundary between capture and creative decision-making can be collapsed, freeing the shot from being permanently defined on set.

Why Aren’t Blockbusters Keeping Up?
Cinema presents a much tougher challenge. Blockbuster filmmaking is deeply director-led. Framing decisions are deliberate and often central to narrative intent. Sets, lighting plans and blocking are constructed to be seen from specific angles. Volumetric capture fundamentally shifts this by decoupling capture from final framing.

The hesitation, therefore, is not primarily about technical feasibility, but about authorship and embedded workflows. Directors must reconsider how their control ebbs and flows in a spatial medium where perspective is programmable after the cameras stop rolling.

As a result, widespread volumetric capture of entire narrative features remains unlikely in the near term. More commonly, multi-view rigs are being integrated selectively into visual effects pipelines, where the flexibility they provide aligns with existing post-production processes. The technology’s strengths are tangible today, but they are being applied pragmatically rather than universally.

What Needs to Happen Next
Creative convention may shape adoption in cinema, but engineering constraints are still limiting deployment in broadcast. Live production environments require reliability under stress. It is one thing for volumetric workflows to work in controlled demonstrations, but another to scale them predictably.

Visual quality is typically the first compromise under real-time constraints. Techniques such as 4D Gaussian splatting can produce high-fidelity representations, but they introduce latency. Generating these models requires iterative learning processes that cannot be accelerated through forcefully adding in more parallel compute resources. Even emerging single-camera approaches struggle to scale effectively in multi-camera environments, which remain essential for full volumetric capture.

Bandwidth heightens the challenge. Uncompressed volumetric datasets are substantial, and even with compression, bitrates can still reach tens or hundreds of megabits per second. Distributing that at broadcast scale, particularly to large audiences or mobile devices, remains a complex challenge.

In short, the industry’s next breakthrough is unlikely to come from capture hardware alone, and will depend on mature, interoperable ecosystems for compression, transport and decoding of volumetric formats. That said, the direction of travel is clear. Just as first-person view drones and cloud-based production have altered expectations of live sports coverage, volumetric workflows point toward a future in which perspective is no longer permanently fixed at capture. In the near term, they will continue to operate within director-led 2D outputs, adding flexibility upstream without disrupting established viewing experiences. Over time, as delivery systems evolve and extended reality devices mature, the possibility of viewer-controlled viewpoints may move from demonstration to mainstream.

For now, volumetric video has flourished where the stakes are highest and the moments are unrepeatable. In the Olympic arena, where fractions of a second define history, preserving every possible perspective is vital.

MURRIETA, Calif.—DigitalGlue, creator of the creative.space on-premise managed storage platform, says it will launch creative.space Intelligence (CSI) at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas. The company describes CSI as “a first-of-its-kind Managed Creative Operating System designed to solve the dual crisis of physics and cognition currently facing the professional video market.”

DigitalGlue says media organizations currently face a two-fold crisis. As global archives are set to reach 174 exabytes, media organizations are having to deal with video files that are becoming too massive.

Traditional cloud storage introduces latency and punitive egress costs, which DigitalGlue describes as a “Cloud Tax" that breaks production budgets and makes large files too "heavy" to move. In addition, production houses are drowning in “Dark Data,” unsearchable, untrackable footage.

“Highly paid creative professionals currently lose up to 25% of their work week acting as librarians, forced to manually log and search media because current tools lack narrative intuition,” the company said.

DigitalGlue says it has solved this physical and cognitive conundrum by unifying high-performance, on-premise hardware (The Body) with a forensic AI engine (The Brain) into a single ecosystem.

At the center of this system is a content-addressable identity system that categorizes media into Core Assets (the underlying DNA of the footage) and Versions (proxies, high-res masters, web exports). Instead of fighting physics by pushing petabytes of video into a slow cloud, CSI brings the Intelligence directly to the source. This creates Data Gravity, where the platform analyzes media exactly where it sits, eliminating costly migrations and instantly linking every Version back to its Core Asset, the company said.

While most industry AI remains "context-blind," DigitalGlue says it is establishing a new standard for creative operations. "Most AI tools just point out objects in a video (a car, a person, a tree),” the company said. “creative.space Intelligence (CSI) does something much more valuable: it tells you why your video matters, how it makes the audience feel, and how to repeat that success."

Because CSI understands the Core Asset, it generates “Contextual Wisdom” that reveals the hidden architecture of successful content, automates the path to delivery, and serves as an indispensable co-creator by mapping narrative beats, simulating audience pulse, and predicting reception before a single dollar is spent on distribution, according to DigitalGlue.

At NAB 2026, DigitalGlue will demonstrate how CSI wraps an unmatched AI engine in the workflow primitives that modern studios require:

• The Vault (Universal Asset Library): Replaces folder-based browsing with Agent-driven ingestion and CSI ID fingerprinting for instant duplicate detection and version tracking.
• The Oracle (Semantic Multimodal Search): Natural language search that understands emotion and mood (e.g., "Find high-energy celebration moments").
• Consensus (Review & Approval): An agentic review experience that summarizes massive feedback threads into actionable change requests and uses "Annotation-to-Action" to generate edit commands.
• Launch (Distribution Hub): Automated multi-platform publishing with AI-driven compliance checks for duration, aspect ratio, and content warnings.
• The Crew (AI Agent Workforce): Autonomous agents - The Librarian, The Researcher, and The Compliance Officer - that work 24/7 to catalog and protect assets.
• Nerve Center (Intelligence Dashboard): Real-time analytics on asset utilization, content velocity, and storage cost intelligence.
• The Bridge (Integration Ecosystem): Users don't have to copy their media assets to work with them; CSI plugs into the user's existing creative.space, local, and cloud storage.

DigitalGlue will also offer a sneak peek at CSI Studio, a unified generative production environment. Designed to bridge the gap between pre-production logic and post-production assets, CSI Studio allows creators to move from a logline to a fully visualized animatic in a single session, utilizing "Character Lock" and automated script breakdowns to reclaim hours of manual labor.

In addition to live demos of CSI, the company will also showcase its Neuro-Seismograph, which visualizes tension and engagement in real-time.

DigitalGlue will be in Booth N3152 in the North Hall of the LVCC.

PORTLAND, Ore.—Iyuno, a global provider of media localization services, is using Dante AV video to transport video streams throughout their production studios.

Based in Burbank, Calif. lyuno specializes in translation, dubbing, subtitling, and voice-over services for a wide array of entertainment content. The company helps major studios, streaming platforms, broadcasters, and production companies bring their films, television shows, video games, and other media to international audiences by providing culturally relevant and high-quality language solutions in more than 80 languages.

Iyuno’s 52,000 square foot facility features 10 recording studios, four Dolby Atmos mixing stages, a large format theatrical mix stage, multiple QC suites, and advanced video and audio editing stations. Iyuno was already using Dante for audio transmission and routing and wanted to find a complementary low-latency video transmission platform to simplify their workflows.

“One of the overarching goals for the facility was to increase our capabilities while also affording us the most flexible solution for delivering audio and video in a secure environment,” said Nate Green, Technical Manager at Iyuno’s Burbank facility. “With Dante audio being delivered via low latency over segregated IP networks, we recognized that a video solution that worked alongside the same infrastructure would provide multiple benefits. With Dante as the audio foundation, adding Dante AV video seemed logical, but it had to deliver flexible, reliable, and synchronized performance. After an exhaustive evaluation, we determined Dante AV video was the right choice for us.”

Dante AV video is a family of hardware and software solutions that enable manufacturers and end users to easily integrate networked video into the Dante platform. It provides interoperability between manufacturers while keeping discovery, configuration, and control to a single platform for all audio and video endpoints and is designed to run on standard 1GbE networks alongside Dante audio devices.

Iyuno selected Bolin’s D20H Dante AV Ultra transceivers to transmit video to its Voice Over (VO) and Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) studios. Source videos in their original language are fed from a central AV server to a recording room via the D20 transceivers, where a VO artist dubs them in the desired target language, precisely in sync with the character's actions on screen.

Another design goal for the facility was to enhance client-centric services while providing engineers with maximum flexibility to support simultaneous and accurate video distribution solutions. Dante AV can route a specific video feed to a client’s viewing position or enable complex workflows that allow multiple performers in different studios to collaborate using the same frame-accurate video source through multicast feeds to decoders.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.—For the thirty-first time, leaders of the television and cinema content production community gathered here in California’s Coachella Valley to discuss the latest developments in media technology, industry trends, challenges facing the industry, network, and also take a short break from the winter weather.

The setting, as it has been for several years, was the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort and Spa, and once again, the Feb. 15-19 event was a “sell out,” quickly reaching its attendance cap of 800 and organizers opening up a wait list to try and accommodate registration procrastinators.

Reviving Old Tech to Enhance AI Workflows
Looming over most of the four-day gathering was what the impact artificial intelligence has had on almost every business and population segment, especially media production.

While LED walls or “volumes” have been popular for lowering production costs by creating sets virtually, these large arrays of LED video screens do come with disadvantages. One of these is the necessity to plan camera shots to avoid generation of moiré patterns due to LED array size and camera scanning patterns.

Even with very fine pitch arrays, there is a critical camera zoom point at which moiré patterning becomes visible. Other disadvantages include the large amount of heat generated by massive LED display arrays, along with high construction and operational costs.

In the session “Case Study: Beyond the Green Screen: Virtual Projection’s Revival in Modern VFX Workflows,” Chris Barnett and Joseph Conover from Christie Digital Systems discussed how these LED virtual set disadvantages are being addressed by applying a much older Hollywood (and television) technology for inserting visual elements into a live scene, front projection.

“What’s old is new and what’s new is old again and coming back full circle,” said Barnett, the driving force behind the technology at Christie Digital Systems. “When I joined Christie, I started talking to some really smart people in the company about my past experience with virtual production.”

Barnett explained that he’d been experimenting with standard LED panels driven by high-speed processors to push the limit of what’s possible in virtual production, and soon realized that laser-driven video projectors in front-projection applications might be better suited for creating sets virtually.

“We’d been leaving this technology on the table and not leveraging it for no good reason,” he said.

Barnett’s work with this modern iteration of old technology proved successful in terms of being less expensive in both upfront construction costs and operational power requirements, and he also discovered that the application of frontal projection created a better environment for utilizing AI.

“You don’t know how difficult it is to actually control AI so that it can tell your story accurately,” he said, noting that AI “really struggles” when in-camera video effects are being used. “It’s really apparent once you start to learn how to control AI in separating your foreground and background in order to get the most out of your storytelling.”

Barnett observed that this reincarnation of technology was also accompanied by a reduction in costs.

“Studios are going bankrupt left and right,” he said. “People are rescaling, trying to figure out how to get ahead of this new curve. The upfront cost we’ve calculated is about half of what’s involved in building an LED wall. The energy used by these laser projectors is next to nothing compared to an LED wall workflow environment where the heat generated is massive. This is all about creating a more sustainable and accessible workflow."

Broadcast Television Session Returns
After an absence of several years, the Tech Retreat’s “TV Panel” returned, rebranded as a “Broadcaster Update” from Matthew Goldman, vice president, strategic & technical initiatives for Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Goldman reflected on the changes that have taken place in television broadcasting since the digital transition began a quarter decade ago, noting that the video streaming trend has resulted in younger people being unaware that “you can just put this stick of metal up and get television for free over the air. It’s amazing how things have changed and (there are) so many people who don’t understand what over-the-air television is all about.”

Goldman described the advantages of the ATSC 3.0 standard over 1.0, especially its ability to provide much more useful and timely emergency alerting information.

“We all know people — probably some of those in this room — who were in the devastating Palisades fire where a lot of our colleagues lost everything. The emergency information that was going out was incorrect and people were told to do the wrong thing. The new EAS system is hyperlocal.”

He also expressed disappointment over the lethargy in setting a date for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 television service, as it’s keeping broadcasters from rolling out the full feature set available in NextGen TV.

“The National Association of Broadcasters…came out with a document saying we really need to establish a clear timeline because we have to break ‘the cycle of hesitation’,” said Goldman. “The television manufacturers don’t want to add another (ATSC 3.0) tuner to their sets because the consumers aren’t asking for it, and consumers aren’t going to ask for it until there’s a compelling reason to do so. Broadcasters can’t add new features because there’s not enough bandwidth to do that.”

Goldman stated that this cycle of hesitation could be broken by setting a firm date for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 and this could encourage production of receivers with NextGen TV capability.

“The FCC said to add the [ATSC 1.0] tuners and that actually accelerated the transition and the turning off of NTSC.”

A Detour into Healthcare
The Tech Retreat shifted away from traditional content production for something of a first at the conference — the application of some 21st century moviemaking technologies in the healing arts.

The session “Beyond Film and Television: Media Technology is Shaping the Future of Healthcare,” featured Thom Belda, director of immersive experimental learning technology at the Mayo Clinic. Belda explained how the use of augmented/virtual reality, large language models and “digital twins’ is being applied in medical classroom training.

“Our goal is to advance medical science through the use of digital technology,” said Belda in explaining the emphasis on digital imaging at the Mayo Clinic, noting that even back in the 1930s the Mayo brothers had hired a medical illustrator to provide drawings to supplement those in textbooks of that period.

“This was a major achievement,” he said, observing that tapping virtual reality was a similar step in providing surgeons with more detailed information about the human body. “VR allows people to be trained in all sorts of surgical procedures, and 3D models provide surgeons with advanced information on what they’ll be getting into.”

He noted that “digital twining” or the creation of a virtual replica of a physical object was also useful in the field of medicine, with the Clinic applying this technology in several areas.

“The digital twinning of human pathology allows surgeons to be able to ‘hold’ whatever the pathology is, a tumor for instance, in their hands,” said Belda, explaining that this was particularly useful in complicated surgical procedures, making a “huge difference” in many cases.”

He also stated digital twinning allowed the creation of very accurate 3D-printed structures for implantation in patients.

Belda described the ongoing construction of a large new Mayo facility that was specially designed to embody the latest digital imaging and other technologies, including an immersive learning lab, a visual light studio for internal image capture, an area for augmented/virtual reality, as well as a large-scale LED “volume” for interactive experiences.

Another use of digital technology by the Mayo Clinic was on the digitization of some 150 years of medical history amassed by the facility to make it more accessible for research purposes.

“The goal is to advance medical science through the use of digital technology,” said Belda.

Breakfast Roundtables
Learning opportunities begin early in the day at HPA Tech Retreats, with discussions on new and emerging technologies and practices taking place over breakfast. There were 30 such “breakfast roundtables” on the program at the Retreat this year, with topics ranging all the way from “Art in the age of AI” to “Why Hollywood won’t adopt your tech.”

One of these was of special interest for those who have to cope with today’s RF spectrum congestion and the ever-increasing number of wireless devices vying for connection to broadband wireless networks.

In the roundtable discussion “Private 5G and CBRS for live broadcast and remote production,” organizer and moderator Jim Jachetta introduced conference attendees to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) and explained how this FCC-allocated and managed 3.55 GHz spectrum chunk can be useful when multiple users max out conventional bonded cellular spectrum.

“The CBRS spectrum is available on a shared basis with the government, satellite communications and wireless broadband companies that have purchased segments for use by their customers,” said Jachetta, CTO and co-founder of VidOvation. “There are several tiers and priorities involving its use. You go into the FCC’s data base and if a 10 MHz slice of 150 MHZ-wide spectrum is available you can get a minimum of one and as many as four slices.”

Jachetta explained that these public use “slices” could not be reserved, but if they were available a user could establish use priority by turning on a transmitter in advance of the event.

“A big use case would be at big sports venues,” said Jachetta. “You’ve got 80,000 fans in the stadium and they’re all on Instagram or filming the game and the Wi-Fi in the venue is oversaturated and the public cellular around the stadium is oversaturated, making use of bonded cellular video transmission difficult or impossible.

“This is where a private 5G network is very useful. Consumer phones can’t get into this spectrum. The band is 150 MHz wide, and if there’s not a lot of usage you can get up to four slices for a high throughput.”

Jachetta noted that most 5G bonded cellular gear used for video transmission is equipped for use in the CBRS band, and that most 5G devices can be tuned to operate in this spectrum by use of either a special physical SIM if the device can accept one, and also by an e-SIM.

Farewell to the Conference ‘Maestro’
On Wednesday, Mark Schubin, a very visible presence at HPA Tech Retreats, announced that would be stepping back from his post as unofficial conference “maestro” or “wrangler.” His involvement with HPA Tech goes back 30 years, with Schubin noting in an interview at last year’s event that he’d first heard about the gatherings during a 1997 New York City SMPTE Section meeting and made it a point to find out more about the event and to make plans to attend the 1998 conference.

From then on, Schubin, with his landmark flower-patterned pants and small bicycle horn used to alert attendees to the start of proceedings, has been an integral part of the Tech Retreat. (He recalled during the 2025 interview that early-on in his attendance, he had to take on multiple roles at the proceedings when members of a scheduled panel on high-definition TV didn’t arrive.)

“I flew out early and I got there, but there was a big snowstorm on the east coast, and none of those I’d invited were able to come, but they all gave me permission to present their policies on HDTV,” said Schubin. “So, I made a whole bunch of really large paper hats and I decorated them, and I would put on the different hats depending on which network I was representing at the moment, and people could ask me questions.”

Schubin was honored for his long-time service in a special ceremony Wednesday afternoon, with present and past HPA presidents on stage to thank him, along with a special video with many of those who had known him through the conference and television industry offering praise for his service. At the end of the ceremony, Schubin was asked to honk his bicycle one last time before it was laid to rest in a specially-prepared display case.

The 2027 HPA Tech Retreat will be hosted by the La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, Calif., Feb. 14-18.

STAMFORD, Conn.—As NBCUniversal prepares to air the Opening Ceremony of Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, the company has released additional details showing the immense scale of its coverage, which will provide more than 3,200 total hours across broadcast, cable, and streaming, including 2,500+ streaming hours, a record 700+ hours on linear television, all 116 medal events live on Peacock, and commentary from more than 80 commentators.

TV Tech’s full coverage of the tech plans and production technologies being used for the Winter Olympics can be found here, here and here.

The February Digital Edition of TV Tech also contains extensive coverage of the Olympics and previews of their production plans.

NBCU provides these stats to show the scale of its coverage:

• 115,000: Square feet in NBC Sports’ integration facility and warehouse in Connecticut, where nearly all of its production and engineering infrastructure begins its journey to northern Italy.
• 3,983: Distance in miles between NBC Sports’ International Broadcast Center in Stamford, Conn., and Milan, Italy.
• 3,200+: Total programming hours across NBCU’s linear and digital platforms.
• 2,900: Approximate total number of athletes expected to compete at Milan Cortina 2026, a Winter Olympics record.
• 2,500+: Hours of streaming coverage across Peacock and NBC Sports’ Digital platforms.
• 1972: Year that marked NBC’s first-ever coverage of an Olympic Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan.
• 1,600: Approximate number of NBCU Olympics employees based at NBC Sports’ International Broadcast Center in Stamford, Conn.
• 1,000: Approximate number of NBCU Olympics employees on-site in northern Italy.
• 700+: Hours of coverage being telecast across linear platforms.
• 232: Number of Team USA athletes expected to compete at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
• 230+: Number of hours on the NBC broadcast network, a Winter Olympics record.
• 116: Number of medal events at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, all of which will be streamed live on Peacock.
• 92: Number of countries and territories taking part in the Parade of Athletes at the Opening Ceremony.
• 84: Number of commentators on NBCU’s talent roster.
• 62: Total number of medals won at the Beijing Winter Olympics by the United States and Norway, who will face off in mixed doubles curling on Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 4:05 a.m. ET on Peacock, marking Team USA’s first event of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
• 50: Number of Full Remote Edit Rooms in use.
• 44: Number of Olympic medals won by NBCU’s Olympic commentators.
• 41: Number of total events that the NBC Olympics Research team went to in preparation for the Games.
• 35: Number of Multi-Purpose Flexible Use Rooms used for everything from replay operations, remote graphics, telestration, and more.
• 17: Number of purpose-built broadcast booths at NBC Sports’ International Broadcast Center in Stamford, Conn., where a select commentators will call live competition from.
• 17: Consecutive nights of primetime coverage on the NBC broadcast network.
• 16: Number of Olympics that NBCU’s lead alpine skiing play-by-play commentator Dan Hicks will have worked.
• 14: Number of international trips that the NBC Olympics Research team went to in preparation for the Games, including four countries and five Canadian provinces.
• 13: Number of Production Control Rooms at NBC Sports’ International Broadcast Center in Stamford, Conn.
• 8: Number of Winter Olympics broadcast by NBC, including Milan Cortina.
• 6: Number of hours northern Italy is ahead of the U.S. Eastern time zone.
• 5: Number of Muppets of Sesame Street (Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover, Bert, and Oscar the Grouch) who will travel to Milan and be incorporated into NBCU’s comprehensive social and broadcast coverage surrounding the Games.
• 4K: NBC and Peacock will be “4K All Day” for Super Bowl LX and the Winter Olympics on Sunday, Feb. 8.
• 3: Number of Olympic Winter Games that Italy has hosted, joining the United States (four) and France (three) as the only countries to host the Winter Games three or more times.
• 2: Number of cities officially co-hosting these Winter Olympics, marking the first time this has happened.
• 1: The one and only Snoop Dogg will contribute to NBCU’s coverage of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, providing his unique take on what’s happening in northern Italy.

NBC and Peacock will present live coverage of the Opening Ceremony on Friday, Feb. 6, beginning at 2 p.m. ET. Primetime coverage will begin at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.

The NBC broadcast network and streaming service Peacock will be the company’s primary platforms for its coverage of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Feb. 5-22.

For more information on how to watch the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics across NBCUniversal, click here.

Surging college commitments to bankrolling students’ hands-on experience with virtual production in film and TV degree programs are rapidly closing the knowledge gap that has been a significant drag on the industry’s VP adoption rate.

From schools specializing in creative arts to big universities on both coasts and in many locations between, the last few years have seen a transformation in how students are taught not only to plan and execute productions, but also to work as writers, actors, set designers and other participants in the new creative environment. For the first time, vast numbers of undergraduates, as well as graduates and working professionals who need to update their knowhow, have access to the latest advances in LED volume design, multipanel synchronization, 3D in-camera visual effects (ICVSF), virtual object placement, automated lighting dynamism, camera tracking and other hardware and software technologies that are impacting every facet of professional video production.

“After the pandemic there was a retraction in virtual production because people weren’t able to use the technology,” Habib Zargarpour, co-head of VP at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, said. “We’re now getting a new generation of professionals who are able to do this work.”

The Right Environment
USC’s soon to be completed Blavatnik Center for Virtual Production, which will greatly enhance an existing VP curriculum, is moving in the direction taken by a long list of institutions like New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, with its new Martin Scorsese Center for Virtual Production, and the Savannah College of Arts and Design (SCAD), with professional-scale LED volume projects in Savannah and Atlanta.

Some other well-equipped VP learning centers include the University of Michigan’s Center for Academic Innovation, Arizona State University’s Media and Immersive eXperience Center, Texas A&M University’s Virtual Production Institute, the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute and the University of South Florida’s Zimmerman School of Mass Communications.

NYU’s Scorsese Center, now midway through its second year, occupies 45,586 square feet in a building on the university’s 35-acre Innovation Campus along the Brooklyn waterfront. The facility supports two 3,500 square-foot double-height stages, two 1,800 square-foot television studios, state-of-the-art broadcast and control rooms, dressing and makeup rooms, a lounge and bistro, scene workshops, offices, postproduction labs, finishing suites and training spaces.

“We’re really proud of our facilities,” said Sang-Jin Bae, Tisch arts professor and Scorsese Center director. “A major benefit of what we’re teaching is we’re focused on providing an environment where you can learn the hard skills you need.”

This goes to the quality of the instruction as well as the equipment, he added. For example, the use of the all-important Unreal Engine software stack is taught by three Scorsese staff members who are Epic Unreal Authorized Trainers.

Among the many emergent VP innovations working with Unreal Engine’s real-time execution of 3D environments at the center, Bae lists VICON’s motion-capture system used in camera tracking; AV Stumpfl’s PIXERA media server, supporting 2D playback on the LED volumes; MegaPixel VR processors orchestrating displays on ROE Visual’s BlackPearl2 LED panels; and the ARRI Alexa35 Camera and Zeiss lenses that serve to mitigate the moiré effect resulting from mismatches between camera sensors and LED display patterns.

Of course, learning the technical dimensions is just part of the VP education process. In fact, a recurrent theme arising in discussions with educators like Bae is the extent to which the technical skills they teach are subservient to the goal of achieving creative success. “We’re coming from the end user storytelling side,” he said.

Winging It?
The VP education agenda unfolding at SCAD is no less impressive with regard to both the scale and sophistication of technical support and the range of learning experiences. As with everyone else engaged in bringing VP onto college campuses, the undertaking that started at SCAD in 2021 has been a “figure-it-out-as-you-go” experience, said Quinn Orear, associate chair of film and business at SCAD, who leads the film and TV department at the Atlanta facility.

“This technology is so new for everybody; a lot of us had to learn in step with students,” Orear said. But having no “how-to playbook” to work with had its advantages, including freeing staff “to be creative in discovering new ways to use the technology” aided by training provided by the teams that built the sites.

The experience has also brought into play a new realm of collaboration across disciplines that traditionally worked separately. Production design, visual effects, video game development, editing—it all came together with a faculty “that keeps our feet in the industry as we teach,” Orear said.

The first VP LED volume and XR stage installation was completed in 2021 as part of an expansion project on the 11-acre lot at Savannah Film Studios, which SCAD bills as the “largest and most comprehensive university film studio complex in the nation.” The project is now in its third stage, adding two sound stages and new backlot facades to over 40 separate street facades and more than 8,000 square feet of dressed set spaces that model historic Savannah, big-city streetscapes, and small-town USA scenes from a variety of eras.

A year later, SCAD opened the second VP stage at the recently expanded SCAD Digital Media Center in Atlanta, which, like the Savannah stage, comprises a 60-by-16-foot curved LED wall coupled with a 38-by-20-foot LED ceiling. Both stages are powered by Disguise xR technology running on Disguise VX 4 and RX II servers with LED volumes supplied by DeNyse Digital.

Orear said SCAD, with over 100 degree programs, has made VP training available wherever it’s needed. And, with the Atlanta facility sitting amid a thriving Hollywood East production environment, the VP assets are also getting plenty of commercial use, which contributes further to the general learning atmosphere. “We’re seeing a lot of cross-disciplinary collaboration,” he said.

A Multidisciplinary Mix
A similar culture prevails at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) in Los Angeles, where the first two courses in VP were launched in 2022 in support of short filmmaking using the Unity game engine. This was followed by the implementation of the Unreal Engine, with the installation of an LED wall supplied by Sony. A class in LED volume usage followed with students now competing to have their five- to 10-minute projects produced for presentation at the end of the school year.

“We have students from production, animation, interactive, experimental animation, cinematograph—graduates as well as undergraduates,” Zargarpour said. “The multidisciplinary mix has worked well with roles shifting and students learning the best way to make use of the LED wall and how to integrate real with virtual sets.”

SCA doesn’t yet offer a degree in VP, but “we’re working on it,” he added. “Once the new [Blavatnik] center is ready, we’re going to be able to make greater use of the VP technology.”

Funded by a $25 million donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation announced in mid-2025, the project is still in the design phase with the goal of getting it done “ASAP,” Zargarpour said. The plan, which he helped develop and builds on lessons learned from work with the current LED stage, calls for a multiuse space housing two stages with wraparound LED panel walls, as well as performance capture, camera tracking and lighting systems, along with multiple classrooms and labs equipped with 3D design software and digital asset libraries.

Understandably, given that the schools profiled here and the many others committing to VP are rooted in cinematic arts training, support for use of VP in live sports, news and other TV-centered productions is generally not part of the curriculum. Live “is currently outside our domain,” Zargarpour said. Occasionally, SCAD’s VP facilities are used by “students who want to learn about how LED volumes are utilized in live production,” Orear said, but such experiments are “feeling like early days as that evolves.”

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Adobe today released more details regarding the commitment of its Film & TV Fund to provide $10 million in grants and donated products this year to help provide creative opportunities and career advancement for creators around the world.

The announcement comes the day before the opening of the Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 22-Feb. 1, in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. The company has also formed a new partnership with Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Dimz Inc. Academy and Rideback RISE.

The Adobe Film & TV Fund is an initiative launched in 2024 that supports underrepresented creators in film and TV, offering grants, career development, fellowships and Adobe Creative Cloud technology.

The company has created a new direct-to-creators funding pathway to solicit nominations from industry and community organizations to support projects built on Adobe tools like Premiere and Firefly.

Adobe’s community organizations will receive funding, including Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively’s Group Effort Initiative, USC Annenberg School of Communications, NAACP and Gold House.

The company is expanding its support of the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship. It has introduced a new short film fund available to Ignite alumni. The yearlong Sundance Institute Ignite program identifies and supports new voices and talent from the next generation of filmmakers by providing artistic and professional development to advance emerging documentary and fiction filmmakers, 18 to 25 years old, worldwide. This will enhance efforts to reach more creators and produce projects from concept to screen in the upcoming years.

Adobe is also launching partnerships with two other organizations dedicated to fostering greater creative access and opportunity: Rideback RISE, which empowers mid-career artists of color to make commercial film and television projects through its RISE Fellowship, and Amelia Dimoldenberg’s transformative creative skills program Dimz Inc. Academy for 18- to 25-year olds from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in careers in digital media.

Four previous recipients of Adobe grants are premiering projects at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, including:

• Stephanie Ahn, writer-director, “Bedford Park” (supported via Gold House).
• Daniel Chavez, editor, “American Pachuco” (supported via Rideback Rise).
• Giselle Bonilla, director, “The Musical” (Adobe x Sundance Ignite fellow).
• Anooya Swamy, director, “Pankaja” (Adobe x Sundance Ignite fellow).

A new blog post from Adobe offers additional details.

BAD HAMBURG, Germany—Maxon, a maker of 2D and 3D design and motion graphics software, has tapped Steve Forde as chief product officer.

Forde will lead Maxon’s global product organization, working closely with Chief Technology and AI Officer Philip Losch to drive product strategy, execution and long-term innovation, Maxon said.

Forde has held senior leadership roles at such companies as Adobe and Amazon, where he led product, engineering and design teams for such large-scale platforms as Adobe After Effects and Prime Video, Maxon said. Earlier in his career, he founded and led two successful startups, including Gridiron Software, where he oversaw the development of Adobe After Effects plug-ins, where he first worked closely with the Maxson team, the company said.

“What drew me to Maxon was the convergence of people, technology and a fundamental shift in how creative content is made,” Forde said. “The proliferation of games, advertising and social media is driving 3D from niche skill set to mainstream job requirement. With the right combination of product innovation and intelligent workflows, it can become accessible to an even broader audience. Maxon is uniquely positioned to lead that transformation, not just by building powerful tools, but by delivering experiences that scale with creators as their needs evolve. I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines while it happens.”

As Maxon’s CPO, Forde will focus on establishing a clear, long-term product vision while scaling its product organization to support global teams, increasingly complex customer needs and sustained enterprise growth, ensuring teams can deliver cohesive, high-quality experiences without losing the creative spirit that has defined the company, it said.

“Steve brings a deep understanding of both where Maxon comes from and where the market is heading,” Maxon CEO David McGavran said. “His ability to connect long-term vision with practical execution makes him an ideal partner as we continue to grow. This appointment strengthens our leadership team and positions Maxon to lead the industry through the next phase of creative evolution.”

A key component of Forde’s mandate is to guide the integration of emerging technologies into Maxon’s products in ways that respect artistic craft and amplify human creativity, the company said. He’ll focus on using technology to remove friction and expand possibilities, the company said, allowing artists to spend more time creating and less time navigating complexity.

Maxon’s products include the Maxon One ecosystem, a comprehensive suite of solutions.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Adobe today unveiled AI-enhanced masking features for Premiere, new typography, materials and 3D features for After Effects that expand motion design and visual storytelling, and seamless connectivity between Premiere and Firefly Boards.

The announcement comes two days before the opening of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where 85% of this year’s films were created with the company’s products. Adobe also said it will further its commitment to empowering creatives from underserved communities, committing to $10 million in contributions and donating projects in 2026 through the Adobe Film & TV Fund.

The investment builds on the $10 million the company has already committed since launching the fund at Sundance two years ago. It is also launching a new direct grant application for filmmakers integrating AI into their creative workflows.

Firefly Boards is the company’s AI-powered ideation surface, which enables video teams to brainstorm and explore concepts collaboratively using AI models from Adobe, Google, OpenAI, Runway and others.

New innovations in Adobe Premiere and After Effects release 26.0 empower video professionals to accomplish tasks that were previously time-prohibitive. For example, rotoscoping can now be accomplished in seconds with new masking features, such as object selection and mask, shape masks, Firefly Boards integration and Adobe Stock integration.

The new After Effects release opens up new creative possibilities for motion designers and visual storytellers with native 3D parametric meshes, more than 1,300 free substance 3D materials, variable font animation and enhanced vector workflows.

After Effects’ new native 3D parametric meshes enable the design and customization of 3D shapes using parametric meshes and combinable shapes with new spot and parallel shadows to enhance assets like stylized graphics and photorealistic set pieces.

Its enhanced vector workflow support enables import of SVGs as native shape layers, preserving editable gradients and transparencies from Illustrator, making it possible for designers to animate with full vector fidelity and precise control over fills and strokes.

More information is available on Adobe Premiere and After Effects release 26.0 and its Sundance presence online.

SAN FRANCISCO—AudioShake has launched its first streaming-capable software development kits (SDKs) designed specifically for real-time music detection and copyright-safe audio cleanup. The SDK lets broadcasters, sports leagues and media creators automatically detect and remove copyrighted music from live and postproduction content, helping to avoid takedowns, fines, muted audio and distribution delays.

“Our partners are using AudioShake’s tools not just for compliance, but to reimagine what’s possible with their existing content,” AudioShake CEO Jessica Powell said. “We’ve helped teams clean up archival footage, prep assets for international distribution, and meet the demands of social content at scale. Now, with real-time capabilities, we’re unlocking entirely new use cases—from mobile apps and on-the-fly editing, to live broadcast cleanup and programmatic compliance checks. And thanks to an architecture that is optimized for NVIDIA GPUs, the SDK runs at blazing fast speeds.”

Background music has become one of the biggest and fastest-growing copyright liabilities in live and social video. Sports teams, creators and broadcasters routinely capture licensed songs in arenas, locker rooms, events and public spaces, triggering copyright claims that can result in financial penalties, blocked global feeds or fully muted audio.

AudioShake said that the new SDKs address this challenge by pairing industry-leading sound-separation technology with low-latency inference. The system identifies music in real-time—even in noisy environments like stadiums or live events—and automatically removes it while preserving dialogue, crowd noise, effects, and other ambient sound without interrupting workflows.

Beyond copyright compliance, the SDK provides fine-grained control over dialogue and background sound, enabling creative teams to quickly rebalance noisy mixes, boost speech, or reduce crowd roar during fast-paced production, the company explained.

Audioshake is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, and leverages NVIDIA accelerated computing and NVIDIA Dynamo-Triton for training and cloud-based inference. Its real-time SDKs utilize NVIDIA accelerated computing directly via optimized runtime frameworks on Linux and Windows to deliver low-latency, high-accuracy performance in dynamic production environments.

Major media companies—including most large U.S. film studios and broadcasters, as well as BET, NFL Films, Poland’s TVPuls and ANT1 TV—are already using AudioShake’s technology across workflows spanning dialogue isolation, music removal, and audio cleanup, the company reported.

“As demand grows for real-time, AI-powered audio workflows, advanced technologies are critical to meet industry needs and keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape of sound production, editing, and processing,” said Shari Reich, developer relations, audio and music at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA accelerated computing and software, AudioShake’s solution empowers content creators, broadcasters and developers to perform high-quality audio separation in real-time to enable seamless integration into live broadcast environments.”

The AudioShake SDK is now available for iOS/macOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. More information is available at developer.audioshake.ai.

LOS ANGELES—I’m the super­vising editor for NBC’s “The Voice,” which is produced by MGM Television and recorded on the Universal Studios lot. I was the first editor hired on the show 15 years ago, and I’ve been on every episode since—that’s 700 episodes and nearly 1,100 hours of broadcast programming over the last 15 years.

We use Avid as our editing solution. The major advantage of using Avid is we start and finish everything in Avid. From offline to final online to color, everything is done inside of that.

Right now, we have about 35 editors, including about eight to 10 assistant editors. I think another dozen producers and story producers are also all accessing the media, all able to see everything, and they’re all remote. And I don’t mean we have some in Burbank and some in L.A. We have people in North Carolina; we have people in Virginia. We’ve had people in Maine and Japan; we’ve had people all over the world working on our show.

A Unified Solution
Having one, unified program that handles all of that has been absolutely beneficial and the cornerstone of our being on the air. I don’t think there’s any other production that hits the Avid hardware and software nearly as hard as we do.

I’m on Media Composer with the Symphony option and so are two of my online editors. The reason for that is we start and finish everything on “The Voice” inside of Avid, including color, final online and output of the master.

We use a lot of image stabilization. Those save our show because it’s a huge concert, and those cameras jiggle, and there’s nothing worse than seeing your artist or your coach jiggling around. I’d say easily between 600 to 900 stabilizations will be done in a two-hour episode.

We also use the “Animatte” effect in Media Composer for multiple reasons. We don’t like to break the fourth wall by showing camera people running through the audience, so we use that to duplicate audience members to hide cameras. We want viewers to be engaged in the performance, and if you see some guy running across the stage with a camera, that kind of pulls you out of it. Avid gives us the proper tools to maintain our illusion, to maintain the moment, without having to go to an external program.

Creating a Uniform Feel
Every episode of “The Voice” is a challenge because of the nature of the show. In an average two-hour episode, we introduce 13 to 15 new “characters,” if you will. Each story needs to have a life of its own, but we have to have some type of uniform feel to the show so when you turn it on, you recognize “The Voice” for what it is.

Our editors are constantly striving to give enough individuality to each of the story pods to showcase each artist individually, as well as maintain a high level of editorial status and make sure that editors are also as creative as possible, but without going completely astray.

We know our audience has faith in what we do and what we say about our show is real. When the first note comes out of an artist on stage—with the coaches’ backs to them in their chairs—that is the first time coaches hear them or see them when they turn. The audience sees our artists in their stories beforehand, but the coaches don’t get any of that information. It is legitimate; that’s the first note that the coaches ever hear. ●

More information is available at www.avid.com.

LONDON—Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset management (MAM) system, Viz One 8.1.

The new capabilities are designed to help broadcasters and content owners facing mounting pressure to deliver more content, faster and across more platforms, the company said. Media firms are finding that the ever-growing volume of raw footage and the limits of manual shot logging and archive research means traditional workflows are no longer sustainable, Vizrt said.

To address these common challenges, Viz One 8.1 integrates with Aiconix’s DeepVA sovereign AI platform, automating key stages of media management and moving teams from time-consuming manual processes to managing media with speed and accuracy.

“Content creators need AI that works for their specific needs, not a one-size-fits-all solution,” Aiconix Chief Marketing Officer Esther Arroyo said. “DeepVA’s ability to train custom models and generate structured, machine-readable metadata ensures Viz One customers can optimize their workflows and deliver more relevant, localized content to their audiences.”

With the integration, the AI-powered visual recognition in Viz One 8.1 allows users to surface the right content in seconds. It adds visual understanding to archives and workflows, automatically identifying and tagging faces, objects and scenes within video material, including through trainable custom models, Vizrt said.

AI automated metadata generation replaces manual logging. Teams can review metadata logged by AI, train custom models for unknown entities and perform optional quality assurance reviews, the company said. The strength in reliability is significant: up to a 50% increase in logging accuracy, 10 times the speed in logging workflows, and five times quicker search and discovery, Vizrt reported.

With the increased time efficiency, surfacing the best clips, scenes, and themes dramatically expands the possibilities for reuse, compliance and even content monetization, Vizrt said. Faster research and clip discovery also means fewer bottlenecks and greater creative flexibility for broadcasters and content creators working across news, sports and entertainment on any platform, the company said.

Viz One 8.1 builds on the system’s containerized architecture designed to scale seamlessly across on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments. DeepVA’s AI services are deployed securely within each Viz One environment, providing powerful AI workflows without risking sensitive data leaving the infrastructure, the company said.

Vizrt and DeepVA also said that they are pioneering a pragmatic approach to AI in media: delivering automation where it adds real value, without unnecessary complexity. Viz One 8.1 delivers the kind of AI that makes a measurable difference, the companies said, saving hours of manual tagging, surfacing the most relevant assets instantly and helping content creators tell better stories more quickly.

“Viz One 8.1 is the next step in our long-term vision to accelerate efficiencies,” said Jochen Bergdolt, head of MAM at Vizrt. “By combining Viz One’s proven reliability with intelligent automation, we’re giving customers the tools to work smarter today—and build stronger media operations for tomorrow."

Find out more about how Vizrt and DeepVA are making media asset management more efficient here.

FREMONT, Calif.—Blackmagic Design said the Associated Press has completed the transition of its global video-editing platform to DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The large-scale enterprise deployment includes several hundred licenses, supporting AP’s 24/7 global news operations and helping enable the creation of more than 1,500 video projects daily.

“AP produces video from more than 100 countries, delivering content to thousands of broadcasters, publishers and digital platforms every day,” said Derl McCrudden, AP vice president and head of global news production. “In support of that crucial journalism, we are working with DaVinci Resolve Studio to equip our journalists with state-of-the-art editing and production tools.”

The deployment included extensive integration with AP’s workflows and involved the development of several new capabilities in DaVinci Resolve Studio designed with breaking news in mind. These improvements included Growing Transport Stream Editing, which allows journalists to begin working on live incoming video feeds directly from AP’s media asset management system without waiting for complete file transfers. This means video can be cut and distributed within seconds after footage arrives.

As part of the deployment, AP now uses DaVinci Resolve Studio’s cloud-based preset and graphics distribution system, including graphics templates, project settings and export settings. This eliminates manual downloads and ensures branding and production standards are maintained across all locations.

Resolve has also been integrated with AP’s MAM to enable scalable cloud rendering. By distributing project rendering to cloud-based nodes, AP can automatically scale capacity during major news events and scale down when demand decreases. This reduces reliance on local rendering by journalists and editors, keeping workstations free for creative work and optimizing infrastructure costs, the companies reported.

The deployment has also simplified the software-management process. With single sign-on license management, AP uses Blackmagic Cloud to monitor, assign and redistribute Resolve licenses across its global user base.

As part of the deployment, AP journalists and field operatives were also given a comprehensive training program focused mainly on storytelling rather than technical editing. AP super-users collaborated with DaVinci Resolve Certified Trainers to develop an internal video-on-demand library, enabling staff to learn at their own pace and ensuring sustainable knowledge transfer.

LOS ANGELES—LucidLink, the file streaming platform, has announced a Frame.io integration and expanded mobile capabilities at Adobe Max.

With the LucidLink integration for Frame.io, footage captured in the field streams directly into editing timelines without the need for uploading or downloading, according to LucidLink. The expanded iOS Mobile app, now featuring multi-file uploads and background transfers on iOS 26, extends these capabilities to iOS users.

LucidLink says the integration will help accelerate downloads, which can hinder and delay editing workflows for creative teams.

This year, LucidLink won an Emmy for tackling this problem in television. Paramount, Warner Bros, and Discovery are among those that use LucidLink to manage over 80 petabytes of data across 150 countries. The new Frame.io integration and mobile capabilities bring the same instant-access approach to creative teams working with video across industries, from advertising and marketing to design, the company said.

The new LucidLink + Frame.io integration creates a mirror of selected Frame.io projects inside LucidLink, making media instantly editable in creative apps like Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

“Frame.io revolutionized capture with Camera-to-Cloud. With LucidLink, it becomes Camera-to-Timeline—media lands in your LucidLink workspace and is instantly ready to edit in Premiere Pro or After Effects,” said Richard Yu, Chief Product Officer at LucidLink. “Paired with our enhanced mobile apps, teams can capture anywhere and start cutting immediately—no downloads, relinking, or changes to how they work on the desktop.”

What this means for workflows is that media uploaded through Frame.io's Camera-to-Cloud appears instantly in LucidLink, allowing editors to cut directly in Premiere Pro or After Effects from a single, always-online source. Producers keep governance and approvals in Frame.io while teams can eliminate downloads, shipping physical hard drives, relinking and version drift, resulting in hours saved per day, fewer handoffs, and a smoother path from dailies to picture-lock, LucidLink said.

The LucidLink + Frame.io integration will be included with LucidLink Business and Enterprise plans. A technical preview will be demoed at Adobe MAX, with general availability targeted for Q1 2026.

Also new is LucidLink Mobile, which allows multiple files to be uploaded in the background with footage being sent straight into a filespace, with no intermediate copies, relinking or "download-then-upload" steps. Editors can start cutting immediately while the rest streams in, eliminating hours or even days of handoffs.

New iOS capabilities complement LucidLink's existing support on Android devices. They include:

• Multi-file uploads with background upload on iOS 26
• In-app previews
• Permission-aware sharing
• Core file operations

LucidLink will demo the Frame.io integration and Mobile apps, alongside other native Adobe workflow integrations, at Booth 3817 during Adobe MAX in Los Angeles, Oct. 28-30.

NEW YORK—Vimeo said it rolled out new AI-powered features and creative tools that it said will make professional video production faster, smarter and more rewarding.

The new features, unveiled Oct. 23 at the company’s second annual REFRAME user conference here, also give creators and teams new ways to collaborate, search and monetize their work while maintaining full control of their content.

During the user conference, Vimeo also presented a slate of customer and creator discussions.

"Vimeo REFRAME is where the future of video creation comes to life," Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer said. “From helping creators cross genres with groundbreaking films like ’Red Clay‘ to unveiling future agentic video features that will transform how the next generation of video professionals will work, REFRAME is where creators, enterprises, and innovators come to share their creative process and push the boundaries of video.”

The new features, which will help make content discoverable at scale, streamline creative workflows, and prepare creators for the next generation of immersive formats include:

• Next-Generation AI Intelligence: Vimeo’s AI breakthrough transforms passive video libraries into interactive knowledge bases, making every frame searchable and actionable. Moving beyond traditional video hosting, Vimeo plans to enable agentic video—where LLMs and AI agents can directly access, understand, and act upon video content across any platform or workflow:
• Ask Your Library: Now in beta, this feature extends beyond single videos to search entire libraries using natural language. It understands both keywords and semantic context to deliver precise answers from your complete video collection.
• Vimeo MCP (Model Context Protocol): Now in beta, connect video libraries directly to LLMs and AI agents for custom workflows beyond the Vimeo platform.
• Answer Engine Optimization: Auto-generate rich metadata, titles, and chapters to enhance discoverability across search platforms and answer engines.
• Reimagined Creator Tools: Purpose-built for how video professionals actually work, these tools eliminate friction from creation to distribution:
• All-new Vimeo Review: Currently in a closed beta with a wide release planned for November, the new Vimeo Review gives creators everything they need to manage video feedback with clients and teams—right inside Vimeo. With time-stamped commenting, customizable review pages, and native Adobe Premiere Pro integration, it’s a complete review solution built into the platform where creators already host, manage, and share.
• Enhanced Vimeo Streaming: New customization templates and advanced analytics powered by NPAW give creators enterprise-grade insights plus new monetization options through ads and sponsorships. NPAW is trusted by platforms like Hulu and Pluto TV.
• Immersive Format Support: Users can now host VR180 content, with Apple Immersive Video and Apple Projected Media Profile support coming in Q4, enabling creators to capture in Blackmagic cameras, edit in Final Cut Pro, and distribute directly via Vimeo.

Learn more at https://www.vimeo.com.

LONDON—The AI-powered VFX toolkit Slapshot has launched a professional-grade AI camera tracking tool the company said is designed to deliver “precise camera solves and dimensionally accurate point clouds” in a fraction of the time taken by traditional methods.

Built specifically for VFX artists working in 2D compositing, this new tool offers precise camera tracking that’s fast, simple to use and production-ready, Slapshot said.

“A track that might’ve taken a day or more to do manually can now be done in under ten minutes with Slapshot’s new Camera Tracking tool,” co-founder and CEO Jon Mason said.

Designed for ease of use, the tool makes high-quality camera tracks accessible for all types of creators, regardless of expertise in 3D workflows, the company said.

“For people who don’t routinely work in 3D, camera tracking can be intimidating,” Mason added. “It’s a very technical area, so it was really important for us to make it as simple yet powerful as possible. So we designed the tool to be able to produce a great solve with zero camera information—it’s literally just clicking the ‘Solve Camera’ button and we work out the rest. Alternatively, for people who have camera information, you can also provide it and it will be respected and incorporated into the solve. It’s entirely up to you, but it works great both ways. Outputs are delivered in widely compatible formats—including .abc and .glb camera files, .exr STMaps, undistorted .jpg plates and a .mov playblast—compatible with all major 3D tools.

The solution excels at the kinds of shots that make up the bulk of real-world compositing work: background replacements, screen comps, sky swaps and cleanups where precision matters but speed is everything, the company said.

“Slapshot isn’t intended to replace the need for expert tracking on heavy CG sequences,” Mason said. “But for those medium-difficulty shots where a 2D track isn’t enough, this is going to save artists hours, if not days, on every job. The speed-to-quality ratio is unlike anything else out there.”

Camera Tracking joins Slapshot’s growing suite of AI-powered tools designed to remove friction from the creative process and raise the quality of output across commercial, film, and episodic projects. By making high-quality camera solves accessible on tight timelines and tighter budgets, the tool empowers artists to deliver stronger results without compromise.

Slapshot was created by the team behind Hotspring, a VFX outsourcing platform used by studios around the world. Co-founders Jon Mason and Varun Parange, along with managing director Ben Stallard, have delivered high-end VFX across Oscar-, Emmy-, and VES-winning projects. Drawing on this experience, they built Slapshot to solve the most time-consuming challenges in post, giving studios and artists faster, smarter, production-ready tools that meet the real demands of modern VFX.

For more information about Slapshot and Hotspring, visit slapshot.ai and thehotspring.com.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid has today announced the release of Pro Tools 2025.10, a feature-rich update that the company said offers notable advances in immersive music creation and workflow efficiency.

Designed for music creators and postproduction professionals, the latest Pro Tools version introduces powerful new immersive audio capabilities with Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, integrated SoundFlow automation, in-app tutorials, and six new Inner Circle Rewards.

“This new version of Pro Tools is all about access and ease of use – making complex immersive audio more intuitive, workflow automation more seamless, and high-value creative tools more available to users,” said Chris Winsor, director of Pro Tools Product Management at Avid. “Whether you’re mixing spatial music, speeding up repetitive tasks, or exploring Pro Tools for the first time, this updated version delivers capabilities that help creators stay in their flow and elevate their work.”

The Pro Tools 2025.10 release continues Avid’s momentum in music and post innovation by streamlining creative workflows, accelerating routine tasks, and enhancing access to professional-grade tools that empower creators to deliver exceptional audio content from anywhere, the company explained.

Notably, Pro Tools 2025.10 delivers native support for 360 Reality Audio, enabling artists and producers to position sounds all around the listener – above, below, and on all sides – placing them at the center of an immersive musical experience. Built on Sony’s object-based 360 Spatial Sound technology, this integration enables seamless 360 Reality Audio content creation directly within a Pro Tools session, while offering:

The upgrade provides effortless format conversion from Dolby Atmos to 360 Reality Audio, with stems and settings carrying over automatically, which means that users can continue to mix and edit in both formats within the same session

Included limited versions of the Audio Futures WalkMix Panner and 360RA WalkMix Renderer for Pro Tools Studio and Ultimate subscribers and perpetual license holders with a current support and upgrade plan.

“By integrating Sony’s 360 Reality Audio directly into the Pro Tools environment, artists and producers can now explore new creative dimensions – all without switching out of their trusted workflow,” said Winsor. “This is a powerful step forward in delivering the immersive experiences today’s listeners are seeking.”

Jordy Freed, senior director, deputy head of Sony’s Personal Entertainment Business, added: “360 Reality Audio opens a bigger creative canvas inside Pro Tools – making immersive music creation more accessible and giving artists and producers the tools to push the boundaries of spatial sound and connect with listeners in bold new ways.”

The new version also allowed users to automate complex tasks with SoundFlow in Pro Tools

Avid has integrated SoundFlow, the industry’s leading workflow automation platform, directly into Pro Tools. All users now gain access to 1,700+ free prebuilt macros, allowing them to automate repetitive actions like bouncing stems, creating tracks, and navigating complex sessions.

Available in all versions of Pro Tools, the new SoundFlow panel keeps creators in the zone by enabling powerful shortcuts at a keystroke. Premium SoundFlow subscribers can unlock deeper functionality, including access to their full macro library, Flows, and an AI-powered Session Assistant – a natural language automation tool that understands context and runs complex tasks instantly at the user’s command.

“Avid’s integration of SoundFlow is a pivotal step toward a more intuitive studio future,” said Christian Scheuer, founder and CEO of SoundFlow. “Together, we’re putting world-class automation directly in the hands of every Pro Tools user – enhancing productivity and empowering creativity.”

A new “Learn” tab, powered by SoundFlow, offers interactive tutorials that walk users through key workflows such as audio recording, MIDI editing, and navigating the UI. These hands-on demos make Pro Tools more approachable for new users and faster to master for pros looking to expand their skills.

Pro Tools 2025.10 delivers six new Inner Circle Rewards from Avid’s top-tier plugin and content partners. Available to annual Pro Tools subscribers and perpetual customers on active upgrade plans, the latest rewards include:

• Acon Digital Verberate 2 – transparent reverb with realistic spatial simulation
• Acon Digital DeBleed:Snare – AI-powered snare bleed removal
• Nightfox Audio Rendition Lite – MIDI chord/arpeggio plugin for fast songwriting
• Three Leap Expansions for Kontakt Player – loops and samples to inspire new ideas

Other enhancements to Pro Tools 2025.10 include: speech-to-Text enhancements, including offline and batch transcription; and UI Customization, Dark Mode support, and MIDI workflow optimizations

Pro Tools 2025.10 is available to all Pro Tools Artist, Studio and Ultimate subscribers and perpetual license holders on active plans as well as Pro Tools Intro users. Learn more about the new features at www.avid.com/pro-tools.

BURBANK, Calif.—In postproduction, speed and reliability are everything. At MAX Post, we provide full-service editorial, transcode and ingest, color grading, sound mixing and finishing services for some of the most recognizable unscripted television and documentary programs on the air today.

Our clients expect polished results on extremely tight deadlines, and that means our workflows have to be both flexible and rock-solid—there’s no room for error.

One of our biggest recent challenges came with a client who was filming on location in Argentina, collaborating with a Los Angeles-based postproduction team. The distance alone made it impossible to move media quickly enough for same-day editorial.

Traditionally, we would have relied on digital imaging technicians to create proxies on-site using prosumer desktop tools, then upload those to our facility. That process, however, was time-consuming, resource-intensive and simply not fast enough for the pace of this particular production. In the best-case scenario, it would have taken 72 hours before editorial could even begin. Even using file acceleration tools and on-prem transcoding, we were still looking at a full day of delays. For this client, speed was critical.

Hybrid Workflows
That’s when we partnered with Telestream to build a hybrid workflow that combined our trusted on-prem infrastructure with the scalability of the cloud. The centerpiece of this solution was Telestream Vantage Cloud, which became our remote transcoding engine. We reoriented the pipeline around cloud-first ingest of camera masters, automated dual transcodes and selective, policy-driven retrieval.

Instead of relying on proxy creation in the field, the field team uploaded camera masters directly to the cloud. Vantage Cloud automatically picked up the files and performed dual transcodes, creating both high-resolution and proxy versions. The real innovation came in how we managed those outputs. Working with Telestream’s Professional Services team, we optimized the workflow so that only the low-res proxies were downloaded immediately for editorial. The high-res masters stayed in the cloud, available on demand.

Back at our facility, those proxies were rewrapped in our on-prem Vantage system and checked into our Avid MediaCentral UX environment. This allowed our editorial teams to keep working with the same familiar workflow, only much faster. When high-res files were needed for finishing or promos, etc., we would download only the needed shots. The rest were trafficked during off-peak hours to conserve bandwidth and reduce cloud egress costs.

This hybrid approach was a game-changer. Even extended camera clips—some as long as four hours—transcoded seamlessly and because we could spin up unlimited Vantage Cloud instances, we easily scaled the workflow to handle up to 10 TB of content per day. What used to take days was now completed in as little as six hours from upload to edit-ready media, a tenfold improvement in turnaround.

For our client, the difference was night and day. Editors in Los Angeles were cutting footage from Argentina almost in real time, and creative teams were able to collaborate across continents without delay. Not only did the solution accelerate the postproduction timeline, it also saved money by reducing unnecessary data transfers and optimizing storage.

Cloud-First Ingest
For me, the best part was how natural it felt. From the editors’ perspective, nothing about their workflow changed, except for how fast they could get the work done. Vantage Cloud integrated seamlessly with our Avid environment, so the team could focus on storytelling rather than technical hurdles.

This deployment is now our model for geographically distributed productions: cloud-first ingest, policy-driven transcode orchestration, proxy-first
distribution and selective
high-res retrieval. It gives us the best of both worlds: the scalability of the cloud combined with the stability and predictability of our established on-prem environment.

Knowing we can support aggressive schedules without compromising quality or timelines gives us the competitive edge to take on high-stakes projects, no matter the demands.

More information is available at telestream.net.

LOS ANGELES—Sony Music Publishing’s Extreme Music has formed a strategic alliance with Avid to launch production music that integrates its catalog directly into Avid Media Composer video editing software.

Extreme’s music panel allows users to search, demo and license music across one comprehensive project, the company said.

“Extreme Music has always taken an unconventional approach in bringing opportunities to creators,” said Russell Emanuel, co-founder, president and CEO of Extreme Music. “Alongside Avid, we are putting the strength of our entire catalog more easily into the hands of the editor community, propelling storytellers everywhere to sonically craft with the speed, flexibility and expertise they need to bring their visions to life.”

Extreme has collaborated with such artists as Hans Zimmer, Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones, Deadmau5, Atticus Ross and Sir George Martin to elevate production music to the level of commercial projects. The new panel smooths traditional licensing hurdles, it said.

Key panel features include access to Extreme Music’s library, intuitive search and match, integrate workflow with Media Composer, edit-ready audio and global entry, it said.

“By embedding Extreme’s unparalleled catalog into our trustworthy platform, we are united in the mission to inspire the next generation of creators in the industry and beyond,” said Guillaume Aubuchon, senior director of product management at Avid. “Our users represent the cultural landscape of music and alongside Extreme’s A-List roster of talent, we are doubling down on our commitment to provide emerging and established creators with a highly curated goldmine of world-class tracks.”

Download the Extreme Music Panel.

More information is available on the Extreme Music and Avid websites.

PARIS—Ateme, a provider of video compression, delivery, and streaming solutions, today announced it is leveraging Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities to automate large-scale, multilingual subtitle generation, a move Ateme says could drastically reduce costs and production times while enhancing content accessibility and value for audiences worldwide.

Ateme’s file transcoding application, TITAN File, is containerized as microservices and deployed through Google Kubernetes Engine. Media files stored in Google Cloud Storage are processed by Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s unified AI development platform. This distributed, flexible, and scalable infrastructure has allowed for a smooth transition and seamless integration into client workflows, according to Ateme.

“This innovation addresses a key challenge for content creators and distributors who have often been limited to translating content into a single language, thereby restricting international distribution and accessibility for non-English speaking or hearing-impaired audiences,” said Yohann Guilloux, VP Global Partnerships at Ateme.

“In the face of exploding content volumes, it’s no longer enough to have good technology: you have to be able to innovate quickly, at scale, and with the right partners,” said Jules Mermet-Husson, Cloud Solutions Architect at Ateme. “Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities enable us to automate what was once a challenging process. Together, we are building an agile, open, and scalable platform that transforms every technical constraint into an opportunity for value creation.“

LONDON and LOS ANGELES—ThinkAnalytics will debut ThinkMetadataAI, the company’s latest step in recommendations, search and discovery services.

ThinkMetadataAI uses agentic AI to automate the process of creating enriched metadata for entire content catalogs without compromising quality. With ThinkMetadataAI, the company has solved one of today’s video providers’ biggest challenges: how to increase viewer engagement, it said.

The new tool eliminates all manual tagging and provides support across dozens of languages and is complementary to all metadata provider offerings. ThinkAnalytics will demonstrate during IBC how ThinkMetadataAI’s ability to automate the tagging of all content, including live TV, enhances search and discovery, recommendations and personalization, the company said.

ThinkMetadataAI is now an integral part of ThinkMediaAI, the company’s unified platform for content monetization, contextual advertising, content curation and content bundling. It is being deployed to all customers as well as being offered standalone, it said.

ThinkMediaAI can personalize the experience for anonymous viewers and any users who do not need to log in, such as those using FAST services. It can personalize recommendations for these users based on one second of viewing using data about the time of day, location, device and other factors.

“Since we launched ThinkMediaAI earlier this year, the reaction from customers has been exceptional as they achieve dramatic operational efficiencies that cut costs while continuing to increase engagement with viewers,” said ThinkAnalytics CTO and co-founder Peter Docherty.

“Our years of experience in AI and discovery has given us a clear lead in understanding the DNA of content. Combining this with our use of agentic AI breaks new ground and delivers rich metadata DNA unlike anything we have seen previously, ushering in a new era of viewing based on deeper personalization.”

See ThinkAnalytics at IBC2025 Stand 5.A87.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif.—Migrate Sound is a recording and audio postproduction studio specializing in all aspects of audio production, including voiceover, dialogue, group and sound effects recording, sound designing and mixing, remote and on-the-go (OTG) recording, mix to picture (stereo and surround), copywriting, translation and adaptation.

With clients ranging from television and streaming networks to movie studios and advertising agencies, the majority of my projects include radio promos for Fox, Amazon Prime, Hallmark, Audible and more. I produce about 30 to 40 promos per year across a variety of genres, including comedy, drama, reality television and entertainment, or contest-based shows.

Sweeps are a notoriously busy time and as they happen four times a year, efficiency and ways to streamline and advance my workflow are always top of mind. I recently upgraded my studio, migrating from legacy Fairlight to DaVinci Resolve Studio for audio post just in time to tackle Fox’s February sweeps promos, which had me creating numerous radio spots for a variety of shows. Armed with the Fairlight Desktop Audio Editor and Fairlight Console Channel Fader hardware, I went to work.

Compressed Voiceover
Having done this for the better part of 30 years, it comes very naturally to me, but the promo is an art that requires fine instincts and the ability to condense an entire episode of a show into 30 seconds. Producing a radio promo means capturing the listener’s attention quickly and delivering a clear, compelling message within a very short time frame, all while maintaining high audio quality and adhering to branding guidelines.

Trying to fit the entire message into less than 30 seconds gets very tricky. The network gives us creative mandates, which include phrases that cannot be cut no matter what. DaVinci Resolve Studio’s ability to time-compress voiceover bits and soundbites from a show is a godsend. It’s done on the fly, it’s very fast and accurate and it doesn’t require the need to create a new clip.

DaVinci Resolve Studio’s AI-based noise reduction and voice isolation tools are like magic wands. Sound bites from TV shows can sometimes be noisy; with outdoor scenes comes background noise. While it makes sense on television because the visuals are there, it’s just confusing when used for radio. Though I’ve gotten rather skilled at filtering out distracting noises manually, the voice-isolation tools have made my job so much easier.

I was a bit hesitant to upgrade my studio as my original Fairlight system was still working great, so why rush? But I realized that staying up to date with technology is crucial for my business, or any business for that matter. I wanted to make sure my studio had the latest equipment, features and compatibility within our industry, so I can deliver to my clients and stay competitive.

As a business owner, a studio upgrade needs to deliver a return on investment and give me peace of mind that it’ll start up in the morning. I don’t have the luxury of moving to another room when there’s a problem with the one I’m working in. If my studio is down, my business is down. So, the most important thing to me is reliability and support, which comes seamlessly with Blackmagic Design.

For more information, contact Blackmagic Design at 408-954-0500 or visit www.blackmagicdesign.com.

NEVADA City, Calif.—At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest architecture that seamlessly unifies live capture, camera card ingest, and file-based workflows.

Built on the Vantage platform, the new workflow capabilities are designed for ultimate flexibility, scalability, and efficiency, supporting on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, the company said. Central to the strategy is Telestream’s practical use of AI; rather than generating unstructured “metadata dumps,” Telestream Global Ingest produces structured, system-aware, and standards-compliant metadata at the point of capture. This enables instant interoperability with a wide range of platforms, such as Avid, Iconik, and Mimir, accelerating editorial, archive discovery and distribution while eliminating workflow bottlenecks, according to the company.

“With Global Ingest, we’re transforming a fragmented technical hurdle into a unified entry point for high-speed production and operational efficiency,” said Charlie Dunn, EVP of Product Management at Telestream. “By standardizing ingest on the Vantage platform, we eliminate the need for proprietary vendors and rigid integrations, enabling customers to move content from any source into any editorial or MAM system with speed and precision. We are making ingest a strategic advantage rather than a workflow gap.”

A Unified, Intelligent Ingest Platform
Telestream’s scalable ingest capabilities empower technical teams with precision, flexibility, and speed, no matter the format, source, or operational environment (on-prem, hybrid, or cloud). It supports a wide range of media operations, from high-performance, real-time ingest for live sports and news, to scalable file-based ingest for post-production and media supply chains.

Highlights include:

• Vantage Live Capture – A high-performance ingest engine with unmatched input/output flexibility. Supporting ST 2110, SDI, SRT, NDI, MPEG-TS, and RTMP, it enables centralized ingest from IP, SDI, and even tape-based sources. With support for up to 16 channels in a single RU and deep codec support, Live Capture seamlessly integrates into editorial and MAM systems such as Avid and Adobe.
  
• Live Schedule PRO 2.0 – A high-availability, enterprise-ready scheduling platform with clustered deployment, automation, and failover capabilities. Designed for continuous operation, it’s ideal for live newsrooms, sports broadcasters, and 24/7 ingest environments.
  
• Camera Card Ingest – Telestream’s camera card ingest solution delivers a streamlined user experience with enhanced metadata extraction, multi-destination workflows, and tight Vantage integration. It accelerates turnaround times for editors and supports modern content production at scale.
  
• Review: Proxyless Player for Distributed Teams – A professional-grade playback experience for live and captured media, with real-time 10-bit native playback, scopes, and audio monitoring. Review will support remote editorial collaboration without the need for proxy generation.

Telestream will showcase Global Ingest powered by Vantage at IBC2025, Stand 7.B21.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO will make the international debut of its enTranslate Mobile for real-time, personal content translation in public spaces and showcase its enCaption and enTranslate solutions for broadcaster and live events during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

ENCO developed the enTranslate platform to perform real-time, automated translations of live broadcasts and streams, VOD assets and presentations in cooperation with the fast, accurate captioning performance of enCaption solutions, ENCO said.

ENCO has consistently added support for new languages both on-prem and in cloud, which will be shown live in several on-booth demonstrations, including an enTranslate Mobile demo that will invite attendees to scan QR codes to access the platform’s Language Selector on their mobile devices. Once prompted, users can choose from several languages via the Language Selector menu, it said.

The company’s live demonstration of enCaption’s new speaker identification feature, debuting at the show, highlights the dynamic AI voice fingerprinting solution, which detects and identifies each speaker with more than one contributor. This capability is well-suited for shows with large panels like talk shows and those with multiple commentators like sports, the company said.

The technology’s AI-powered functionality is powered through a single-stream audio mix that dynamically identifies each speaker in real time upon analyzing the pitch, timber, accent and speaking style of each participant, it said.

The company will also feature enCaption feeding live captions into virtual production environments, such as the live Qimera virtual production set at its stand, which will debut at IBC this year. The Qimera demo will include green-screen technology with 3D multi-camera tracking, PTZ camera integration, 3D graphics assets and real-time data feeds, including captions that can be composited along with live camera feeds, ENCO said.

See ENCO at IBC2025 Stand 8.C76

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEVADA CITY, Calif.—Telestream today unveiled Vantage AI, a platform-wide evolution of artificial intelligence capabilities that enable smarter, faster and more adaptive media workflows from ingest to delivery, and will show it at IBC2025, set for Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Building on Vantage’s ability to automate complex operations, the AI expansion broadens the scope of what can be automated.

“Many AI tools overwhelm teams with raw transcripts and labels that require manual interpretation before they’re useful,” Charlie Dunn, executive vice president of products at Telestream, said.

“Vantage AI takes a fundamentally different approach,” he said. “We deliver context-aware metadata that’s embedded into workflows and ready to trigger real actions, whether automating subtitles, accelerating search or enabling smarter decisions. It is practical AI that enables our customers to improve their operations and businesses.”

Telestream’s unified approach to AI empowers customers to streamline operations, enrich metadata and enhance QC, while maintaining full control over content, infrastructure and cost predictability. Highlights include:

• AI-Caption, which generates accurate, multilingual subtitles from audio with options for human-refined or fully automated delivery, preserving timing, readability and cultural nuance.
• AI-Speech, which creates rich, searchable metadata through transcription, content summarization and sensitive language detection. This accelerates content discovery across news, sports and post workflows.
• AI-Qualify, which detects lip sync issues, subtitle overlap and spoken language mismatches—problems often missed by rule-based QC systems. Automating these checkpoints with AI eliminates manual checks and improves accuracy across formats and platforms.
• AI-Vision, which detects logos, scene changes and ad break opportunities to automate segmentation and streamline content repackaging. This also helps ensure compliance by identifying visual elements that may require masking or replacement.
• AI-Workflow, which uses natural language prompts to create media processing workflows, accelerating production cycles while reducing errors. The intelligent automation makes media operations more streamlined and dynamic.

Vantage AI also enriches content in Telestream DIVA, automatically generating captions, transcripts, summaries and visual metadata that accelerates archive discovery and automation without the need for third-party tools or siloed processing.

“Security is paramount for our customers. Vantage AI operates securely on-prem or in controlled environments, keeping media assets within the customer’s domain. No customer content is used for training the model,” Dunn said. “This ensures compliance, auditability, and cost control, especially important for broadcasters and live event producers operating at scale.”

Vantage AI is available for deployment today across a range of media workflows, including live production, 24/7 broadcast operations, content repackaging, and other high-volume environments.

See Telestream at IBC2025 Stand 7.B21.

More information is available on the company’s website.

At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Moments Lab will unveil its new Discovery Agent, an AI-powered research assistant for video production teams. Offering a natural language, chat-style experience, the Discovery Agent helps users locate precise clips, quotes, or scenes from their media library in seconds, without the need for vague keyword searches or technical know-how.

"You can think of our Discovery Agent as your personal research assistant, one who can remember every single video in your archive," explained Moments Lab co-founder and CEO Phil Petitpont. "The Discovery Agent is powered by our AI indexing technology, MXT-2. Just tell the agent what you're looking for and it instantly returns the best selections from your video library. One of our beta clients even referred to it as a 'significant life improvement' for their team."

Moments Lab will also showcase the newest features in its award-winning multimodal AI indexing technology MXT-2, which understands and describes videos like a human. Available on the Moments Lab platform or via its public API, MXT-2 features Custom Moments, time-coded shot descriptions of key video moments that can be tailored to users’ needs. The MXT-2 Custom Insights feature automatically generates text of any length (titles, descriptions, articles) and can classify content by specific parameters.

Moments Lab solutions enable organizations to:

• Centralize, index, and sort videos automatically with AI
• Search, discover, and repurpose content at scale
• Share and distribute media files to key partners
• Commercialize media libraries via a cloud-based marketplace

On Saturday, Sept. 13, Moments Lab CTO Fred Petitpont and Richard Yu, chief product officer at LucidLink, will discuss how their AI video search, data access, and collaboration technologies power a real-time workflow for Brut–Europe’s leading media brand known for its short-form video content–at the Cannes Film Festival. The presentation will take place at 4:00 pm, IBC Showcase Theatre, Hall 8.

Moments Lab is a proud participant in the 2025 IBC Accelerator Programme project: AI Assistance Agents in Live Production, championed by ITN and BBC, in a proof-of-concept aimed at deploying the Video Discovery Agent in live news workflows and integrating it with other production tools.

Moments Lab will be in Stand #7.C22.

Whether it’s a live sports or entertainment production, an episodic TV show or some other program, color management is an essential component of ensuring shots from the multiple cameras being used to capture content match and convey what the producer has in mind.

The emergence of high dynamic range (HDR) creates even more complexity with respect to the production pipeline as the audience is split between those watching standard dynamic range TVs and those viewing HDR sets.

Tim Walker, senior product manager for color management products and HDR solutions at AJA Video, sat down with TVTech contributing editor Phil Kurz, to discuss color management, look management and other color-related issues during a 10-minute Executive Q&A video.

Today’s mixed SDR-HDR production environment isn’t the only development affecting the production pipeline when it comes to color and look, however. Producers seeking to create specific moods and emotions among their audience members develop unique looks that must be maintained carried accurately forward throughout the pipeline.

The rise of Cine Live—a live production approach that brings cinematic techniques to video—is another factor. It requires its own set of color and look management considerations as digital cinema cameras with cinematic lenses with different color requirements are introduced into live video capture workflows, said Walker.

Even the use of specialty cameras and drone cameras are creating new color management challenges for broadcasters and producers as they work to match these camera sources with the other more conventional video production cameras used to capture events, he said.

During the interview Walker described how AJA Video’s ColorBox and other tools are being used to assist producers as they address the color and look management issues these and other productions developments are creating.

Watch the full video here.

We all agree that content isn’t valuable unless it’s accessible and that access today (and for the foreseeable future) depends almost entirely on metadata. And while AI tools have made headlines for sensational visual generation, the real opportunity lies in applying AI at the point of ingest, where metadata can be structured, system-ready, and immediately usable across production, editorial and asset management systems.

For organizations managing mixed environments that include OGs like Avid to newcomers like iconik and Mimir, the challenge is consistent: how to generate actionable metadata once, and make it usable everywhere.

The answer requires more than transcription. It requires engineering metadata pipelines that are system-aware, and automation-ready.

The Metadata Challenge at Ingest
Ingest workflows today must accommodate a wide range of formats and signal types, from SDI and SRT to ST 2110 and file-based delivery. These inputs often arrive without standardized metadata, or worse, with metadata that is incompatible with the production environment it’s entering.

When your production, editorial or asset management system can’t interpret this metadata, assets become invisible. They might be present on shared storage or in a database, but they are effectively inaccessible to your colleagues who rely on search, tags, and categorization to do their work.

This isn’t just a usability issue; It is a systemic bottleneck—one that leads to duplicating efforts, unnecessary storage bloat, and unused assets. The manual update of metadata can be a drag on the creative process, and the big downside, loss of monetization opportunities around unused assets.

The Real World is a Mix of Logos
Consider a media operation where the editorial team builds long-form stories in Avid Media Composer, the digital publishing team uses iconik for clipping and social content, and leadership is planning a move to a cloud-native MAM like Mimir. Without metadata interoperability, these systems operate as isolated silos.

Engineers in this environment face several challenges:

• How do you normalize metadata formats across systems with different schemas?
• How do you automate tagging without exposing sensitive data to external AI services?

How do you build a metadata layer that can persist across platform migrations?

Solving these problems starts at ingest. When metadata is created during ingest using a controlled, customizable AI engine, it becomes possible to prepopulate editorial and asset management systems with structured, validated, and consistent metadata.

Privacy Please
Security and privacy is paramount for every professional media company. They want on-premise, media-specific AI engines that can generate multiple types of text-based metadata such as:

• Transcripts for full-text indexing and search
• Sub-clip summaries for segment-level context
• File-level summaries for cataloging and archive tagging
• Sentiment tags for editorial filtering

Keyword Extraction for Named Entities and Events
Because the AI runs entirely within the local infrastructure, there is no need for cloud access, no exposure of sensitive content, and no unpredictable usage-based costs. The output can be formatted to match the ingest requirements of your system without risk of your data being scanned or used to train public data sets.

The result is an ingest workflow that not only delivers transcoded media, but a complete metadata envelope with zero risk that is ready for immediate use across platforms.

Building a System-Aware Metadata Pipeline
The critical engineering task is not just metadata creation. It’s metadata alignment. AI-generated metadata must be:

• Standards-compliant to ensure compatibility across ingest and editorial systems
• Contextually aware so that summaries and tags reflect the intended use of the asset
• Mapped to system-specific schemas, including AAF for Avid or JSON/XML for cloud-based asset managers
• Linked via persistent identifiers to ensure traceability across edits and platform migrations

When this is done correctly, it unlocks a number of efficiencies. Editorial teams can search by phrase or keyword without transcribing manually. Digital teams can find content aligned to tone, event, or subject matter. Engineers can integrate new platforms without retrofitting metadata after migration.

Most importantly, content becomes discoverable and usable immediately upon ingest rather than sitting dormant on storage until it’s manually processed (or not).

Engineering for Discoverability
From an engineering standpoint, this is about shifting metadata from a post-processing task to an ingest-native function. When AI is embedded directly into the ingest workflow, metadata generation becomes deterministic, repeatable, and secure. The pipeline delivers not just media assets, but indexed, searchable, and categorized content across the production stack.

This is not just a smart automation play. It is a foundational shift in how media workflows are engineered for speed, scale, and cross-platform utility. In a landscape where discoverability drives reuse, speed to air, and monetization, metadata is no longer optional infrastructure. It is core to system design.

Interra Systems, a global provider of end-to-end quality assurance for the media industry, will unveil its latest innovations in media QC, monitoring, and analysis at IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam.

As the media and entertainment industry looks ahead to a future defined by multiplatform complexity and rapid technological change, Interra Systems’ solutions empower broadcasters, telcos, and streaming providers to deliver outstanding viewer experiences. Visitors to Booth 7.C11 will see how the company’s integrated QC and monitoring tools help media organizations identify and resolve issues early, optimize workflows, and ensure seamless, high-quality content delivery in today’s dynamic environment.

“IBC is where the global media community comes together to shape what’s next. Our long-standing team of engineers is committed to developing technology that enables our customers to thrive in a fast-changing landscape,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management at Interra Systems. “We’re excited to showcase our latest advances in QC, monitoring, and captioning, and to collaborate with industry leaders on driving the future of media quality and innovation.”

Interra Systems Solutions on Display at IBC2025:
ORION Suite: Comprehensive Video Monitoring for Every Platform
At IBC2025, Interra Systems will spotlight the latest enhancements to its award-winning ORION content monitoring suite, including a powerful new multiviewer feature for real-time visualization of multiple video and audio streams. ORION continues to set the standard for robust, real-time monitoring across linear, IP, and OTT workflows. With flexible deployment, broad format support, industry-first all-frame decoding, real-time audio language detection, ad insertion monitoring, and advanced analysis, ORION dramatically improves video quality checks and playback assurance for critical channels.

ORION Central Manager (OCM): Unified Workflow Oversight
Interra Systems’ flagship OCM platform delivers centralized, end-to-end visibility across the entire media workflow. Recent updates include support for IPv6 compatibility, advanced probe management and user group permissions, and support for enhanced end-to-end ad insertion monitoring — boosting operational efficiency and security for large-scale media operations.

BATON 9.3: AI-Powered Automated QC
BATON 9.3, the latest version of Interra Systems’ industry-leading automated QC solution, introduces enhanced autoscaling, improved 4K video quality checks, and new validations such as blank bar detection and CIE color gamut analysis. BATON 9.3 aligns with the latest ITU-R BT.1702-2023 PSE flash guidelines and features advanced algorithms for QR code detection, freeze/duplicate frames, media offline, blockiness, defective pixels, video dropouts, burnt-in text, and shot transitions.

BATON Captions: Intelligent Captioning and Subtitling
With the demand for accurate, multilingual accessibility at an all-time high, BATON Captions delivers robust, AI-powered captioning and subtitling. New features include intelligent caption placement that follows scene change guidelines to prevent overlap with burnt-in text — a common challenge in regional content.

The latest release also introduces advanced QC and correction tools powered by machine learning, ASR, and NLP. A redesigned UI enhances usability with an integrated relay workflow service, vertical zoom on audio waveforms, and smart caption segmentation that automatically splits, merges, and resegments captions based on clause boundaries, character limits, and natural pauses. These enhancements improve efficiency, ensure compliance, and support seamless multilingual viewing experiences across formats.

VEGA Media Analyzer: In-Depth Media Analysis and Debugging
Interra Systems’ VEGA suite for compliance, debugging, and stream interoperability features expanded support for VVC, AV1, HEVC, MV-HEVC, AVS3, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, ATSC 3.0, and more. VEGA simplifies complex video standards and ensures seamless compatibility across platforms and devices.

Interra Systems will be in Booth 7.C11 at the RAI Amsterdam.

BURBANK, Calif.—Key Code Education, a provider of instructor-led postproduction training, is growing its curriculum with new programs for beginner and intermediate training for Ross Video Carbonite and XPression, Vizrt TriCaster, EditShare EFS and SNS EVO.

The coursework offers in-person, online and on-site training that goes beyond the basics of self-paced eLearning. The courses are designed to give students the real-world knowledge needed to operate systems efficiently with confidence, Key Code said.

“For many companies, onboarding new staff or adopting new tools is a steep climb,” Key Code Media President Mike Cavanagh said. “Our instructor-led classes help teams quickly get up to speed, accelerating workflow transitions and improving performance.” 

Key Code Education has long offered advanced training in Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve and engineering certifications like Avid ACSR. The new courses are designed for production professionals and those switching careers to receive a strong foundation with widely used tools, Key Code said.

California-based media organizations that qualify for the state’s Employment Training Panel (ETP) program can receive discounts on the training for their staff.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—FilmLight has officially launched FilmLight REMOTE, a remote color-grading solution that allows post houses and colorists to work remotely without sacrificing the high-quality and low-latency monitoring essential for fast and efficient workflows.

The FilmLight REMOTE solution, which has been through an extensive beta program, is available now to all users as part of Baselight 6.0.

“In today’s post-production environment, there is an increasing call for remote working, whether you work on dailies, editing, VFX or finishing,” Martin Tlaskal, head of development at FilmLight, said. “But the world of color correction has its own particular challenges and previous offerings have been limited in terms of the ability to drive both the color grading control surfaces and the monitoring of high-quality images with low latency. FilmLight REMOTE addresses this by offering the first complete remote grading solution without sacrificing quality or speed.”

FilmLight REMOTE allows users to integrate a FilmLight control surface, UI monitors, mouse and keyboard with professional monitoring over the internet. The Baselight or Daylight can run HP Anyware or Amazon DCV to provide the remote end with multiple UI monitors up to 4K. At the same time, an SRT video connection is made to provide a high-quality video stream (supporting JPEG-XS and H265) to the remote system, where the FilmLight desk service can also provide support for the Slate, Blackboard Classic or Blackboard 2 control panels.

UNIT TV was part of the FilmLight REMOTE beta program and recently added REMOTE to its unique workflow setup in London—helping its team stay focused on creativity.

"The solution we decided upon for UNIT’s workflow was at the bleeding edge of technology and had not been attempted before,” Adam Luckwell, founder and CEO of UNIT TV, said. “Filmlight’s support was amazing, the depth and breadth of knowledge along with their can-do attitude mirrored our own engineers, who worked together with Filmlight to solve initial problems and develop a brilliant fully remote solution that has kept our artists happy and focused on their creative output.”

REMOTE also supports the increasing interest from facilities to host equipment off-premise, in a data center or in the cloud. A thin-client system can be used to stream the UI from the Baselight or Daylight system, and handle the control surfaces. The video stream is received by the thin client or the FilmLight REMOTE server, which can be used to receive up to four UltraHD video streams—converting them to SDI to interface with existing SDI routing infrastructure. FilmLight REMOTE also opens up the possibility to work seamlessly from home or other remote sites, without the need for any extra hardware encoders or decoders.

Coffee & TV in London was also part of the REMOTE beta program and is now running REMOTE regularly, with Baselight now located off-premise in a data center.

“The highest compliment we can give is that you’d never know the Baselight wasn’t in the building—it works seamlessly,” said Lewis Crossfield, senior colorist at Coffee & TV.

More information is available here.

With nonlinear editing now about 35 years old, even the most experienced practitioners have known little else—and it is, by any measure, a mature market. It also faces fundamental change, from users in unanticipated fields, revolution in the fundamentals of computing and a changing audience and market for video itself.

“What it means to be in video has developed a wider definition,” Meagan Keane, director of product marketing for Adobe’s video portfolio, said. “Our customer base is so diverse. When we look at our users, there’s everything from top features and TV to docuseries, broadcast news, sports, commercials, content creators and everything in between.”

Despite that diversity, Keane said, the needs of users are often constant. “The strategy for Premiere as a single application is that users are needing it to be more end to end,” she said. “Maybe that’s because you’re a one-person band and doing everything, or you’re a craft editor and you pass off to finishing, sound—but there’s still an expectation from the director that the first cut you see looks and sounds beautiful.”

Staying in the Zone
As excitement around machine learning subsides to a more sustainable level, Keane described an approach to AI that will be familiar to many in the industry: “assistive AI—there’s generative extend. [Adding] two seconds of audio or 10 seconds of video doesn’t seem like a big deal, but from the editor’s perspective, it’s huge. That keeps the editor in the creative flow, not having to go and find B-roll or reverse or slo-mo, or room tone nobody recorded.”

Allowing creatives to stay in the zone as machines pick up the donkey work is a common thread, but the maturity of the market can be a caveat on the desire to add new things. Adobe’s approach is gradual, Keane said.

“The way we’ve been addressing the mature app and legacy code for both Premiere and After Effects is that as we’re updating [features] in the app we’re addressing legacy code that may be there,” she said. “It’s not a full app rewrite all at once, it’s addressing layers within the app—they’re being modernized or evolved. And how do you do that without disgruntling experienced users?”

Often, though, that tension can be resolved in mutually beneficial ways. “Our high-end users see it as valuable that we’re also used by the content creators,” Keane said. “Data shows that the next-generation consumption patterns are going more and more short form. A huge percentage of box office ticket sales are now driven by short-form content—trailers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. A lot of the big tentpoles [are thinking], ‘How do we do this well, how do we connect with that short-form audience in a way that’s meaningful for our big name releases?’ ”

Grass AMPPs It Up
Grass Valley’s Edius is perhaps identified most with broadcast edit, but remains far from immune to revolution in the wider world. Michael Lehmann-Horn, CEO of distributor Magic Multimedia, described Edius as “a different product to what Grass Valley normally sells. A camera will always be a camera—that’s hard to do in software. The editor came historically from the company Canopus, which is a Japanese company, and in the past it’s been a little bit separated. In the last year, they’re working much more closely, because they’ve seen that integrating editing in their [SaaS] AMPP solution is interesting.”

That kind of integration, Lehmann-Horn said, makes software more usable in more places. “You can use AMPP for editing; you have the [asset manager] Framelight X which also includes the editor,” he said. “Since about a year ago, they’ve been really pushing to integrate Edius into the AMPP workflow—but that said, Edius doesn’t need AMPP, it runs on a standalone PC, too.”

Much as service-oriented solutions have become popular, concerns over economics have recently moderated the uptake of cloud computing in media production. There are ways to address the problem, though, as Lehmann-Horn explained.

“Edius can work without a good GPU; systems in the cloud are expensive if you add GPU,” he said. Concerns over data-handling fees are also addressed. “What people used to do is download the file, change it and upload it again, that costs a fortune,” he said. “With Edius, you go to where your footage is, make the change—there's no up-and-down.”

While upscale GPU resources have brought blinding performance to certain aspects of editing, Lehmann-Horn pointed out the value in keeping things more lightweight.

“We have been working with Hans AI and Akon—they have AI-based tools for denoising,” he said. “The fun stuff is, if you look at [other solutions] you may have very high quality denoising but it’s consuming a lot of energy. The tool from the library from Akon is 50K, it’s a small file. It can be processed by any CPU, even embedded CPUs, and that’s the point. If you’re using a lot of energy, that’s not the future of AI.”

In a more general sense, though, Lehmann-Horn proposes that “the future of editing is having more information about your footage. Editing is searching files, the right clips … analyzing it and building something. If you’re always doing the same kind of work, you’d like to have an assistant making the timeline for you.

“One car-part manufacturer was selling like 12,000 different types of towing attachments,” he added. “They needed 12,000 videos. We took the data from an Excel file … wait a bit and you have 12,000 video files!”

Expanding Collaboration
The word “collaboration” might increasingly describe working with a machine, rather than another human. As software matures, though, expanding feature sets require diverse skillsets. Bob Caniglia, director of sales operations for Blackmagic Design in North America, explained the evolution of the company’s Resolve editing platform in this way: “As Resolve expanded into audio and effects the need to do collaboration expanded more and more. You can begin with the free version. I know a lot of people who share projects and they’re not necessarily using Resolve Studio, they’re using Resolve which is the free version.”

Worries over exit fees are addressed by Blackmagic’s cloud solutions. “Our cloud service gives people the ability to move files through without storing,” Canigila said. “It can be a less expensive way to move files.”

Security, too, is a concern, especially in the world of high-end drama from which Resolve originally hails.

“If some people are cautious about putting files in the cloud, we still can share the Resolve projects and then they’re all working on the same project at the same time,” he said.

“Another thing that’s as simple as can be is the Blackmagic cloud app,” Caniglia added, describing another aspect of integration. “If you’re out in the field shooting and the camera has a locked-off shot the journalist can use a cellphone to shoot another angle and send that back to the station.”

As the company reaches increasingly for the broadcast market, Resolve’s live capabilities have grown accordingly. “When we started talking about a replay system I didn’t think any of us thought it would run through Resolve, but when it came out we thought it made a lot of sense,” Caniglia admitted. “That’s one of the tools we threw in there recently… Resolve becomes a live replay system.”

Caniglia is clear that updating software with the legacy of Resolve, and without compromising performance, demands careful engineering. “Resolve has been optimized and reoptimized a number of times,” he said. “When Blackmagic bought Da Vinci, the code was clunky, but it didn’t matter because the hardware was the fastest on the planet. Every time they talk about speed improvements, it’s about keeping it going so you don’t feel like you’re waiting around for things.”

Legacy Media Composer
Avid’s Media Composer must rank among the most mature of its breed, and it accordingly has faced keen pressure to innovate while sidestepping the wrath of a hugely established user base. Michael Krulik, Avid’s product evangelist for Media Composer, remembers a long history.

“It’s been over 35 years since we came out in ’89, and people still talk about Media Composer … even for basic trimming, people historically have said we have the best tools for that,” Krulik said. “That’s what people are doing. They’re cutting.”

“The big enhancements we’ve done AI-wise in Media Composer are to do with the transcription tools,” Krulik added. “They provide transcription for source clips and transcription of the sequence. If you search for a word, it jumps to that point in a clip and you can edit the transcript text directly from your sequence. There’s also a single-click subtitle creation. What they don’t want is the machine making creative editorial decisions for them. Searching, suggesting possibly, may be good, but when I talk to a lot of editors, producers, post supervisors, there will still be a human element to it.”

Bringing the benefits of modernity to such an established art form has required something that Krulik describes as something of a carrot-and-stick process. “What’s changed tech-wise is being able to finish on software in a way you couldn’t years ago,” he said. “People want to be able to work faster. What happens with that is when you make a change … people slowly adjust, but development isn’t going to happen with the older software. So, if they want any of the [new tools], if they want the Pro Tools-Media Composer interop, they’re not going to get that with the old version.”

Making collaboration features useful to that kind of audience, Krulik said demands respect for the traditional approach. “As far as remote and collaboration goes, they still like the idea of being in person, of shouting down the hall, ’Hey come and look at my cut!’ There are tools like Avid Huddle that lets you share through Teams. You can get talent from anywhere. You’re not required to be in L.A. or to drive an hour and a half, one way, to work behind a desk, then miss being with your family and putting your kids to bed.”

Krulik concluded by pondering a harsh reality that continues to plague creatives worldwide. “It’s a mental thing, but also you need to have work to be able to do this,” he said. “I think the biggest issue at this point is that editors want to get back to work. A lot of people who are working, and they’re very thankful to be working, but a lot of people who aren’t are wondering when they’re going to get their next gig. Hopefully this year, production becomes a bit stronger.”

BRISTOL, U.K—Wounded Buffalo Sound Studios is an audio postproduction facility that has worked on countless award-winning TV productions, including “Planet Earth III,” “Earthsounds,” “Our Great National Parks” and “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet”.

From their facility in Bristol, in the west of England, Wounded Buffalo Sound Studios has carved out a unique niche in the world of audio postproduction. It is known for its exceptional work in natural history documentaries.

Long-Shot Audio
Working on natural history documentaries presents many unique challenges. Since most subjects are shot on very long lenses, you can film something from 400 yards away but you can’t easily capture the sound from that distance.

This often means that when we receive footage, the accompanying audio is sometimes minimal or of poor quality. In the field, audio is rarely a priority, or even available, with shoots often capturing “first-ever” seen footage in extreme environments.

But we do get some atmospheric sound if we’re lucky. Sometimes the production team will leave a remote camera with a built-in mic somewhere, and even though the sound can be pretty terrible, it’s really useful; it lets us know what we’re supposed to be aiming for.

Natural history content requires incredible attention to detail. We regularly consult with scientists and episode producers familiar with the footage or landscapes they depict to ensure the authenticity of the sound. Each layer is pretty fastidiously researched. The wrong bird at the wrong time of day can ruin the authenticity.

The pressure to maintain accuracy is immense. We often work with footage that needs the sound to be reconstructed entirely. This means creating a soundscape that is believable yet captivating.

Swimming In Sound
One of the more surprising aspects of natural history sound work is dealing with underwater audio. Given the important role of clear underwater audio in ocean scenes, we advise recording teams on how to capture it for best effect—for example, stopping the boat’s engine so that the noise doesn’t interfere with natural sounds.

Underwater stuff is actually quite tricky. Swimming generally doesn’t make much noise, but when you see it, it kind of needs to make a sound to look right. So, if you’re underwater and a dolphin swims past the camera and above you, you can follow it with sound.

To address those difficult issues at Wounded Buffalo, our facilities now include three dubbing theaters featuring Dolby Atmos technology and six edit suites:

• Dubbing Theatre A (Dolby Atmos): Avid Pro Tools HDX system with S6 M40 console, and wall-to-wall speakers.
• Dubbing Theatre B: Avid S6 control surface and Pro Tools.
• Dubbing Theatre C: Two Avid S1 modules and Avid Dock.
• Sound Editing Suites: Pro Tools with various plugins including iZotope RX, a powerful noise-reduction software package.

A turning point for us came with the integration of Avid’s S6 control surface, marking a significant upgrade. When the S6 came along, we jumped ship and went to Avid. It’s very versatile.

The integration has been particularly crucial for our work on complex projects. Everything is in one place. The integration is seamless, and it brings forward everything we need for a session.

More information is available at avid.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Interra Systems has announced that its long-time customer Starz has upgraded its caption generation and quality control workflows to the latest version of the Interra’s BATON Captions solution.

Starz made the move as part of an effort to streamline its English-to-Spanish captioning process. The newest version of BATON Captions has enhanced caption quality and helped the network detect and correct shift and drift errors more efficiently, the two companies said.

“Interra Systems’ BATON Captions has been instrumental in streamlining our captioning workflow,” Dan Stowell, director of programming operations at Starz, said. “BATON Caption's speech-to-text feature significantly reduces the time and effort required for creating accurate captions, which helps us meet the growing demand for multi-language content.”

BATON Captions uses cutting-edge machine language (ML) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, allowing Starz to address caption-related requirements such as generation, postproduction editing and content localization. Harnessing the power of ML and ASR, BATON Captions ensures precise captioning every time. The automated solution includes a user-friendly web-based player and advanced reporting, with feedback on caption quality and more, Interra reported.

"For the past two years, we've proudly collaborated with Starz, delivering an innovative captioning solution that supports their global content strategy," said Ashish Basu, executive vice president of global sales and business development at Interra Systems. "Our BATON Captions solution, powered by machine learning and ASR technology, ensures high-quality captions and seamless audio compliance for Starz."

More information about Interra Systems solutions can be found at interrasystems.com.

Adobe has expanded its Firefly family of creative generative AI models to video, in addition to new breakthroughs in its Image, Vector and Design models. The Firefly Video Model, now in limited public beta, is the first publicly available video model designed to be “commercially safe,” Adobe said.

Perhaps the biggest news that came out of Monday’s Adobe Max conference for broadcasters was the addition of generative AI to Premiere Pro, one of the most popular video-production systems in the Media & Entertainment industry. However, the “Generative Extend” AI beta is not full-on generative AI, but rather a feature that allows creators to extend clips to cover gaps in footage, smooth out transitions or hold onto shots longer for perfectly timed edits.

The company said it trains its Firefly generative AI models on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock or public-domain content, and its features are developed under its AI Ethics principles of accountability, responsibility and transparency—aka what it calls “Content Credentials.”

“Since founding the Content Authenticity Initiative in 2019, Adobe has championed the widespread adoption of Content Credentials as the industry standard for transparency in digital content, now supported by over 3,700 members,” the company said. “Content Credentials, which act like a ‘nutrition label’ for digital content to show how it was created and edited, are applied to select Firefly-powered features across Creative Cloud to indicate the use of generative AI.”

Since Firefly’s first beta release in March 2023, Adobe said it has been used to generate more than 13 billion images—an increase of more than 6 billion over the past six months.

“The usage of Firefly within our creative applications has seen massive adoption, and it’s been inspiring to see how the creative community has used it to push the boundaries of what’s possible,” Adobe Chief Technology Officer, Digital Media Ely Greenfield said. “We’re thrilled to bring creative professionals even more tools for ideation and creation, all designed to be commercially safe.”

The beta for Adobe’s Firefly Video Model (beta) extends Adobe’s family of generative AI models, which already includes an Image Model, Vector Model and Design Model, “making Firefly the most comprehensive model offering for creative teams,” it said. It is available today through a limited public beta to garner initial feedback from a small group of creative professionals, which will be used to continue to refine and improve the model, according to Adobe.

Within one year of being launched, Firefly was brought into Photoshop, Express, Illustrator, Substance 3D and more, while supporting various workflows in Creative Cloud applications. Firefly also supports text prompts in over 100 languages.

Other new features include:

• Text to Video and Image to Video (beta), for user controls and stunning video clips: Powered by the Firefly Video Model and now rolling out in limited public beta in the Firefly web app, creators can access new Text to Video and Image to Video capabilities. With Text to Video, video editors can generate footage from text prompts, access various camera controls, such as angle, motion and zoom, to fine-tune videos, and reference images for b-roll generation to seamlessly fill gaps in a video timeline. Image to Video capabilities allow creators to bring still shots or illustrations to life by transforming them into stunning live-action clips.
• Firefly Image 3 enhancements for faster generations: With the latest evolution of Firefly Image 3 Model, creators of all levels can ideate by generating images in seconds with results that are up to 4 times faster than previous models—now available on the Firefly web app.
• Generative Workspace (beta) in Photoshop: Adobe Firefly-powered Generative Workspace in Photoshop allows designers to simultaneously ideate, brainstorm and iterate concepts.
• Firefly Vector Model (beta) advancements in Illustrator: Adobe Illustrator brought Generative Shape Fill (beta), Generative Recolor and Text to Pattern, all powered by the latest Firefly Vector Model (beta) earlier this year, allowing designers to quickly ideate or add detailed vectors in their own unique style to existing artwork and designs. The latest version of Firefly Vector Model allows creators to further control the density of elements in a single pattern to change how tightly those elements are packed together.

Adobe at the conference also previewed “Project Concept,” a new capability for multiplayer, collaborative, creative concept development that lets creative professionals remix images in real time, so they can conceptualize live within a single canvas.

In Firefly Services, a collection of creative and generative APIs for enterprises, Adobe unveiled new offerings to scale production workflows. This includes Dubbing and Lip Sync, now in beta, which uses generative AI for video content to translate spoken dialogue into different languages while maintaining the sound of the original voice with matching lip sync. “Bulk Create, Powered by Firefly Services” is also now in beta and will let professioonals edit large volumes of images more efficiently, streamlining tasks such as resizing or background removal.

The Firefly Video Model is in limited public beta via waitlist at firefly.adobe.com. During this limited public beta, generations are free. Adobe will share more information about Firefly video generation offers and pricing when the Firefly Video Model moves out of limited public beta.

TV Tech sister brand TechRadar Pro has more.

DETROIT—Waymark, a developer of AI video-creation technology, is launching “Variations,” a new technology that generates video ads in multiple lengths and aspect ratios with a single click for all devices and platforms, maintaining a cohesive look and feel, the company said.

Waymark said its AI-powered video platform enables creators to generate high-quality commercials for local businesses in five minutes or less. With Variations, creators will be able to take their Waymark videos and convert them into additional lengths such as 30- 15- and 5-second clips, as well as complementing formats such as 16x9 and 4x5, with a single click, creating an “omnichannel” video campaign, the company said.

“As we rolled out our video ad platform over the last two years, we’ve continued to talk with our partners about their ongoing needs and we’ve often heard their desire to generate high-quality ads that can cover all of their platforms,” Waymark CEO Alex Persky-Stern said. “So, I’m thrilled to say that our entire team dug in and developed our groundbreaking new Variations technology. We believe it’s going to truly be a game-changer for all our partners.”

Since launching its video ad platform last year, Waymark has signed partnerships with numerous leading media companies including Spectrum Reach, Fox, Scripps, Gray, Beasley Media Group, Nine (Australia) and U.K. newspaper publisher National World plc. Earlier this year, Waymark teamed with Paramount+ and Pluto TV to launch the new Paramount Ads Manager platform and joined Comcast NBCUniversal’s LIFT Labs Vertical AI Accelerator program.

DOHA, Qatar & DUBAI, UAE — At CNBC Arabia, the financial and business information channel, we faced the daunting challenge of a comprehensive overhaul. It was imperative due to the revamp of our Dubai headquarters and an expansion in our Doha location, as the network sought to adapt to ever-evolving industry demands and emerging technologies.

Embracing the change, we had a clear goal of streamlining workflows, enhancing collaboration, and driving innovation across the organization. An Avid customer for more than 15 years, CNBC Arabia had previously used another Newsroom Computer System (NRCS) with third-party integrations before switching to Avid MediaCentral | Newsroom Management (iNEWS).

Two Facilities, One System
With two facilities in Dubai and Doha as well as several news bureaus across the Middle East, CNBC Arabia recognized the imperative for a comprehensive and integrated newsroom workflow efficiency solution from a single vendor, so that content could be easily shared between locations and delivered to end users as fast as possible.

Avid’s solutions offered a unified user experience in the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, bringing together script writing, video viewing and editing, logging and access to archive content. Editors work in Media Composer to craft packages for air, powered by the video sharing capabilities of MediaCentral | Production Management, with Avid NEXIS shared storage. Avid ingest and playout servers are deployed in both sites for robust workflows to get media in and play media out to air.

Another key aspect of our transformation was the adoption of Avid | Edit On Demand, a cloud-based platform for seamless media sharing and collaboration, removing the need for on-prem infrastructure in the bureaus and providing a simplified way of creating content that can be easily accessed by both main studio locations.

CNBC Arabia benefits from being on a subscription package encompassing all locations, giving the organization leverage and flexibility to upgrade to a better system without a heavy initial investment.

Our migration to the new solution in both Dubai and Doha was not without its challenges, but by now using the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, staff can easily view and browse content in either site on a unified user interface, and then use MediaCentral | Delivery to exchange content swiftly for use by their editorial teams.

The capabilities of MediaCentral | Newsroom Management also allow staff to view any stories in either site and transfer them simply by dragging and dropping from one rundown to the other.

In Dubai, our infrastructure was—and still is—based on SDI, while in Doha, an IP-based infrastructure was deployed. Avid’s solution can handle both scenarios. While viewers may not notice any change to their viewing experience, the technical infrastructure behind the scenes is vastly different.

Avid | Edit On Demand, which runs in the Microsoft Azure Cloud, empowered CNBC Arabia to create, edit, and distribute content with unprecedented ease and efficiency. Additionally, our distributed teams benefited from a sense of reliability and consistency. With Avid | Edit On Demand, we now have a centralized process to bring content into the cloud, making our lives much easier.

Cloud-Based Flexibility
With a modernized system now in place in our two main locations, combined with the cloud-based flexibility of Avid | Edit On Demand, the need to re-edit and transcode files and footage before sharing has been eliminated. Valuable time is saved, allowing us to deliver news to our audience more swiftly and efficiently than ever before. We no longer spend time digging through file systems, allowing us to focus on our content schedule. We have more bandwidth to create new programs and talk shows.

Looking forward, the flexibility and scalability offered by Avid’s subscription packages will enable us to adapt to evolving needs and take full advantage of all system capabilities. With plans to further explore Avid’s offerings, we’re poised to unlock even greater newsroom workflow efficiency and innovation, paving the way for future growth. l

More information is available at www.avid.com.

VANCOUVER, BC—Hollywood-based post-production veterans, MTI FILM and ColorTime, have joined forces to launch Flow Post Partners, a new creative boutique in the heart of Vancouver’s creative district, Flow “is designed to support the rebounding television production market, capitalizing on Canada’s favorable post-production tax credits,” the two companies said.

Flow Post Partners has secured two high-profile television series: CBS's "Watson" and the upcoming Peacock comedy, "Laid."

"Vancouver is an ideal location to launch Flow. It has an excellent pool of talent from which to choose so staffing can be all Canadian. "Our studio partners have a strong presence in Canada, and they need a reliable known partner who can offer creative and technical support locally,” said Larry Chernoff, CEO of MTI FILM. "To begin, Flow will provide productions with dailies and, in phase two, complete their projects with VFX and finishing services enjoying the financial benefits of the local tax credits."

Expansion plans are already underway, with new partnerships planned to launch in other key markets, the companies said.

LOS ANGELES—High-end boutique post-production house Arsenal FX Color has upgraded its evaluation monitoring with the addition of Sony’s new 4K BVM-HX3110 TRIMASTER HX professional grading monitor to handle its diverse workload of increasingly complex media projects and meet client demands for high-quality content.

Focused on long-form content for broadcast television, streaming services, feature films and commercials, Arsenal has witnessed an evolution in the role of monitors over the years. Adding the HX3110 signals to clients that the self-described “artist-driven” shop has first-hand experience with personalized client service and prioritizes quality, it said.

"I’m a colorist, Josh Baca is an editor, and our other partner, O.T. Hight, is a visual effects artist," said Larry Field, managing partner and supervising colorist at Arsenal. "Our combined expertise offers a profound understanding of client engagement in the studio. This [the HX3110] enables us to provide nuanced guidance tailored to today's highly specialized projects across multiple genres of home and theatrical entertainment."

Arsenal installed the HX3110 in early 2024, complementing its current inventory of Sony monitors. The pot house previously installed several BVM-X300 models, later adding several BVM-HX310s, which offer the same color gamut as the new BVM-HX3110 for ease of use in tandem operation and overall consistency, Sony said.

With improved viewing angles, quicker pixel response and a more intuitive menu system, the HX3110 is designed for enhanced color fidelity. Peak luminance has been increased to 4000 cd/m² with high-speed pixel response and reduced motion blur, it said.

Arsenal has seen the projects it takes on evolve. Handling more projects, Arsenal has faced a wider range of requirements for color, conforming and visual effects. Projects are now underway longer compared to the past with regards to network-based broadcast television projects and features that do not have an upfront streaming component, the Arsenal team noted.

“There was a rhythm and a fairly predictable delivery schedule with TV work,” said Baca, partner and chief technology officer at Arsenal. “Now we work on projects that are six to 10 episodes and in some cases are treated more like a large feature film. They are more complex, require more time and as a result projects are open longer. Plus, we’re creating multiple deliverables on everything: standard and high dynamic range, multiple nit levels, different color spaces, formats and more.”

“The improved viewing angle really helps, especially when you have a client or a DP, for example, sitting next to you during a session. If you hit something off-axis where the colors and contrast are shifting, then they start questioning the quality of the color correction. But now you can have someone next to you enjoying the same viewing as if they were looking straight at it.”

The Arsenal team has also found the monitor’s improved pixel response, reduced latency and intuitive menu system offer significant workflow benefits.

“We use the fast response license to review items like end credit scrolls and check for motion blur,” Baca said. “Also, the menu system is intuitive enough for artists to easily make changes to color spaces or nit levels, which is especially helpful because they're swapping between projects throughout their working day.”

The new monitor is helping Arsenal to fulfill increasingly varying delivery requirements faster and more efficiently for streaming platforms and stay up to date with the latest trends in monitoring. At the same time, the growth of the home entertainment market also affects the professional monitoring space. TV manufacturers are producing new models capable of displaying higher nit levels, plus increasingly discerning viewing consumers expect higher quality levels.

“The decision to entirely grade a project in HDR and view it only in HDR is becoming more of a trend, where just a few years ago there weren't even enough qualified devices available to execute that type of project properly,” said Field. “The streamers are really advancing the requirements for HDR, and we now have demand to hit 4,000 nits where a year ago the conversation never went past 1,000 nits.”

More information is available on the Sony and Arsenal FX Color websites.

Israeli telecom HOT has deployed OOONA’s QA Manager to transform management of its video-on-demand (VOD) catalog and automate quality assurance operation, enhance the accuracy of localization and deliver a better experience to customers.

HOT faced several challenges prior to adopting OOONA’s solution. It relied heavily on manual processes to track and update content in its vast catalog with tools like Microsoft Excel and email. Not only was the process time-consuming, but it also was prone to human error, OOONA said.

Those errors were difficult to identify and once found prioritizing which to correct was difficult. Incorrect pricing and errors in asset metadata had the potential to aggravate customers and negatively impact revenue if not promptly corrected, it said,

HOT also was nearing the limit of its ability to handle its ever-expanding catalog because the operational process that was in place was not scalable, the company said.

OOONA's QA Manager addressed these challenges by automating and scaling traditional, labor-intensive QA workflows, it said.

“OOONA QA Manager has significantly reduced the time needed to fix issues. We can now perform a full quality check on various devices, ensuring a better customer experience,” said Aviran Barlev, HOT Telecommunications content operations director.

Implementation OOONA's QA Manager involved integrating the system with HOT’s existing CMS to ensure seamless data synchronization and maintain data integrity. The system was customized to automate workflows for error handling and updates. OOONA also trained HOT staff on the new system and continues to provide the telecom with support, it said. 

Using QA Manager has led to a 10x improvement in the speed with which errors are resolved. Critical problems can now be corrected in as little as an hour, it said.

The solution also has improved the accuracy of VOD asset metadata and pricing with automated checks, improved scalability in VOD catalog operations by 100% and provided HOT with data-driven insights with dashboards and reports on error trends and operational performance, it said.

Next up for HOT is the integration of other OONA tools, such as one to streamline subtitling. The telecom also plans to explore how AI solutions can automate content previews and metadata generation. HOT also plans to enhance the QA Manager dashboard for better insights and implement AI-driven solutions for content analysis and promo creation, the company said.

“OOONA’s QA Manager not only helps us manage the day-to-day and the quality of our VOD Library,” said Barlev, “but it also gives us insights into overall trends or where we can improve the whole localization process.” 

More information is available on the company’s website. 

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Cineverse announced this week that it is using XL8’s AI-powered machine translation technology to enhance Cineverse’s Matchpoint content management and distribution platform for captioning and localization.

The partnership combines XL8’s real-time AI-powered localization supply chain solutions, including AI-generated subtitle and caption creation along with its proprietary machine translation engines, with Cineverse’s content management and distribution platform. 

This direct API integration streamlines how vast content libraries are captioned and localized, while reducing the costs required to serve the needs of global audiences with more diverse, culturally relevant, accessible translations and captions, Cineverse said. Embedding AI localization into the media supply chain enables Cineverse to offer a broader range of content to their audiences at a lower cost and speed with accuracy and consistency, according to the company.

XL8’s MediaCAT APIs will serve as a critical link in Cineverse’s digital media supply chain, which will leverage XL8’s AI technology to efficiently manage the localization functions within the company’s proprietary Matchpoint all-in-one OTT and streaming platform. Matchpoint streamlines the distribution process and enhances the overall management and monetization of digital media by automating workflows with AI capabilities. 

As a provider of Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) technology, Cineverse says the new integration offers its channel operators a scalable, fully automated content delivery product suite that now includes translation, captioning, and localization.

MediaCAT builds innovative artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to provide high-quality, real-time media content translation. The platform integrates seamlessly into existing automated workflows while adhering to the industry’s standards for security and compliance.

“Our partnership with Cineverse demonstrates our ongoing commitment to innovation and leadership in the AI-powered media localization market,” said Josh Pine, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at XL8. “Embedding our platform into an automated media delivery system for FAST represents an industry milestone, and we’re thrilled to be part of a solution that empowers media companies with fast, accurate, and culturally nuanced translations to expand their reach to global audiences.”

Cineverse’s Chief Operating Officer & Chief Technology Officer, Tony Huidor, added, “Integrating XL8’s top-tier AI auto caption creation and machine translation engines into Matchpoint allows us to leverage next-generation technology to help Cineverse and our partners to easily expand our business internationally without incurring significant costs. Through the power of Matchpoint and XL8’s MediaCAT, our content partners can now more effectively maximize their distribution and improve monetization for their content libraries.”

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Adobe has launched the new Adobe Express for Enterprise, which Adobe said is designed to help businesses improve marketing content creation and extend easy, on-brand content production to communications, sales and other business users. 

Adobe Express for Enterprise includes powerful branding tools, support for automated content creation and AI-based content creation with Firefly Image Model 3. It also provides streamlined interoperability with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat combined with granular brand controls enable organizations to easily create content. 

Adobe reported that leading enterprises and agencies like IBM, Dentsu and others have already adopted Adobe Express for Enterprise. 

“Adobe Express for Enterprise is the only solution that brings together enterprise-grade brand management, intuitive tools, advanced AI designed to be safe for business and seamless workflows with world-class creative apps – empowering individuals across the enterprise to produce more impactful, on-brand content faster than ever before.”

More specifically, Adobe said that the new advances include Brand Controls, Bulk Create, Generate and Firefly Custom Models, enabling marketers to reuse and adapt content for upcoming campaigns and localize campaign assets for different regions. Sales teams can effortlessly create and customize engaging materials for clients and prospects, and internal and external communications teams can design content for stakeholders – quickly and easily.

Adobe Express for Enterprise is seamlessly integrated with Adobe Acrobat, Creative Cloud and AEM Assets, as well as Adobe GenStudio, the company’s forthcoming end-to-end content lifecycle app. Adobe GenStudio enables marketers to reuse existing brand-approved content, generate variations for digital channels, activate content in Adobe and third-party applications and measure content performance. Deeply integrated into Adobe GenStudio, Adobe Express for Enterprise supports the ability to remix approved assets and directly edit content without requiring specialized creative skills.

“With the exponential growth in demand for personalized experiences, companies must find new ways to supercharge the production of content that connects with customers and elevates their brands,” said Govind Balakrishnan, senior vice president, Adobe Express Product Group and Creative Cloud Services at Adobe. “Adobe Express for Enterprise is the only solution that brings together enterprise-grade brand management, intuitive tools, advanced AI designed to be safe for business and seamless workflows with world-class creative apps – empowering individuals across the enterprise to produce more impactful, on-brand content faster than ever before.”

Adobe reported that IBM marketing teams are already personalizing content using Adobe Express for Enterprise. According to Jonathan Adashek, senior vice president, marketing and communications at IBM, “Marketers are looking for trusted AI that seamlessly integrates into their work. Adobe Express for Enterprise is empowering marketers at IBM to create on-brand content aligned to business objectives that delivers compelling, personalized experiences to targeted audiences."

IBM Consulting is also partnering with Adobe to help clients leverage Firefly-powered workflows in Express to create commercially safe content with unprecedented ease and speed and modernize their content supply chains. Clients can expect to see a 30% increase in project capacity and 70% reduction in time to market by distributing creative production tasks across a more diverse team of professionals while delivering more personalized, brand-compliant, digital assets at scale. Adobe Express for Enterprise will also empower IBM’s Consultants to make on-brand content by quickly applying fonts, colors, logos and images to marketing materials.

Other large brands and agencies using Adobe Express to create on-brand content faster and more efficiently include:

• Dentsu, one of the largest global marketing and advertising agency networks in the world, saw a 70% faster time to market by empowering marketers to self-serve.
• Red Hat, the world's leading provider of enterprise open-source solutions, is using Adobe Express in its marketing organization. Leveraging Adobe Express templates, marketers can create their own assets on demand and rapidly scale up for digital campaigns, product marketing and events. Empowering marketers with Adobe Express enables Red Hat to accomplish in minutes what used to take days. The integration between Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Express streamlines Red Hat's design workflow, giving creative teams more bandwidth to design new ways of engaging customers.
• Owen Jones, a brand experience agency, saw a 40%-time savings on content versioning when clients were able to make self-serve changes with Adobe Express.

Adobe’s own marketing and communications teams are also using Adobe Express for Enterprise across a variety of use cases. According to Stacy Martinet, vice president, marketing strategy and communications at Adobe, the social media team is leveraging Adobe Express templates from the creative studio to make and activate more content quicker, which also enables the team to test and optimize content at a much faster pace. As a result, the team has increased time to market by 12X, improved engagement by 35% and reduced costs by 17% while saving hundreds of hours annually.

Using Adobe Express for Enterprise, Adobe’s sales team also has reduced delivery time for client assets from two to three weeks to just 30 minutes, helping them close deals and realize revenue faster.

The solution also features updated capabilities for Firefly, which uses generative AI models that are designed to be safe for business so enterprises can deploy the app broadly with confidence. Firefly-powered advances like Text to Image, Text to Template, Text Effects, Generative Fill and other features like auto-translate, are deeply integrated into Adobe Express workflows, enabling marketers to deliver campaigns faster, instantly generating, translating and customizing production-ready assets and creating endless variations in just a few clicks at greater scale and lower costs.

Adobe also reported that Firefly Image Model 3 is now available directly in Adobe Express – the latest Adobe image model delivering stunning advancements that unlock unprecedented quality, control and variety of output through new features. For example, users can upload reference images and use Firefly to generate new images based on the style, mood, lighting, layout or composition of the reference images with a simple prompt.

Adobe offers enterprise customers IP indemnification for imagery generated with Firefly, giving brands additional assurance. To provide transparency around the use of generative AI in the creative process, Content Credentials are automatically attached to digital content created or edited with Firefly in Adobe Express, providing a digital nutrition label that builds trust with audiences.

Coming soon, Firefly Custom Models will be available in Adobe Express so enterprise customers can create bespoke Firefly models to generate images with stronger brand identity across tools, teams and marketing touchpoints.

Bulk Create and Generate will allow marketers to create design variations – including generate images – in seconds. Marketers will also be able to leverage generate copy to create and test messaging performance and adapt to channels and design types at the speed of AI.

Adobe also reported that it is working with Microsoft to develop Adobe Express Extension for Microsoft Copilot to unlock new levels of creativity and productivity for employees. When it launches, the extension will empower everyone to easily create on-brand content within Microsoft 365 apps with a simple prompt –from engaging videos, animations, social, banners, flyers and more – directly in the Copilot chat and without disrupting their workflows.

Adobe will share more about these latest innovations at an Adobe Express for Enterprise virtual event on June 11.

For more information, visit www.adobe.com.