Automated and unattended audiovisual production
Introduction
Among the developments carried out by the Multimedia Communications Group we find the development of a new multimedia system for recording and automated and unattended audiovisual production, carried out jointly with the company ESVEU Media Systems.
This solution is aimed at environments in which a session or meeting is recorded in which several participants take part, such as the municipal plenary session of a town hall, a conference or a meeting of the board of directors of a company.
The main novelty of this solution is that it allows automated and unattended management of the production process, that is, without requiring a dedicated person to carry out the different shots that make up the video. Likewise, by enabling the generation of time stamps of the video recording, it allows the participant to be identified for their subsequent location in a concrete and immediate way.
Description
The solution is based on vMix, a commercial video production software. This software allows, among other functionalities, the configuration of the different video streams (e.g. video cameras) and the selection of the output video stream.
The new solution allows the following actions, which typically require a dedicated person:
- Start and stop the video streaming process in case multimedia stream is transmitted in real time.
- Start and stop the recording process.
- Control the person who is speaking at any given moment.
- Manage the movement of the available video camera(s) to focus on the person who is speaking.
- Carry out the realization of the video, that is, manage which is the multimedia output stream of all the streams from the different cameras. This not only implies focusing at all times on the person who is speaking, but also involves a series of more complex tasks: dealing with situations where more than two participants are speaking, avoiding fast camera movements, avoiding shots of excessive duration that hinder the video display (for example, a fixed general shot of a long duration, which gives the impression of image freezing), avoiding short shots that “dizzy” the viewer, and so on.
Thus, the developed solution automates all the above processes, using for this, apart from the aforementioned implementation software, a microphone system that allows, through a control protocol, to know the status of the microphones at all times.
Therefore, the solution consists of the development of an application called “autoMix” in charge of managing, on the one hand, the communication with the microphone system, and on the other, with the production software in charge of managing the video cameras and the recording process. Thus, once the video cameras and the microphone system have been configured, autoMix is in charge of carrying out the entire process of recording and audiovisual realization of a session as if it were an automatic pilot, without the need for human intervention.
The following image shows an example where the active microphone is detected, and the production program automatically focuses on the camera pointing at the participator.
Likewise, the new application is integrated into the digital record management platforms that may exist in the market, such as “Digiacta” developed by Esveu Media Systems, or other third parties through an API with user code for integration.
These platforms store the audiovisual content of a recording and display various information about the session/meeting, such as the people involved and direct links that allow quick access to the moments exact statements in which a specific speaker has spoken. This allows quick access to the different interventions made by the speaker.
In addition, this can be combined with the minutes of the session, in order to have the points of the meeting/plenary session, the interventions of each participant, etc. classified on the same digital platform and access each of the points immediately.
Here is an outline of the solution:
