Zixi, the industry leader for enabling cost-efficient and highly scalable live broadcast-quality video over any IP network or protocol, and the provider of the award-winning Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP®), today announced, after winning the 2022 IBC Accelerator Project of the Year Award, its participation in two more innovative projects for the 2023 edition to be featured at the forthcoming IBC 2023 show.
IBC created the Accelerator program in 2019 to support the Media & Entertainment industry with a framework for agile, collaborative, and fast-track innovation with a unique multi-company project-based approach to solving complex media and entertainment business and technology challenges. It focuses on hands-on experimentation and learning about new technologies and possibilities through their application in tangible use case and workflow deployment.
Participants of the 2022 Zixi winning project titled “5G Remote Production… in the middle of nowhere” also included Zixi Enabled Network ecosystem partners AWS, Microsoft, Net Insight and Singular.Live, University of Strathclyde and championed by renowned broadcasting companies BBC, BT Sport, BT Media & Broadcast, RTÈ, TV2, Olympic Broadcasting Services, Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery. The cutting-edge project proved the portability of a flexible, private 5G network in a box for live broadcast production use cases, for untethered broadcast production in real world scenes. Live use case for the project PoC at the IBC show in September, demonstrating how they used extremely remote geographical locations as their setting, including Kenya, New Zealand, Southern Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. Due to the success of the project, the showcased system was used as part of the live coverage of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s final departure from Scotland on September 13th, 2022. The extensive innovation challenges spanned from developing architecture and workflows, including local testing of equipment, to demonstrating that these 5G-NPN can be used now to support and enable live IP video production, from almost anywhere, using Low Earth Orbit Satellite for backhaul.
This year Zixi will be participating in two cutting-edge 2023 Accelerator Media Innovation projects for IBC 2023. The first is a Gallery Agnostic Live Media Production that will run a live event on location, a fully automated studio switching between on-premises and cloud, while applying this workflow to both professional Tier 1 equipped broadcast facilities, as well lower end Podcast/social media set-ups. A standardized and structured approach to how API can ensure interoperability and connectivity of software devices will be explored. ITN, YLE, BBC, TV2, TRANSMIXR will be champions for the effort, where Zixi Enabled Network partners Grass Valley and Singular.Live will join Zixi as the On-Air application will deliver streams from a roaming reporter in the field back to their cloud environment, representing a breaking news story with on the scene without additional OB truck support. The Zixi On-Air app allows flexibility without the need for a backpack solution, options for multiple contribution methods (5G / 4G / LEO) with built-in bonding and allows remote operators to easily configure to send to cloud or on-prem receiving locations.
Once in the cloud the compressed IP to NDI conversion is output into a VPC and throughout a production workflow meaning customers can switch in and out best of breed solutions depending on the production requirements. Once the production TX feed is finished it is then sent back to the Zixi Broadcaster software and transcoded for distribution at ultra-low latency with ZEN Master monitoring and orchestration from any location.
The second project is “Connect & Produce Anywhere” championed by DAZN, Sky Sports, BT Media & Broadcast, Vodafone Group, BBC, TV2 and technology participation from Open Broadcast Systems, Singular.live, Google, Microsoft, AMD, Grass Valley and Verizon Business. Zixi is being used for distribution across multiple cloud infrastructure providers to build a distributed edge & cloud computing system to produce live sporting events and create the ability to geographically move media processing without the user knowing. Interoperability between software providers with common approaches will also be emphasized.
"The IBC Accelerator Media Innovation program is a fantastic platform for the industry to come together to solve media and entertainment business and technology challenges," said Chris Fellows, Senior Solutions Engineering Manager, Zixi. "Again this year with our partners Zixi is delivering innovative software solutions across multiple complex workflows, and we look forward to presenting them at IBC 2023."
IBC’s Accelerator Media Innovation Program will be showcasing the projects in Amsterdam this year at the Innovation Stage, Hall 3, A27 with “Gallery Agnostic Live Media Production” to be unveiled on September 16th, and “Connect & Produce Anywhere” on September 17th, both from 10:45 to 11:45 AM.
Zixi will be exhibiting at IBC 2023, with Singular.Live in the Zixi Partner Village demonstrating these Innovation use cases. For more details and to book a meeting please visit https://zixi.com/zixi-at-ibc-2023/
