EEG Video, Ai-Media come together to form complete captioning platform in NAB 2022

EEG Video and Ai-Media (Booth N5509) have announced their trade show debut together at the 2022 NAB Show.

Since Ai-Media’s acquisition of EEG in April 2021, their combination has created a one-stop shop of captioning solutions, combining cloud offerings with human services. This is reflected through Ai-Media’s EEG iCap, Falcon, and Lexi Automatic Captioning cloud services, available with Ai-Media’s captioning, transcription and translation technology and teams.

EEG and Ai-Media offer advanced captioning solutions that are easy-to-deploy and cost-effective. Their combined cloud-based solutions and global network of captioning professionals benefit many kinds of content creators. This powerful platform streamlines broadcast and live streaming captions for broadcasters, streaming content, events, corporates, municipalities, educational institutions and more.

Here is what conference attendees will see at the EEG and Ai-Media NAB booth:

For broadcast captioning, EEG Video will highlight the Alta Software Caption Encoder for Live IP Video. Alta is ideal for any broadcaster planning closed captioning/subtitling in IP video production environments. A cloud-based encoder for live IP video, Alta merges intelligent captioning and translation capabilities with cloud-based video workflows, and is available for both MPEG-TS and SMPTE 2110 formats. Alta processing pipelines can be run in private VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud), or in full-service short-term packages from EEG with the Alta Cloud Rentals program.

CDI Alta is the latest update to Alta, extending its support to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Cloud Digital Interface (CDI), making it easier and more affordable than ever for content creators to caption cloud-based live video production.

The introduction of CDI Alta follows EEG’s previous announcement of support for AWS Media Intelligence (AWS MI) solutions. Through this collaboration, Ai-Media’s EEG Alta and Lexi Automatic Captioning Service were both made available as part of AWS MI solutions.

Live streaming video captioning solutions include the following:

The Lexi Automatic Captioning Service is the automatic captioning service. It is now faster, easier and more cost-effective than ever, offering increased control and interoperability to IP-based workflows.

Broadcasters, streaming content creators, governments, municipalities, corporates, and educational users will benefit from the many advances in Lexi. Capable of achieving over 96% accuracy, Lexi expands the usability and quality of affordable AI captioning for live broadcasting, live streaming and events, videoconferencing, and even VOD programming.

NAB will also mark the debut of Smart Lexi. This CaaS live captioning solution combines machine learning automation with expert human curation. It builds on Lexi’s 96% accuracy to provide users with unprecedented levels of accuracy, automation and affordability.

Smart Lexi is designed for broadcasters, live event producers, corporates and educational users seeking live captions at a higher accuracy than out-of-the-box automated captioning solutions and with a sharper price point than live human captioning.

Smart Lexi achieves its high quality and performance by layering captioning techniques and technologies, including human curation, custom dictionaries and machine learning. Its AI-powered automation delivers optimal automatic speech recognition (ASR) caption accuracy.

Smart Lexi provides security and logging features, as well as content teams and value-added fast turnaround services for post-event transcripts.

Multilingual Services brings international reach to content with captioning for dozens of languages. Ai-Media’s deep expertise with premium human captioner teams that can provide live translations and audio interpretation will connect creators and audiences everywhere.

The iCap Translate automatic captioning translation solution is cloud-hosted and builds on Lexi’s advanced AI to create live captioning in a video program’s spoken language. iCap Translate supports English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Danish, Maori, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. It can work from source captions in any of these languages created by a monolingual expert stenographer, a live Lexi Automatic Captioning Service speech-to-text job, or a previously recorded and embedded caption track.

In addition, the popular Falcon Live Streaming RTMP Encoder now features an HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) output mode, providing extensive support for world language web captioning.

In HLS output mode, Falcon users can add up to six segmented Video Text Track (VTT) caption tracks to a live stream. These VTT caption tracks are detected by the user’s media player as closed captions, appearing in most HLS players as a user-selectable option, with all encoded languages listed.

Falcon provides a fast and efficient workflow for live streaming captioning based on an RTMP uplink. The converted HLS output stream integrates with many of the most popular HLS video players, such as JWPlayer, hls.js, Kaltura, Bitmovin, FlowPlayer, TheoPlayer, NexPlayer and Castr. With Falcon, content is efficiently captioned through a complete AI transcription and translation stack using the Lexi Automatic Captioning Service.

The Falcon, Lexi and Smart Lexi cloud services are a core offering of EEG and Ai-Media’s CaaS platform. This comprehensive set of live streaming-ready cloud captioning services are seamlessly integrated, offering one-signup for ease of use when creating accessible, localized content. As a result, content owners can easily connect to new markets for additional revenue streams.

NAB also marks the show debut of the iCap Connect AV650. Ideal for any production studio or event space captioning in 4K resolution, the AV650 adds powerful new capabilities to all the features of the HD492 iCap Encoder. It provides native support for UHD 12G-SDI Caption Encoding and Decoding, making it 4K ready.

Users can now produce in a wider range of SDI workflows. Ai-Media’s EEG AV650 can easily overlay open captions on a 4K display, or in ATSC 3.0 for in-room monitor accessibility. The AV650’s SDI signal with captions can also be sent to a separate streaming media encoder and instantly converted to RTMP for a live streaming workflow.

The 1RU AV650 is optimized for event production companies who recognize that captioning and readable video can significantly expand their audiences. Ai-Media’s EEG AV650 provides the flexibility to work with broadcast, live stream and in-room spaces, with the option to encode in 4K.

Another NAB highlight will be the first showing of V2.1.0 of the AV610 CaptionPort™ Live Captioning Display, giving users increased control of onscreen imagery, text position and appearance in an affordable and easy-to-use purpose-built solution.

The AV610 was created to deliver caption connectivity to video conferencing and live meeting displays, with V2.1.0 making the AV610 more flexible and intuitive than ever for in-person meetings. Designed specifically for AV applications, the AV610 ensures full presentation visibility by scaling input video down by 15% with the option to place caption data either above or below the video. This unique feature allows for the use of standard presentation templates without visual interference from captions, while ensuring accessibility for the hearing impaired.

Live meeting hosts can now use Scaler Mode to generate a fullscreen background image with text overlays. Caption Decoder Mode gives users complete control over captions’ appearance including standard or custom fonts, size and color, in addition to text position. As a result, horizontal/vertical displays can be easily combined with larger text using the AV610.

Additionally, no upstream video generator is required to use AV610 V2.1.0. No external video source or TV converter from HDMI to SDMI is needed, making the 1RU AV610 a completely self-contained accessibility display solution for live meeting environments. In Background Image Mode, users can simply upload a JPEG, PNG, TIFF and SVG image such as a brand or event name and then place text on top, enabling a screen at the meeting to display captions in real time.

With the AV610, captions can be sourced automatically from Ai-Media’s EEG Lexi Automatic Captioning Service, or from thousands of live captioners over EEG’s iCap, the world’s largest closed captioning and subtitle delivery network.

“It has been a pleasure to welcome EEG’s talented team to Ai-Media,” says Ai-Media co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Tony Abrahams. “Our combined strengths have led us to launch our comprehensive one-stop shop. This is an innovative ecosystem of video and captioning services. We are glad to be together for the first time at NAB Show 2022.”

“EEG and Ai-Media provide a sophisticated tech stack that builds on what captioning can do,” says Bill McLaughlin, Chief Product Officer of Ai-Media. “NAB Show 2022 is the perfect opportunity to meet with content professionals worldwide, educate them about Captioning as a Service and learn about their unique captioning needs.” Sports Video Group