SVG Sit-Down: Tedial’s Jérôme Wauthoz on SMARTLIVE Storytelling for Sports

Combining AI with metadata engine, the system automates logging and highlights-production

In early 2018, Tedial unveiled its SMARTLIVE platform, which marries AI to a metadata engine, enabling remote logging and automating highlights production. Since then, it has won a Best of Show Award at NAB 2018 and at IBC 2018 and has attracted interest from the sports-production sector, especially among lower-tier properties looking for automated production solutions to streamline live-event operations.

The system, which added Speechmatics speech-to-text capability and an auto-logging tool at IBC, can analyze commentary tracks and insert the corresponding logs into event logs, as well as provide video recognition of action and players. With the metadata engine, SMARTLIVE also automates media logging and clip creation and distribution, including to social media.

Tedial’s Jérôme Wauthoz: “A rapidly changing media landscape is challenging, so we are constantly developing features and functionalities.”

SVG sat down with Tedial VP, Products, Jérôme Wauthoz to discuss how SMARTLIVE leverages AI for advanced storytelling and targeted delivery, streamlines setup and prep time, enables teams to create and produce more personalized content, increases access to historical content, and can impact the overall sports industry.

How does AI enable advanced storytelling and targeted delivery? And what does that mean to the sports community?
SMARTLIVE delivers personalized stories to fans. The end-to-end workflow is tailored to sports and live events and uses AI tools to maximize its metadata engine to automate media-management tasks from remote logging and clip creation to distribution. Features and functionalities important for the sports community include the ability to automate speech-to-text from the commentary track to enrich event logs of live game coverage, and video analysis to recognize faces and jerseys. System capabilities also extend to automatic metadata tagging.

How does the AI-powered automated metadata engine streamline production and increase the number of game and season highlights generated?
Before the game starts, SMARTLIVE pulls data about the event, such as the lineup and schedule or even historical statistics, from event sources and databases. It automatically creates the event, schedules recordings on the video servers, and creates keyword grids that the production team can use immediately, significantly reducing preparation and configuration time.

During the game, SMARTLIVE combines the data-feed logs with the AI engine to automatically create highlights of the most relevant actions. It can also create clips on demand: for instance, the best moves of one specific player or the most exciting plays of a team. It can create highlight packages of an entire game or the most interesting actions of several teams, such as the best goals of the weekend.

How does SMARTLIVE help production teams produce more and personalized content?
Personalized game and season highlights — or whatever viewers want to see — are generated automatically and distributed to linear TV and pushed to social networks or digital platforms via automated metadata mapping, effectively growing fan engagement. It’s simple and targeted storytelling but at a fraction of traditional costs.

How is historical content accessed, and what does that mean to sports production?
SMARTLIVE is powered by Tedial Evolution [media-asset management] and scalable media-oriented BPM engine, which means that access to the archive is a native feature. It [automates] event-metadata ingest, automatically provides a production environment, provides instantaneous live searches to bring historical media and informational archives to the live event, and automatically generates highlights for delivery to digital platforms and social networks. Historical content with little or no metadata can be re-analyzed by the AI engines to automatically regenerate metadata, revitalizing value for the old content in the archive.

How is the move to centralized remote broadcast production enabled?
SMARTLIVE is a fully web-based, service-oriented architecture. It can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid when combined with Tedial AST for full multi-tier and multi-site content and storage management. In addition, all UI’s are HTML5.

The arrival of newcomers to the digital economy — Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter — has increased the cost of sports rights and poses new challenges for sports broadcasters. Does SMARTLIVE help control production and infrastructure costs?
Staying competitive and profitable in a rapidly changing media landscape is challenging for broadcasters or any content owners. So we are constantly developing features and functionalities to keep our customers ahead of the curve.

SMARTLIVE allows the production team to collaborate better and create much more content. The number of clips generated is drastically increased, costs are reduced, and creativity is unleashed. The more content produced, the more opportunities to boost revenues, and a shift to digital platforms and delivery to social-media networks maximizes visibility and monetizes content in the moment.

SMARTLIVE provides better control of infrastructure costs with a “grow as you go” business model. Its scalable design supports systems from the most modest to large, enterprise-level implementations.