Featured in the video are:
Trialling live music performances in immersive 3D worlds: MAX-R
BBC Research & Development has been at the forefront of applications of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in broadcasting for many years and we are now looking at capturing content that can be delivered directly to users for experiencing in 3D environments such as games, rather than just passively watching conventional video.
One strand of this work involves investigating the use of volumetric capture technology. This is ideal for intimate performances of one or two artists under controlled lighting conditions and allows participants to view the performer from any location.
We are also researching approaches using broadcast cameras as a part of our work in the MAX-R EU collaborative project. This approach may be better suited for a larger number of performers, with complex stage and lighting conditions, at the expense of a less 3D feel and a more limited range of viewpoints.
A second Emmy for our work on High Dynamic Range television
This year we won another Emmy for our work on high dynamic range television (HDR-TV). The first was awarded last year to the ITU-R for Recommendation BT.2100 – the international standard that specifies both the BBC/NHK Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) HDR-TV system and Dolby’s PQ. This second Emmy has been awarded to the BBC for our work on developing what has become known as the 'single-stream' HDR live production workflow, and the format conversion LUTs (look-up tables) that we developed to support the workflow.
Time magazine - The best inventions of 2024: Content Credentials
The Content Authenticity Initiative—over 3,700 tech and media companies, including Adobe, TikTok, and the Associated Press—and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, which includes Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and the BBC, have created Content Credentials, a system of watermarks and metadata intended to ensure authenticity and flag AI.
The Responsible Innovation Centre for Public Media Futures is a research centre hosted at the BBC. It is funded primarily by UKRI, a non-governmental public body that directs UK research and innovation funding. Working with the BBC and 12 world-leading partner organisations whose work advances technology in the public interest, RIC produces scholarship and resources to help ensure a strong and resilient public service media sector now and in the future.
Time-addressable media: Cloud-Native Agile Production and beyond
In 2023 we published the Time-Addressable Media Store (TAMS) API, offering a new way of working with content in the cloud. It’s an open specification that fuses object storage, segmented media and time-based indexing, expressed via a simple HTTP API. It lays the foundations for a multi-vendor ecosystem of tools and algorithms operating concurrently on shared content via a common interface, blending the best of live and file-based working. Since then, we’ve been busy!
A group of forward-thinking solution architects at Amazon Web Services picked up on the API and were excited about the possibilities. They were particularly interested in the potential of TAMS to streamline the process of fast-turnaround edit in the cloud in an open, modular way - one of our top priorities. After some further discussion to cement and validate our collective enthusiasm, AWS proposed forming a collaborative project with a number of partners to build an end-to-end proof-of-concept demonstrator of a Cloud-Native Agile Production (CNAP) workflow based on TAMS.
Sounds Daily - trialling generative AI & synthetic voices to deliver personalised audio streams
BBC Research & Development’s Sound Lab team have been focussing on the idea of a personalised curated stream of audio content for in-car journeys like this.
Sound Lab is one of our Innovation Labs, bridging the gap between BBC R&D and BBC Sounds. The innovation agenda for Sound Lab puts flexible media capabilities front and centre, seeking opportunities against BBC Sounds current goals and working together on tooling and audience experiences.
Sounds Daily aims to tackle R&D's ambitious goal of giving flexible segmented and personalised content to users on their journey. Sound Lab was the perfect place to look at these opportunities since BBC Sounds is the place for in car entertainment from the BBC.