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Broadcast Tech Talks

Technology Podcasts

Short (5-20 minute) podcasts for the TV industry, covering the creative use of technology in production, post-production and broadcast. From the makers of Broadcast Tech, Broadcast Sport and Broadcast magazines.

Location:

United Kingdom

Description:

Short (5-20 minute) podcasts for the TV industry, covering the creative use of technology in production, post-production and broadcast. From the makers of Broadcast Tech, Broadcast Sport and Broadcast magazines.

Language:

English


Episodes

Tim Burgess reveals what's next for Tim's Listening Party

3/13/2024
Tim Burgess talks to Broadcast Tech editorial director Jake Bickerton about the development of Tim's Listening Party, from Twitter/X to an Absolute Radio show to a hit podcast series. Tim also covers the influence of AI in music, and reveals he's recorded a song he asked ChatGPT to write in the style of The Charlatans. Find out more in this great episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks, which was recorded live at the Media Production & Technology show at London Olympia.

Duration:00:15:57

The Future of Post Production

3/4/2024
Broadcast Tech editorial director Jake Bickerton talks to president of Picture Shop, Cara Shepherd, Racoon founder David ‘Klaf’ Klafkowski and director of post production and partnership at Sky, Adam Downey, about the major issues affecting post-production right now. The discussion covers the ongoing impact of the recent writers’ and actors’ strikes, and the potential of more strikes to follow from other sectors of the industry. A big focus of the debate is on how post-production houses are having to adapt to deal with several major business challenges coming at once – the strikes, the commissioning slowdown, significant budget pressures, the cost of living crisis, etc. In some cases, these have slashed workload for post houses by half. The good news is things are set to change dramatically in the second half of 2024, which could see facilities being packed out again, as discussed in this podcast. Also discussed is how post is reacting to the growth of GenAI and automation, whether it’s a welcome change or a threat to business; whether post houses could or should accommodate the needs of the social-first generation of content creators; and ensuring data security within post-production. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast is a recording of the opening speaker panel discussion at the recent Future of Post Production Forum we ran in association with Avid at the BFI Southbank, London last month.

Duration:00:52:06

What rapidly evolving GenAI means for the media industry

1/24/2024
Cyrus Mewawalla, head of thematic intelligence at GlobalData explains what the future looks like for GenAI and how it won't take as long as you might imagine for AI to present with 100% accuracy, to be a sentient being with a conscience that's at least as intelligent as a human being. And that's when the future of the human race could be under threat. In terms of the immediate future, Mewawalla looks at how GenAI is already impact every segment of the media and entertainment industry, and how it's evolving fast, improving ten fold every 12 months. This short podcast makes compelling listening. It was recorded at the AI Creative Summit, held at BFI Southbank, London towards the end of 2023.

Duration:00:17:42

Generative AI & the Art of Storytelling

12/19/2023
This podcast is a recording of a speaker session from the AI Creative Summit, held at BFI Southbank, London, in November. The session, called Generative AI & the Art of Storytelling, looks at where Artificial Intelligence can push the boundaries of storytelling; how it disrupts traditional methods of conveying a narrative; and how the industry might harness generative AI and ChatGPT. The panellists talk about how AI will be the catalyst for new forms of storytelling – bringing illustrations to life, creating immersive theatre environments, adding the ability to speak to characters in a narrative context, and more. Talking about their current use of AI, one of the panellists says their whole team has to use it every day, for everything from mundane tasks to generating short form video scripts, for which they say it does a great job. The panel's use of AI includes for creating post-production deep fakes to make someone speak in different languages and recording professional-sounding voiceover from a smartphone microphone. The panel also talks about the ability to monetise the use of AI by selling prompts to get the most out of GenAI for generating scripts, and how certain jobs in the industry including rotoscoping will likely to replaced by AI. More specifically, one panellist says AI will not steal your jobs but people who know how to use it may. Another panellist believes AI will eventually be better than us at making TV programmes and “might even kill us, but we might as well enjoy it while it lasts”. Speakers: Guy Gadney, Co-Founder & CEO - Charisma.ai Eline van der Velden, CEO & Founder - Particle6 Alex Hryniewicz, Director of Content - Little Dot Studios Chair: John Cassy, CEO & Founder - Factory 42

Duration:00:45:28

The Business of AI: Where Artificial Intelligence can make a real difference

12/13/2023
The Business of AI: Tools of the Trade - Where Artificial Intelligence Can Make a Real Difference Discover how much of a game-changer AI and machine learning is, and how it's benefitting broadcast businesses. Find out how the industry is looking to adapt, what technologies and AI tools have already been adopted, and how to keep on top of innovative technologies in such a rapidly evolving market place. This episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast is the full recording of a speaker session at the AI Creative Summit held at BFI Southbank, London on 16 November. The speakers: Maria Ingold, Strategy & Innovation CTO - mireality Connagh Flynn, Senior Insights Manager - Formula E Asa Bailey, Writer & Director - BAILEY AI Film Company Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data & AI Officer - ITV Philippe Petitpont, CEO & Co-Founder - Newsbridge

Duration:00:40:03

AI Innovations: The Future of Multilingual Automatic Speech Recognition

10/27/2023
In the first episode of the new series of the Broadcast Tech Talks Podcast, Jake Bickerton talks to Trevor Back from Speechmatics and Mira Pelovska from Broadteam about large language models and the future of multilingual automatic speech recognition. The focus of the episode is about how AI-driven speech-to-text engines can more accurately and more effectively handle different dialects and accents, and what goes into the machine learning training to enable this to happen. Trevor and Mira explain in straightforward terms what's currently possible for applications such as live subtitling utilising speech recognition, and how highly trained AI from Speechmatics makes it possible to cope with different voices from around the world and produce highly accurate speech transcriptions in a matter of seconds. The podcast also covers what the future holds for AI-driven transcription and translation services as their accuracy and abilities continue to grow, especially with the introduction of genAI enabling a move from speech transcription to speech comprehension. What this means in practice is Speechmatics will, in the future, be able to understand what was said, how it was said and the context in which it was said, which will have a huge range of benefits and potential uses within the broadcast industry.

Duration:00:22:56

Airspeeder takes flying car races to the sky with Base Media Cloud

7/19/2022
Airspeeder head of media Stephen Sidlo joins Base Media Cloud CEO Ben Foakes to talk to Broadcast Tech & Sport Group editorial director Jake Bickerton about how they are capturing and handling broadcast and a host of digital content during the inaugural season of Airspeeder flying car races. Airspeeder is the world’s first racing series for flying electric cars. The first competitive races are with the remotely piloted EXA Series, which navigate tracks in the sky in a series of close-proximity races. Airspeeder and Base Media Cloud work together to create an end-to-end digital media workflow, which handles digital media content to be distributed online and used on social media. It also takes care of the analytical data for the robot Aviators that takes the place of pilots. They digitally receive remote inputs and mimic the movements of the human pilot on the ground. The series includes multiple teams, with multiple craft transmitting data that needs to be processed, tagged and stored. The isolated locations where the races take place require flexible, scalable applications that can be scaled up and down as demand fluctuates on race days.

Duration:00:22:15

TikTok and BBC Studios - How to plan a content strategy for TikTok

6/15/2022
TikTok head of UK media partnerships, Normanno Pisani and BBC Studios VP commercial, digital, Matt Ford talk to Broadcast Tech & Sport Group editorial director, Jake Bickerton, about how BBC Studios is bringing high-profile properties, including Top Gear, Eastenders and Doctor Who to the TikTok platform. Pisani and Ford discuss how they have been working together to plan the content mix and editorial tone of the different BBC Studios' TikTok accounts, in advance of their launch on the short-form video giant. The podcast offers advice for all content creators on how to plan and roll out a successful TikTok account; how to create 'trends' on TikTok and utilise existing trends; and how to ensure your account complements your broader content strategy across social media. Pisani and Ford also talk about the rapid growth of vertical video and how to best present content in this format.

Duration:00:21:26

How the OB sector has to adapt to the changing shape of live production

6/13/2022
Outside broadcasts, post-production and studios provider Timeline CEO Dan McDonnell and head of operations Dave Harnett talk to Broadcast Tech reporter Max Miller about the company's recent expansion in Ealing. It has opened a 9,700 sq ft broadcast facility specifically designed for remote productions, and including a 2,000 sq ft virtual studio space. McDonnell and Harnett explain the thinking behind the facility, and how it's been designed to complement the company's existing range of live production services. They also discuss the future of live production, sustainability in production and the possibilities opened up by virtual studios. The podcast also covers the impact on the outside broadcast industry of the collapse of Arena TV, and why Timeline are continuing to invest in outside broadcast trucks despite the huge growth in remote production over the last few years.

Duration:00:25:58

IWD 2022: How to ensure gender and ethnic diversity in post-production

3/8/2022
Podcast with Jet Omoshebi, senior colourist at Goldcrest and Natascha Cadle, co-founder, Envy for IWD 2022. Omoshebi and Cadle talk about gender representation in the different areas of the post-production industry, to mark International Women’s Day 2022. The podcast discusses what can and is being done to encourage more women to pursue careers in grading, picture and audio editing, VFX, engineering roles etc within post-production. Omoshebi and Cadle also talk about whether being a woman in a fairly male-dominated industry has ever held them back at all during their career to date, and they offer their advice to young women who might want to pursue a career in post-production.

Duration:00:21:19

Everything you need to know about virtual production, with Final Pixel

2/7/2022
Virtual production experts Final Pixel join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to provide invaluable insight into the burgeoning world of virtual production. Final Pixel's Monica Hinden, Chris McKenna and Michael McKenna talk in-depth about what virtual production offers producers; the long list of advantages for filmmaking in an LED Volume stage; and the planning and approach required to maximise the potential of virtual production. The Final Pixel team bring to life the world of virtual production through real-life examples, showcasing where they have worked with a wide range of clients across a variety of genres to create fully immersive environments that make great use of real-time, in-camera VFX.

Duration:00:26:58

How virtual production is bringing the news to life at Al Arabiya

11/16/2021
Fadi Radi, director of creative at Al Arabiya News Channel, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how an ambitious mix of state-of-the-art virtual studios and virtual production sets are being used to visualise the week's biggest news stories. Every week, Al Arabiya creates a new eye-catching virtual set, immersing the viewer in a virtual world related to the topic under discussion. The environments created in these extended reality (XR) sets are whatever the editorial requires, with the presenter seamlessly embedded into the scene. So far, they have included the Amazon rain forest, an underwater scene, a space scene, immersive 360-degree views of Afghanistan and Iran, and the blood stream. The quick-turnaround sets are created using a combination of Unreal engine and Vizrt for tracking the camera movement in real-time. Vizrt chief technology officer Gerhard Lang also joins the podcast to explain how Vizrt works in partnership with Al Arabiya News Channel to enable the broadcaster to fulfill its editorial vision.

Duration:00:26:00

How sports production is heading to the cloud

10/4/2021
Gareth Capon, CEO of 'video production, editing and publishing in the cloud' platform Grabyo talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how the sports production sector is transitioning to cloud-based working. Capon talks about how Grabyo evolved from a sole focus on live video clipping to full-scale live production in the cloud, with its product range now including tools for packaging and streaming live broadcasts, post-production editing and live clipping and distribution. He also reveals what he believes to be the future of live video production, with flexible, lightweight browser-based tools becoming the norm across all forms of sports production.

Duration:00:18:58

Crafting a new model for the post-production house of the future

7/21/2021
Cara Kotschy, the former managing director of leading post-production house Fifty Fifty talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about her decision to quit her role last year and how she’s been busy creating a new model for the post-production house of the future. Kotschy was only 28-years old when she became MD of current Broadcast Post-Production House of the Year, Fifty Fifty, and spent a decade in the role before she stepped down, to the surprise of the post-production community. Following a number of consultancy roles, Kotschy has spent her time devising a new type of post-production facility, which is dedicated to becoming best-of-breeds in a specific niche service, offers fully flexible working, recruits a diverse workforce from all areas of the community, and is based on a co-operative business model. She explains her vision and her timescales for rolling out her new take on the post-production facility during this enlightening episode of the Broadcast Tech Talks podcast series.

Duration:00:14:26

The Hundred: How Sky Sports will cover the new fast-paced cricket format

6/30/2021
Sky Sports director of cricket Bryan Henderson talks to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the launch of The Hundred cricket tournament, which begins next month. The Hundred aims to bring a new audience to cricket with simple-to-understand rules, fast-paced game play and building the format around an entertainment-first approach. Henderson explains why The Hundred is different to what’s gone before, and then provides great insight into Sky Sports’ plans for its coverage of the new cricket format. Sky has been involved in The Hundred since the early stages of the development of the format and has devised five pillars that underpin how it will present and produce content from The Hundred. These are: Henderson explains all these pillars in detail in this podcast, focusing on how they have influenced Sky Sports’ approach to the production and broadcast of the series. He also covers the rights deal that sees Sky become the host broadcaster and showing all games, with the BBC also airing 18 live matches from the tournament.

Duration:00:11:48

BBC at Wimbledon 2021: New virtual studio, new camera positions and Covid-safe production changes

6/25/2021
Ron Chakraborty, lead executive, major events at BBC Sport talks to Broadcast Tech and Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the BBC's new virtual studio at the club, which will be its main presentation space at Wimbledon 2021. He also talks about Covid-19 enforced changes to the broadcaster's camera positions as well as its production setup at Wimbledon, to ensure social distancing of production staff. Chakraborty also covers the BBC's expansion of UHD 4K content from Wimbledon, to cater for increased demand from the public for high-resolution sports.

Duration:00:14:14

How to showcase your sports tech innovations to BT Sport at Innovate 21

5/25/2021
BT Sport COO, Jamie Hindhaugh and BT Sport director of mobile strategy, Matt Stagg talk to Broadcast Sport editor Jake Bickerton about the broadcaster's Innovate 21 competition. Innovate 21 is the latest in a series of large-scale competitions run by BT Sport seeking ideas for forward-thinking new sports broadcast experiences. The previous incarnations of Innovate have resulted in BT Sport teaming up with two products – Sceenic (which won the 2018 BT Infinity Lab competition), and Seenit (the winner of the 2016 BT Infinity Lab competition). Sceenic has worked with BT Sport to support last year’s launch of Watch Together on the BT Sport App, and Seenit has enabled fans to send in short video reports and comments from stadia around the country as part of BT Sport’s Premier League Tonight show. Innovate 21 is looking for entrepreneurs, creatives and start-ups to pitch products and services that will play a significant role in BT Sport’s broadcasts and productions.

Duration:00:13:32

How to do 20+ camera live productions in the cloud

4/27/2021
Mike Cronk, vice president of advanced technology for Grass Valley talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how to make the transition to the cloud as straightforward and cost-effective as possible for media companies. The bandwidth and technical requirements for media companies has made the move to cloud-based working more challenging than many other industries, and there’s also latency issues that come into play too. To address these issues, minimise latency, and enable true live cloud production, Grass Valley recently launched a cloud product that’s been specially designed for the production and broadcast industries – the Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP). It has also created something it calls the GV Media Universe that is attempting to bring the industry together to work on the next generation of cloud-based services. Cronk explains all this technology and talks about how it’s been used to enable seamless live high-quality cloud production on 20+ camera events, including the EA Sports FIFA 2021 European qualifiers. For this event, the camera feeds originated in the UK, the signals were processed in a data centre on the East coast of the US, and the vision mixer was 3,000 miles away in California.

Duration:00:20:19

David Ross, CEO of Ross Video talks tech innovation during Covid-19

1/21/2021
David Ross, CEO of Ross Video, talks to Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton about how Ross Video has addressed the many challenges of the pandemic. The Canadian company offers a plethora of products and services in more than 100 countries that are used by television networks, sports teams and stadiums, esports producers, live events and production companies. A big focus for Ross during Covid-19 has been on its Ross Mobile Production division, which provides OB and studio services, predominantly for sports and esports. As soon as the pandemic hit, it started utilising robots on-set to reduce the amount of staff required, and created a fully decentralised production environment that enables production/gallery staff to work in isolation from any location, including their homes. During the podcast, David also talks about the pros and cons of cloud working and his concerns about cloud security, and being able to work at higher resolutions such as 4K UHD in the cloud. He also covers the fragmentation of content; the growth of esports; the automation of sports production; his predictions for 2021; and how Ross Video chooses which innovations it will focus on and bring to the market.

Duration:00:18:37

BT Sport and EE's new Match Day Experience (with Jamie Hindhaugh and Sam Kemp)

12/9/2020
Jamie Hindhaugh, COO at BT Sport and Sam Kemp, marketing technology director at EE join Broadcast Tech editor Jake Bickerton to talk about an innovative new set of features on the BT Sport app called the Match Day Experience. It's a collection of complementary tools that enhance live matches with a series of immersive features. These include AR insights and behind-the-scenes stadium tours, a 'Watch Together' function, and a 360-degree 8K pitch view so you can watch a high quality image of the game from any angle of your choice. The real-time AR graphical insights offered by the Match Day Experience include team line-ups and formations; in-game stats and graphics augmented on the pitch; a mini-map tracking the positions of all players for a tactical viewpoint; player names; player speeds; and tracers marking the path of shots.

Duration:00:16:50