Ep 6, S3 - NAB Solutions Tour: What’s Next for Government Video

Michelle - Intro: This podcast is for city communications, teams and video professionals in government. We talk about expanding service delivery with video and streaming, media accessibility, gear, broadcast and streaming workflows and more. It's all right here on the Government Video Podcast. Michelle: Welcome back to the Government Video Podcast where we feature service providers, policy experts, and local operators sharing their real world insights to help local government media teams optimize their operations and choose the right tools. I'm Michelle Alimoradi, and I'm here with my special co-host today, Pete Tufigno. Hi Pete. Welcome back. Pete: Thanks for having me back. I, I think the last time I was on was maybe about this time last year when we talked about some NAB things among others. But thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Michelle: You did and, and you had just joined our team as well, which was super fun. So it's fun to, to be back here a year later, looking at what is coming out once again. So every year, NAB show is, you know, where everybody sees all the latest, the, the next generation of media technology is unveiled. And I think especially now with the AI stuff advancing so rapidly, it's it really is exciting for the last three years 'cause there's just been so much completely new stuff. And AI is just like getting really practical now within our media workflows. But you know, for local government and community media teams, yeah, we love all of that. But the real question isn't about the new flashy stuff necessarily. It's, what innovations are actually helping the small teams operate more efficiently and, you know, serve their communities better. I mean, what are, what are you hearing on your end, Pete? Pete: Yeah, I, I absolutely agree. Like there's no question that the bar has gone up, I feel like each year at NAB, it's like, oh now you can do all of these things on your phone while you're on a bus. And so for, for the customers that we're talking to, like the, the thing is that, these teams need equipment that they can manage from anywhere. They need condensed workflows that kind of streamline not only their production, but also like the distribution, like getting the content out there. Michelle: For sure. Pete: And even what we're seeing lately is like, tools that can measure the success, right? Like view counts, watch patterns. At the end of the day, like ' systems that just work, it's, it's, I like to say it's like reliability without friction. Michelle: And the, the insights part that you mentioned, that is huge, 'cause I we're seeing a lot of folks have to, you know, justify these purchases. Obviously there's people's tax dollars going into these purchases. And so I think that's also gonna be a big thing too, is just like being able to determine the returns, the benefits as people are upgrading their workflows too. Today we're gonna dig into some of those new innovations coming out. Specifically the ones that really go across the full government video tech stack as we're calling it. Identifying where teams can gain efficiency for staff, deliver better content to residents, and get deeper insight into what is actually working. Pete, I don't remember if I told you this, but my whole inspiration for this episode format that we're doing today is that NAB used to do these little tours, these little solution tours that you could sign up for ahead of time. So, you know, if you haven't been to NAB, like it's huge, there's four big halls in the Las Vegas Convention Center. So if you've not really done it before or you don't really know what you're looking for, it's kind of fun to have a tour guide like take you around. And they would be focused on specific types of workflows. I think the one that I did was on like remote production streaming, something like that. And so they, they'd have like one or two vendors from each aspect of the workflow that was like, ready, they knew you're coming, they were gonna talk to you, not just about what their brand did, but about that aspect of the workflow in general and like, what, what you should be looking for. And they, I don't think they do those anymore. Do they do those still? Pete: It's, it's, I for sure remember like seeing them come through. Like someone usually has a flag and everyone's wearing headphones. Michelle: little tour group. Pete: But they're super helpful, right? Like, follow me. But they're super helpful because you're right, like you get. You get to this, to a booth, someone's right there. They're like, Hey, here's, here's our four minute pitch, or here's the one thing that we're really excited to talk to you guys about. And then you go on to the next, I, I think maybe one of the changes I might recommend is that they take place on Segways or something where you can just zip from, like from Central Hall and then you're gonna zip over here, you know, learn some stuff, zip over there, learn some stuff. 'cause it's, it's a lot of walking. That's maybe a benefit of having this available as a podcast. Is that you can, you can be comfortable, you can multitask and not need to be standing on the show floor with your feet aching, which inevitably will happen in, in a few short days. Michelle: All right. Yeah, so the cat's outta the bag. That's what we're doing here. We are basically doing our own, not virtual, I guess it's a virtual solutions tour. It's a digital solutions tour. And you know, you can listen to it while you're riding on the bus, while you're doing your grocery shopping. While you're doing your laundry. So, bonus points for, for the ability to multitask. Or at least I'm giving myself the gold star for that. I don't know about you. We're talking about being efficient. Okay. So we, we can't just let that go by. So we curated a little specialized group of vendors representing as many layers as we could think about of the modern government media video tech stack. I dunno. We want, we threw in a lot of buzz words there. From cameras, control systems, pro audio, AI transcription, content transport, distribution, in room displays. Am I leaving anything out? Pete: TBD we'll know, we'll know at the end of the episode. No, I think that it's, there's a, there's a lot there that we're trying to like bring awareness and bring some knowledge around. So I think your list is, is all inclusive. There's so much at NAB, so we kind of built this NAB preview, if you will, specifically for government media operators. So we're highlighting innovations launching at the show, that, let's see, improve efficiency, they strengthen accessibility. That's a big one. And just simplify compliance. So improve, strengthen, simplify. That sounds good. So whether you're planning a full system overhaul or you're upgrading one piece at a time, you'll know what's possible and what questions to ask when you're out there. Michelle: Couldn't have said it better myself, pete. Let's, let's get into it. So Pete: Let's do it. Michelle: First up, we have a very important part of the workflow. Before you can stream, switch or caption anything, you need a connection that you can count on, right? So we're starting out the tour with transport and connectivity, that layer, and we're gonna take a look at that with, our friend Mike from Miri Technologies. I am here with Mike Nann. Or maybe I should say I am i'm back with Mike Naan because you've, you've been on the podcast before. Welcome back. Mike: I have thanks for having me back. Michelle: Yeah, I mean, so let's just tell people, 'cause this was one of our most popular episodes. We had you on a couple years ago to at NAB New York, which is the, you know, east coast Fall counterpart to this Spring Vegas event. And I think people really loved what you had to say because, you know, we put that, we put that episode out and. People were listening to it for months, so, so back by popular demand we're, we're here with Mike Naan, who's gonna. Mike: I'll put that on my resume. There you go. Michelle: Right. And, and I mean, you're, you're out there, you're, you're seeing everything because you're working for a lot of different parts of this workflow, right? You represent a lot of different parts, a of different pieces of the puzzle. And you're actually gonna be doing that today. You're gonna help us cover the data connectivity component, transport, control, and we're getting into cameras a little bit as well. So let's start out with this like data connectivity component. Mike: Mm-hmm. Michelle: So we've been talking about this throughout the episode. These government media teams, they have really small crews. They're not always very tech savvy, so troubleshooting isn't really a thing they wanna have to put on these teams. And they have limited resources, beyond just small staff. So, so Miri's approach is creating flexible, reliable connections that seem, that seems like a great fit. Right. So how does your philosophy there of making connectivity simple and reliable, what guides your solutions at Miri Technologies? Mike: The first thing really is that the internet and connectivity is the backbone of every media workflow now. It's pretty much unavoidable and really the first guiding principle though is that as far as connectivity capabilities have advanced over the years. The reality is that internet outages are still a fact of life. You know, the big mobile outage from one of the major carriers earlier this year in January that went down for hours, proved that, and you know, frankly, producers have enough to worry about setting up for a live shoot, especially in the field without having to deal with complicated networking setup. You know, they don't want 'em take an IT guy out there with them. And if you're in the field, especially, a lot of the time, you don't even know how good or bad your connectivity will be on site until you get there. What do you do if you get there and it's just not good enough? You, you know, trade show, convention centers, things like that. You know, these things cause problems for a lot of people, so, you we wanna plan ahead. Michelle: There's so much that's not within your control anyway, right? Even if you wanted to try to troubleshoot it, even if you knew how, a lot of it's not even within your control or, you know, not within your, your access. Mike: Well this is actually one of the origins of Miri as a company, was the founder of it was a production guy, and he was doing a production for a governor, as a matter of fact, and they, it was in a hotel and they relocated it to a lower level of the hotel and the connectivity just stunk. And, you know, he was cobbling together some stuff, some apps, some technologies to be able to get the connectivity he needed and was inspired to then create solutions around them, which we'll talk about later. But you know, even if you start out with a good connection, if you're a one or two person crew, what do you do if your connection goes down during the live event? You kind of have to make this choice. Do you keep focused on the production so that at least you have a good recording for later? Or do you take your eyes off the production to fix the connection and maybe you're not switching as much or whatever. So really you need to build in that resilience so you don't have to worry about it. You know, government media teams need solutions that not only just work, but stay working even during an outage. So Michelle: yes. Mike: that's where combining multiple connections, like a mobile connection and a starlink, you know, together. Can give you that reliability plus more speed if you're limited. Michelle: Yeah, that's what I love about these tools that use like bonded data is that it's almost like having a safety net, right? Like you've got this one primary connection that you think is gonna carry you the whole way, but just in case you have any vari variation in that, you've got these other like sort of lifeboats to, to help keep you going, right? Mike: exactly it. And I mean you mentioned flexibility and you know, bonding solutions. That's one other part of our philosophy here though too, is to be data agnostic. And what I mean by that, there are bonding solutions out there designed specifically for transporting video, but they might only support one protocol or one format and only video. But our goal is to be able to improve connectivity from any type of data, whether that's video in any current or future format or other stuff. Maybe you're uploading media assets or you're monitoring social media and all that sort of thing at the same time, moderating comments, that all needs to go down that pipe as well. So the idea is that everything can flexibly go through our solutions. Michelle: Yeah, I like that. And I think that's a big guiding principle for a lot of folks as they are looking to upgrade or overhaul is like, what, what can we get the the most out of? You know, what's, what's really flexible, but also does these core things we need like really, really well. Mike: for sure. Michelle: And I also loved, I don't wanna glaze over this because I think this is a thing that comes up a lot, especially in the government space. 'Cause it's, it's pretty niche, right? Some of these needs. Hmm. I love it when I hear that a solution is created by someone who just needed that solution, Mike: Right. Absolutely. Michelle: Like, I, I needed this. Like, there wasn't, there wasn't something out there to solve this problem. So I just built it, you know, I love to hear that story because I, in my mind, whenever I hear a story like that, like that's the thing I want, you know? Mike: Exactly in this case. I mean, to be honest, it wasn't that the pieces weren't there. You know, there was a core technology that, you know, it existed, but it required the user to put a lot of these pieces together themselves to make it happen. And again, the idea of making it simple for the guy in the field, you wanna build it all into one so they can just plug it in and just works. Michelle: Yeah, it comes down to just sometimes just like three or four little settings, you know, that's like, oh, that's exactly what I needed. Like this, clearly this person understood, you know? know Mike: exactly. And sometimes you have to live it to be able to truly understand it. Right? That's what it comes down to. Michelle: Exactly. And so when you are, whenever you have the opportunity to get something really purpose built like that as opposed to some general purpose thing that's trying to solve everyone's problems and ends up kind of being lowest common denominator as a result, it's not. It might be the thing that everyone uses, right? It might be the the highest recommended on some of the tech lists out there, but at the end of day Mike: sure. Michelle: I'm usually gonna go with the thing that has those little thoughtful features in it that. Mike: And feels like it was built for you. Michelle: Right. Right. Exactly. I love that. Let's talk about, you know, trends across the industry. I think there's probably some overlap here, right? 'cause, 'cause Mike, you personally are, you're always thinking about the industry as a whole and where this, the solutions that you're representing fit. So let's, let's zoom out a little bit more for this next question here. In the transport, you know, connectivity space, what trends do you think government teams should be paying attention to right now? Like, what, what are the up and coming things in live and remote coverage? Mike: Sure. Well, I actually wanna start by sort of addressing what I'd told is kind of a myth about a trend. I mean, you know, the trend right now in mobile is Michelle: This is real meta. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. I know the trend right now, you know. Mobile has gone 5G. Right. And there's sort of this misconception now that with 5G mobile connectivity being so much faster than previous generations and more reliable itself, that you can get away with just a single 5G hotspot for streaming in the field. And a lot of people try that. And the problem is that's not necessarily the case. I mean, 5G is fantastic, but like any mobile technology, in some areas you might get poor coverage or slow speeds. You know, crowded, congested areas where everybody's doing it or you know, trade show convention centers that are like, you know, giant Faraday cages, the, you know, brick rooms, all that sort of thing. And not only that, as I mentioned, if you only have a single link with a single carrier, what happens if that carrier goes down? I mean, then you're, even just briefly, your, your stream stops or whatever you're doing. So again, what we were talking about with combining multiple connections together, especially from multiple carriers, can really help overcome a lot of those issues. The other trend, you know, I'm really, you know, we're seeing a lot of too, and again, it's not just about streaming, it's, and it's not just about the field, it's about your meeting rooms and your studios is the adoption of cloud-based processing for so many functions. And when you're working in the cloud, reliable connectivity is absolutely essential. And that's cloud or hybrid. You know, lemme give you an example. If you were using a hybrid solution for captioning for your meetings, maybe you're powering the captioning of your live stream and your in room displays, and you probably have some in room hardware that's connected to your local av. But all the processing, all the AI stuff is happening in the cloud. If your internet service provider goes down, that's not just gonna affect your live stream, but that's also gonna affect your interim displays too. I mean, your captioning is basically just gonna stop. So you really need that fault tolerance connectivity for that type of thing as well. It's something that, you know, a lot of people are looking at it for their field productions, but think about it, back on back of the ranch too, so to speak. Michelle: I, I like that example because I think a lot of things that people maybe don't consider is like the visibility of the fail, right? Like whenever you have a failure in your production, like some of it probably isn't super visible or super noticeable, but something like that where something's being like processed live in the cloud, which is a lot of solutions now. Like, let's be real. And people want to move in that direction for like data security, for efficiency, to have, you know, less on-prem hardware that they have to deal with or remote into. Mike: Yep. Michelle: And like it, they don't think about like now the, the visibility of something, Mike: Right. Michelle: if any of that falters. And, and so I think that's Mike: Not only that, it's beyond the visibility. We're back to creating sort of the potential for a single point of failure. Right? You know, because it, you know, when you had five different pieces of devices that were doing all this stuff in a room, you know, one goes down, the other functions might keep going, but now with the cloud, you're sort of forcing everything back through this internet connection. So, you know, the connection as a whole can be a single point of failure, so you want to make it as resilient as possible by, you know, having sub connections within that. Michelle: Right, so we're seeing both a, increasing reliance on the cloud because a lot of these teams now have a mandate to live stream, right? They also have open meetings in person, so there is, both an in-person and a remote viewing experience that they're supporting live. And, and so they, they really do need to think about like having the strongest connectivity, like you said, supporting the, the most critical potential point of failure. Right. Mike: absolutely. Yep. Michelle: so I, yeah, I think that's a really good thing to keep in mind. As we, as we get into NAB, what can folks expect to see from Miri? Mike: As you've probably guessed based on what we've been talking about, you know, Miri has a solution to solve all these problems we're talking about. Their flagship solution is the X510 bonding router, which overcomes all of these issues. It's powered by a technology called Speedify. I mentioned that, you know, there was that, that technology that the founder used originally and put together with the other pieces. But fundamentally, it combines multiple connections. Local ethernet if you have it, wifi, starlink, 4G Mobile, 5G Mobile. They let you bond both of those. So if you're in an area that happens to have bad 5G, you know, you can still combine it with 4G. You know, there's still a value there and it does all of that to keep you connected reliably while giving you more speed than you might be able to get from a single connection. So that solution came out last year. It is still just as relevant or even more relevant today. But you know, like all of these shows, everybody's got something new and Miri's gonna be showing some powerful updates that boost its performance even further. And they've even got a new operating system on the device called Mi Os that's gonna be available not only on their X510, but a couple of different third party routers as well. So. That's, you know, that's the evolution of the bonding because they're not sitting still. I mean, as we talked about, they're out there in the market using this stuff as well. You know, they feel the pain points as things change and they wanna make sure they're addressing them. Now, the other new thing that they've got is, I mentioned the philosophy of being data agnostic. So this, this isn't specific to streaming. So one of the things that meant though is separating the connectivity from encoding and streaming, unlike bonding, streaming solutions. So something else that Miri has just launched at ISC over in Barcelona last month is its new V410 live encoder decoder that's gonna make its North American debut at NAB. And much like we talked about with all of this already, I mean, it was really built with an emphasis on the user experience to simplify operation, right? Like nuances, like, you know, putting the headphone jack on the front, like little stuff like that. When you're out there in the field, you know, as a constant source of frustration, if you're always like reaching around the gear to plug things in. You know, little things like that all add up to that experience you were talking about. So, you know, that's, that's where they focus with that product. And last but not least, there'll be some new surprises, but you gotta visit this, the booth to see them. Michelle: Okay, well, so where can people find you on the floor? What's, what booth are you in? Mike: So Miri will be in Booth N 1561 in the North Hall. You know, of course if there's anything I've talked about that's already been launched, you can find out more information about it on the website. That's miri.tech, MIRI dot Tech, and you can get in touch with them through the website or emailing them at sales@miri.tech. Michelle: It's great. And, and before anybody reaches for a pen and us and decides to try to take notes on this, we're gonna include this stuff in our show notes, so it'll be available. Mike: Perfect. Michelle: So I, and I just have to safully, uh, full disclosure. We have used, my team has used Miri in the past in one of the most volatile connectivity situations, which is at a big trade show convention. And, like you, you never know what's gonna happen with the internet there. Like we're at this big tech event where everybody is trying to suck up as much data as they can to. Mike: Yep. Michelle: Run everything live. And that's happening so much more these days. You know, you used to just run things locally, but now you get to an event like this and everybody's really running, like real demos in real time over the internet. And we had such a smooth experience like compare to what we've seen in years past where we just tried to rely on whatever the convention center provided. And I was really, I was really amazed actually with how smooth it went and how little we had to pay attention to our connectivity because that, that is usually a major headache. So, Mike: You hit the nail on the head, we want you to not have to pay attention to it. Right? That's, that's the goal, right? It, as I said, it just works and keeps working. Michelle: That's great. Pete: Next, once your connection is solid, you'll need some eyes on the room. We're looking at remote controlled cameras and what Telycam is bringing to the PTZ space this year. We'll go right back to Mike. Michelle: And we're back, Mike, and this time we're gonna talk about cameras, more specifically remote cameras. So we've been talking about, you know, workflow consolidation, doing a lot with a small team, and I think PTZ cameras really are a huge part of making that type of workflow work, especially in a city council chamber. So, let's talk about this philosophy of, you know, simplifying high quality production to help these teams and what guides Telycam that we're talking about today in building their solutions. Mike: Absolutely. I mean, talking about small teams, you know, overall, PTZ cameras inherently let media teams do more with smaller crews. Because the remotely controlled nature, I mean, even if you're sitting there five feet from the cameras, still one person can be operating multiple cameras from a single control panel. And that's really powerful because you know, camera operators are one of the biggest human resource expenses that come along with productions normally in a multi-cam situation. Now, advances though in PTZ cameras like better AI powered auto tracking and auto framing. Take that even further because now the camera can keep a target person in the shot automatically. Even while the operator is looking ahead or thinking ahead to the next shot, you know, often we'll be Michelle: Or operating another camera as well, right? Mike: precisely, you might be moving the next camera into the position that you want it to be, but you know, if the person on stage moves, the first camera can actually be adjusting to that automatically. So, you know, that's a really powerful thing in helping keep things really efficient for the operator. And again, keeping crews lean. So, you know, a lot of it too is you mentioned cancel chambers and studios and that sort of thing, but remote production is really an area where PTZ cameras shine as well because, you know, somebody could be controlling them back at the studio. You know, maybe you actually set up some cameras in remote places where you haven't even sent a crew, but you know, something important's going on, you just wanna light up the camera and get a live feed from there. You could do that right away. Now, one thing though, if you're bringing cameras into, out into the field. One thing you should be considering too, though, is the lighting that you might encounter. So a lot of times when you're doing field production, I mean, one thing I've heard from a bunch of Guideing customers, the lighting in a council chamber is set for in-person people, but not necessarily for production. And you know, if you're in council chambers, they don't want you bringing in a whole bunch of bright lights and everything else that change that dynamic. So you're stuck with the lighting that's there. You know, imagine if you're going out into an auditorium or a gymnasium or somewhere out in the public space where again, you don't have control of the lighting. That's where it's really important that the cameras can adapt quite easily as well, because you just don't know what you're gonna get. And as you said, you can't control the environment per se. So you might one day be faced with a low lighting situation, in another situation, you know, really blight, bright fluorescence overhead. Things like that. So if you're, you know, if you're gonna be taking the cameras into the field, PTZs, you should be looking at something with a large sensor, you know, a one inch sensor because it's more sensitive to lowlight situations and things like built in ND filters where you can actually adjust to the lighting conditions automatically, even from the control panel that you're operating and not have to worry about setting up more lights and that sort of thing. 'cause again, you don't wanna be setting up a lot of stuff in the field. It's time consuming and heavy to lug around. Michelle: Well, and I think another thing that comes into play that we see often with these local government crews is that sometimes more things come up last minute. You know, whether that's multiple meetings happening at the same time or something that's happening on, on location outside of City Hall. And so having one piece of equipment that can adjust in a situation so readily, I think that's also extremely valuable because it allows you to be nimble. It allows you to act when something unexpected comes up. Mike: Absolutely. And I mean that sort of plays into Telycam's philosophy overall because I mean, we all know there's lots of different PTZ cameras on the market. But, you know, and different positions, different specialties, different emphasis. But Telycam's philosophy isn't to try to be the cheapest on the market or to be too specialized, but they, what they wanna do is bring high-end quality and flexibility down to a more accessible price point so that you know that this camera you bought, it's an investment, right? And, but you know that you can take it anywhere and it'll do whatever you need in whatever environment you have. Michelle: And it might replace multiple pieces of, of your production equipment, it sounds like. Mike: Absolutely. I mean, again, the PTZ cameras are so dynamic. I mean, you can be getting the shots from all the different angles. You can actually, you know, you can be programming presets into the panel, things like that. So again, instead of having you know, multiple camera operators, each with their own joystick controls or that sort of thing. Or again, handheld cameras, which are even more cumbersome. You know, and they have camera control units and all this sort of thing. It could be as simple as a few PTZ cameras and one powerful controller. Michelle: Light kit, lean crew gets the job done. I like it. Mike: Absolutely. Michelle: You've mentioned a lot of important value points for this type of workflow. What are we seeing in terms of new development? What are the industry trends in this area for remote controlled cameras? Mike: Before, before I talk development, I mean, just one thing I really want to talk about in trends, we're seeing a lot of municipal governments now and that sort of thing that are right at that stage of the replacement cycle. It's time to replace their first PTZ cameras. 'cause they were purchased anywhere from five to 10 years ago. Those are often getting along in the tooth in terms of quality or features or reliability. And frankly, a lot of these cameras were bought during the pandemic when people just bought whatever they could get their hands on because of all the supply shortages. So it may not have been exactly what they wanted. It may not have been quite, you know, as good quality as they wanted, but it's what they could get. The thing is though, the technology has come a long way since then. I mean, I mentioned the AI powered auto tracking, auto framing, things like that. Those have gone from being, you know, a gimmick to something that's sophisticated enough to actually be usable in production. Larger sensors, we now have PTZ cameras that literally can rival broadcast cameras in terms of quality. And on top of that you can even are, uh, configurable enough that you can actually color match them to the broadcast cameras and things like that. So they seamlessly integrate with the cameras you already have. Those are big things because, you know, there was a time when PTZ cameras, they had their place, they had all these functionality, but they weren't quite the same level as some of the traditional broadcast gear. But now we've gotten to that point now. Then another one autofocus. You know, how quickly does it autofocus and how precisely does it autofocus, especially if you're in an environment where you are tracking somebody. These are the kind of things where we're seeing, you know, there's been a lot of advances in that respect too. Michelle: Yeah, I like, I like that you're pointing out, you know how far things have come in. Less than, less than your last like hardware cycle, most likely. Right? So it's a good thing to be checking out what's available now, especially if consolidation is a big priority for you going into NAB. So what is Telycam bringing to NAB this year? Mike: Well, you know, we've talked a lot about PTZ cameras, so I'm sure you can guess already that's gonna be a big focus with Telycam. And, you know, Telycam has a bunch of different product lines to match the feature and budget requirements of any size of government organization. Whether it's a small team going into the field, a big city where they have a lot of council rooms to cover and things like that. Entry level all the way up to advanced broadcast class. I mentioned things like the lighting conditions and that sort of thing earlier. So one of the models that'll be a particular interest to the government production teams is one called Explore XE. It has a large one inch sensor, so everything you know, it still looks spectacular in low light, even if you don't have a lot of control of the lighting. It has what they call phase differential autofocus or PDAF, which is a fancy way of saying really fast and accurate auto focus. You know the variability in D filters, I mentioned 20 times optical zoom. Again, Telycam's trying to deliver all this at pricing that's unheard of for this level of quality and capabilities. You know, rival stuff that you would've gotten only in a big broadcast camera before. But you know, the other thing I wanted to mention is that there is more than just PTZ cameras to Telycam, and their newest launch is towards complete production solutions. Now, we talked about PTZ controllers. Well, what they've done now is combine a complete 4K switcher and a PTZ controller all in one. So you have all the presets, you have the hall effect joystick, all the advanced PTZ control you want, but you can also switch between six AP and IV input sources. You can do graphics streaming, monitoring, all that sort of stuff. Michelle: Where can people find this, on the show floor? Mike: Telycam will be in, the Telycam will be in the North Hall, they're in N1563. Michelle: Well, great, and we'll have more details about that in the show notes. Now we're getting into production control. Specifically, how do you bridge all those signals together? So whether you're running IP, traditional AV, or a mix of both, Magewell's approach is all about making those connections invisible. So here we have Mike once again telling us a little bit about that aspect of our media stack. And we're back. And in this segment of our Solutions Tour, we are covering more of the production control element. So there's a lot of options out there and a lot of individual preferences. And we've actually got a couple of ways that folks can handle their production setup that we're covering just in this, in this solutions tour alone and many more at NAB. But right now we're gonna take a close look at Magewell and what they bring to the mix. So as we get into that conversation, Mike, we've been talking so much about NDI and IP workflows. How does, what is Magewell's approach to simplicity and reliability in this type of setup? Mike: Well, it all starts with one of Magewell's overarching goals, which has always been enabling customers to easily bring any source to any destination. So, you know, we say bridging signals, software streams, and screens. So you know, that originally started with things like capture devices, bringing HDMI or SDI signals into software, but it grew into integrating traditional video infrastructures with IP media networks like NDI. And while the transition to IP isn't really new per se, there continue to be a lot of workflow gaps that have prevented users from maximizing their potential. You know, I'm trying to get this IP signal into this, but it doesn't go, it doesn't support it natively. How do I do that? So the goal is to develop practical solutions that break down these barriers, you know, in, in terms of simplicity. I think it's an overarching goal also to achieve what Magewell calls technical invisibility, and that's where everything just works so seamlessly, that you forget they're there. You know, that could be just the fact that it's plug and play. Just plug it in. It automatically goes and doesn't need any driver installation, but even just automatically detecting the input signal format. So if you're expecting seven 20 P and you send it 10 80 I, you know, it doesn't matter. Everything stays rock solid in reliable all the way along. Michelle: I think a lot of our listeners are probably bookmarking that moment right there, because that we hear that so much, right? We don't wanna have to think about it. We just wanna set it up. And it does what it's supposed to do, and that's it. Right? We configure it once we let it run. And so I, I think that you are really speaking to the right crowd with, with that one. Mike: Absolutely. I mean, there's production solutions that you want to touch, you know, the creative stuff. And then there's other things that, again, it's a widget, right? You want, you wanna plug it in, not think about it again for the next five years. And that's, you know. If that's exactly what they're aiming for. Michelle: That's great. When we talk about innovation in this space, what are we looking for in 2026? What's, what's changing? What's new? Mike: Well, I mean, one of the things that you know is really important is the fact that there always is something new, just conceptually, like we talk about NDI. But if you look at the history of NDI. There have been so many different versions of it over the years. You know, Kodak Wise, NDI HX, NDI HX 3, NDI high bandwidth and NDI SDK version 4, 5, 6, cetera, et cetera, Michelle: the reinventions never cease with NDI For sure. Mike: exactly. And that's a great thing because it's evolution. But you know, how do you keep up with that when you have these bridging solutions and especially when often the best solution for a lot of stuff is still hard work. Even though software is flexible, if you want something with assured performance and you know, guaranteed reliability, especially as a conversion brick type of thing, that's where dedicated hardware comes in. But you wanna make sure that your solutions are upgradable. And that's the, the fantastic part is so many solutions these days are upgradable with firmware updates and things like that so that you can keep up with it. But it is really important for everybody to be cognizant of, you know, NDI is interoperable across the board, but there are features, you know, there's new features in NDI 6.3, for example, that if you have a solution that only supports NDI 6.1, it might not work with it yet. So you wanna make sure you're keeping up with what you know, the latest and greatest whenever possible. You know a lot of people, as much as you wanna plug in that that widget and not touch it again. There are advantages to performing upgrades on it. I mean, one philosophy is, Hey, it's working. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But sometimes, you know, going ahead and doing an upgrade on it might bring you new functionality that lets you get into whatever the next step is in the IP workflows and things like that. Michelle: So plugging this into our city council chamber coverage situation, what sort of use cases are you seeing for this kind of technology? Mike: One of the big ones is still bridging the traditional AV signals to IP. So you have, you know, a lot of the governments, they have big investments in HDMI based equipment, or SDI based equipment, and they don't want to just scrap, you know, they've got this, there's a great new tool that they wanna use that's NDI based, but they don't wanna scrap it. So one of the, you know, that's where you want something that will seamlessly bridge between those formats and IP, you know, preserve those investments as long as possible. The other thing also that keeps coming up, and I hear a lot from government customers as well as educational customers, is even on the software side, there are still a, a number of products that don't support IP inputs natively, or ip, you know, video conferencing software's a perfect example where if you want to bring an NDI signal into your video conferencing software, a lot of it requires NDI tools, which is an add-on that comes, you know, that you can get from NDI to work with it. But in a government or educational environment, it restrictions often don't let you install something like NDI tools. Not only do you not have permission to install it yourself, but to requires administrative privileges, which of course they're not gonna give just everybody. So, you know, again, these are the kind of barriers that suddenly pop up in a workflow that people aren't expecting. And again, that's where, you know, a hardware solution that would convert something like NDI or SRT into just a USB webcam output. Can it really help save those people? Because then you don't have the whole IT headache or other layers of software on top that you have to go through. Michelle: So folks are looking to solve their problems with Magewell solutions. What should they be looking at? Mike: Well there's, there's a whole ton of stuff that touches on all of these things. Again, you know, the Pro Convert family that they have, I know lots of your customers who are using it already again. HDMI, SDI out to any of the NDI formats. Convert it, plug it in. Don't have to touch it again. You know, rock solid reliability. The problem I just mentioned with bringing IP signals into software. They have a new product called Pro Convert IP to USB, which turns NDI just into A USB webcam output. So if your software can take a webcam now it can take NDI. It's that simple. You know, on top of all of that, I should mention too that it, that, Magewell has complete production solutions. So for small teams, they have products like the director series, which brings in NDI inputs as well as AV inputs. And it's a complete switcher and graphic system and everything in a portable device. So it's designed for one operator solo to be able to do the complete production through a touch screen. Or for a small crew where they can also be using the accompanying app or third party control systems like stream deck and that sort of thing that they can plug into it. You can have one guy mixing the audio, one guy doing the switching, all that sort of thing, while bringing in and combining the IP inputs as well as the AV. Michelle: The options abound. And Mike: They Michelle: people really appreciate that, especially in a situation like you mentioned, where we're not necessarily overhauling everything, right? Like we've made some investments that we want to protect for a little while. But we, we wanna find efficiencies where we can plugging in, some new things and we wanna make sure that there's going to be future proof compatibility as much as possible, right? Mike: Interoperability is critical. Michelle: yes, exactly. And so where can people find Magewell at NAB this year? Mike: Magewell's gonna be over in the Central Hall. They're in C6113. Michelle: In Central Hall. Alright. Mike: Central Hall. Michelle: And we'll have more information about Magewell in the show notes as well. Thanks so much, Mike. Quick question, are you heading to NAB this year? If so, we'd love to meet up. We're Tightrope Media Systems, the producer of this podcast. We make tools to help media makers in government work smarter. Video accessibility and compliance with MediaScribe, as well as broadcast automation with Cablecast. If any of that sounds relevant to what you're working on, let's grab some time and chat while we're both in Vegas. Click on the link in the show notes to book a meeting with us and we'll see you at NAB. Michelle: From there, we're talking about automation. Bitfocus and Elgato are helping operators condense complex production workflows down to a few buttons. Quite literally, let's check it out with Bryce. And we're back with our NAB 2026 Solutions Tour, and we are here with Bryce Seifert, who is the connections manager at Bitfocus. So in this part of the tour, we're focused on automation. We're focused on live production control. And again, with lean teams, this is a really important aspect of the workflow. It's really important to get this right and we know that folks are always looking for ways to refine, improve on this, and gain you know, higher quality in fewer steps. Bryce, thank you for being here with us today. Bryce: Yeah, thanks for having us. Michelle: We're excited to see what you guys are bringing to NAB this year. But before we get into those details, let's, let's talk about these workflows in general when we're trying to automate as many steps as we can, try to minimize any potential for mistakes missing, turning something on or off. What is your guiding principle when you all are building these systems to simplify complex production in a broader ecosystem? Bryce: Yeah. Yeah. So for us, really the core principle is that we provide control for the operator, you know, not the manual, right? So in local government especially, you don't necessarily have the luxury of having a full-time engineer on staff. And so you often end up what I like to call key person risk, right? I think we all know this person. It's the one person that knows everything about how your operation works, and if something goes wrong while they're on vacation, you know, the whole station goes dark. And so Michelle: everybody, everybody has that person, especially in these community media operations Bryce: Right. And some of you watching might even be that person and you're like, yes, please. I want to just take a vacation without my phone, you know, blowing up. Michelle: for for sure. Bryce: So, you know, our, our goal and one of our principles is to really try and mitigate that risk by building our tools to be intuitive by design. But at the same time, we're still trying to have them be powerful enough that they handle the demands of modern day productions. 'cause you know, everything's getting so complex these days in terms of what's being asked of, of uh, you know, productions in general. And so we really want every operator to be able to focus on the show and not the technology, no matter their skill level. So that's what really. When we develop our core products and work with our partners is really what we try and focus on, Michelle: Yeah. And I love what you said about the manual or the operator versus the manual. 'cause my mind immediately went to like too long, didn't read, right? Like, which is kind of where we're all at these days. Like if you ask me to read instructions and it's not just intuitive, I'm probably gonna skip over it or I'm gonna pick something else. That's just kind of the reality. Or I'm gonna like try to find something on YouTube, right? So you might as well make it easy and just eliminate that step. So I, I really love that philosophy. So what do you think is emerging in this space? Like what, what are the ways that people can upgrade or refine? Like what direction is automating live production going in? Bryce: Yeah, I mean, I really think the biggest shift is that. People are moving away from brand loyalty. Like they just don't really want to be locked into a particular ecosystem anymore, and they're skewing more towards workflow loyalty. So, they're sort of accepting the fact that that's possible now, right? You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket. So we're really trying to help break those barriers that traditionally have existed and provide sort of unified. Brand diagnostic control. Doesn't matter if your cameras, your switchers, your routers, your audio console, if they're all from different vendors, or if you know, if it's a mix of legacy gear, or like modern IP based gear. And I know that especially comes up for more budget con just operations. 'Cause you don't always get to choose, you know, when you can update things, right? So you might have sort of a, a mix of solutions that you're trying to, to wrangle. And so one of our goals here at Bitfocus is to sort of make it all work together, and it's really about unifying your devices and empowering your workflow so that, so that you aren't. Fighting your gear, you're just using it. And so I think that's kind of, you know, where things are headed in the long term. Is it? It's not gonna matter specifically what you have, it's what you want to do. Michelle: Yeah, I love that. And I love the layers in there, which is that, you know, if you are in a situation where you're doing a full overhaul, you're not limited by you know, compatibility nearly as much as you used to be, right? Now you can pick whatever your ideal solution is for each part of your workflow and fuse that together using Bitfocus or you know, similar solutions and the other side of that coin is when you're not at the point of being able to do a full overhaul and you need to protect the investment of the things you already have, but maybe one thing broke, you know, or you can't update it anymore. Now you also have that flexibility to bring something else in and, and patch that if you need to. And, and on top of that, using Bitfocus on the software side is really flexible, but it's also really flexible on the hardware side as well, right? Bryce: Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we've really worked on with our partners at Elgato is, you know, making it so you can use a variety of surfaces depending on your budget level, depending on your needs too, to control the product. So we're, we're happy to have them as partners, to be able to offer that solution. But, you know, buttons can also just be want run in a web browser as well, so. We're really trying to open it up so that you're, you're not locked into, you know, a key piece of equipment, you can really adapt to whatever it is you're trying to do in your environment. Michelle: Yeah, I immediately put limitations on that, 'cause I was thinking of like a controller. But you're right that we can use virtual control or you can have some sort of physical controller and, I think depending on your situation, that level of flexibility is also key, right? Because sometimes you are in a regular environment like, you've got the same council meeting that you're covering over and over in a single room, and sometimes you've got something unexpected that pops up and you can't bring all that gear with you. So having those options is really nice. Tell us about what BitFocus is showing at an NAB this year. What's new? Bryce: Yeah, absolutely. So this year we're really excited to show off some great new features with Bitfocus buttons. And some of the big highlights, I think are virtual routing, tie lines and user management. So, just a very brief tease, if you will. The first two features really go back to what I was saying, to making sure everything works together in a simple way. And so virtual tie line or virtual routing and tie lines, excuse me, really allow you to visualize and manage your entire productions routing setup, no matter how complex it becomes in a really intuitive way. So, on a technical level, technical level, we're really excited about that. And then user management is great, especially in sort of a local government context because it allows you to, you know, create users and assign them specific roles. And so you're making sure that each operator only has access to items that are sort of relevant to their role and their skill level. Which I think is really powerful in making sure that, you know, you avoid mistakes in production, right? Because there can be a variety of skill sets that you want to try and give them the power to do what they need, but not anything beyond that. So, we really hope you stop by and check out a demo on that. Michelle: I, I think that that custom configuration based on, skill level or just technical need, whatever the situation calls for, is super important to these teams, right? Like we, we have a lot of people asking for that in as many ways as possible with our playout automation solutions at Tightrope because, there's just, it's such a powerful tool that's a big part of it, right? Bitfocus could do so much that you kind of wanna rein it in, if not for the level of technical savvy, but also, the overwhelm of seeing everything that's possible when you only need a subset of features for a particular production situation. So I think that's really key and that people should be sure to be thinking about that as they're thinking about live production control and automation. Where can people find you at NAB? Bryce: So, yeah, you can find us, the Bitfocus team alongside our partners at Elgato. We're gonna be in the North Hall booth N2665. I'm sure you'll remember that. But, you could also, find us at some other booths, including the Tightrope booth, where we're gonna be showing how easy it is to integrate buttons and stream deck with Cablecast. And, if you want sort of more info about other booths we'll be in or want to set up a meeting, we have an events and trade show page on our website, bitfocus.io. Michelle: That lists all the booths that you're in, including your own booth, correct? Bryce: Yes. Yeah. That'll have every, everything you need for that. Michelle: Great. And, and I just wanna add that, in the Tightrope booth we actually have a workflow for Cablecast and for our new MediaScribe product as well that we'll be showing with Bitfocus and stream deck, so folks can check that out for, for all the products in our booth. We're excited to be showing that because we have a lot of current users that we know are using this for one of the most common use cases we hear about is like a a three button production. So if you're covering a meeting, you might have one button that's automating everything you need at the start of a meeting. One button that's automating everything you need to like pause and resume if there's like an executive session or something, and then an adjourn button that turns everything off that needs to go off, right? And if you think about it, that is so simple, you could set up as many tools as you want to make that production serve all the purposes it needs to serve. If it's accessibility, it's just distribution everywhere it needs to go. But it's, it's reduced down to three buttons, which I think is pretty incredible. So, so Bryce, thanks for, thanks for joining us and, excited to, to see you guys at NAB. Now we're moving on to the accessibility layer. AI powered speech to Text. Speechmatics is the engine behind a lot of captioning tools that government teams are already using, even if you've never heard of it before. Speechmatics is pushing accuracy further than it's ever been in AI speech recognition. Here's Ricardo with more. I'm here with Ricardo Herreros-Symons, Chief of Strategy at Speechmatics. Speechmatics is the speech to text engine behind some of the world's most accurate real-time transcription, translation, and also voice AI across dozens of languages, making vital content more accessible and searchable. Ricardo, welcome. Thanks so much for being here today. Ricardo: Thank you for having me today and, congratulations on pronouncing my name properly. That's usually a big challenge for most people. Michelle: I worked so hard, I've got in on the first take. And thank you so much for, for joining us. You're our first international guest so far on this podcast. So, welcome from the other side of the pond. So you all will be at NAB this year. And you are actually a vital part of a lot of workflows that I think people might not even know about, directly at least. So. Let's get into it. We're, we're seeing a lot of government teams either add or expand their captioning right now, and what many may not realize is that Speechmatics powers a lot of speech recognition behind the tools that they're evaluating. So, as teams are working towards greater meeting equity and more dependable captions and transcripts, how does Speechmatics help them deliver that level of accuracy for the level of accessibility that they need to provide to residents? Ricardo: Well, as, as you mentioned, a lot of people will probably be using us without realizing anyway. I think we're probably sitting behind around 30 of the booths at NAB. So, if you're using a tool somewhere, I might have Speechmatics behind it. In terms of the accessibility and equity question, obviously that is sort of the, the most important part of, of what we do. The way we, we train our speech to text, our speech recognition, our live captions, is done in a way that we understand every voice, every accent, different languages, but also different ways in which people speak. So, you might hear me speak like this right now, but as you can hear from my name earlier on, Ricardo Herreros is a little bit, sort of more Spanish sounding. I was born in Spain, lived there for five years. When I spoke English 30 years ago, I sounded very different to now I speak more, more like this. Difficult to understand and more to transcribe. Now that might to some people's ears be difficult to transcribe, but because we train on millions of hours of unlabeled data across lots of different languages, it means that we can essentially understand every range of English and other languages, importantly. So that's sort of number one out the box. And we come to accessibility. It's about getting those different, different accents and voices correct. Number two, just getting the words correct. You will not find a speech recognition engine that is better than us in real time for live captioning. And obviously that's pretty much the most important thing that matters right now. We're actually embedded with a lot of government sort of customers and clients across different partners. Legal, sort of transcription to council meetings to various different sort of district councils or sort of law enforcement or security. Some things we can talk about more, some things we can talk about less. And obviously that also includes everything from sort of having your, your cloud hosted, sort of real live transcription, which enables you to set it up very easily anywhere. But at the same time, there's a lot of use cases where you need it to be on premise or on device. High security offline, fail safe in whatever environment it's needed. And, we do that too. So Speechmatics is probably being used, but if it's not, then come and find us at NAB and, and test it out. Michelle: It sounds like you'd be a good candidate for training it initially, honestly, was that a part of, of the work for you? Ricardo: Well, interesting you say that. I grew up loving languages. I speak six or seven and, definitely get involved with a lot of the testing of the various systems. So it's more can I break it rather than can I make it any better? But yeah, in my spare time create some training data. Why not? Michelle: I think it's so great to, you know, expose people to this process of training the models, because one of the questions we get most often is like, is it, is this accuracy reliable because, you know, just a few years ago AI captioning wasn't that great. And we've seen a huge improvement in just a few years. That said, what shifts are you seeing today after we've seen all of all of this growth, all of this improvement? What are the major advances right now in speech recognition and AI transcription that government teams should be aware of? Ricardo: So I'd say what we have seen, as you mentioned is an improving across all levels of the accuracy, but it just means that the, the problems or the challenges that people think about shift into slightly different areas. So one thing that that we do very well, that is really important is actually, it's not just the words, getting words, right, but it's getting specific terms, right? You can't necessarily have known beforehand. So my name Ricardo Herrero Symmons, a speech eng recognition engine would generally transcribe my surname as Herrero without the S because that surname is more common than Herreros, which technically means smiths or blacksmiths. And so it wouldn't get my name right out of the box, but what we provide is an ability to customize the dictionary. So you could say, Hey, you know what, today I'm transcribing Ricardo here. I know various things about him. I also know where he went to school, where he went to university, sort of, the name of Speechmatics, maybe some of their less well-known products. We've got some products that have made up names that don't exist anywhere else outside of Speechmatics. But to transcribe those correctly, the ability to add those words into the dictionary before the transcription so they are captured correctly is really important. So that's sort of one, one focus area. The other one that we've seen a lot of requirements for and where we do particularly well is around Speaker Diarization. Now I use the word diarization every day, but not everyone does. And so what you think about when you say speaker diarization is the ability to differentiate between different speakers. So here this is a fairly simple call. We've actually got different audio, audio feeds, so it's easy to pick up who each, each of us is. But if you've got an environment where there's eight of you a council meeting each with a different voice, it's really useful to know who said what, to be able to give sort of real fidelity to what's been said. So we can do that, but we can also actually say beforehand, Hey, I've got a snippet of, Michelle or Ricardo, or whoever it may be. And so actually from the, from the offset, you know who I'm put my voice in there. And so you can have everything that I've said also linked to that as well. And then I guess the final thing that I'd say that, sort of the area that people are really starting to think about. So you've got obviously accuracy and types of accuracy. You've got what people, sort of, what people said. Sort of who said it. But then you also wanna make sure that the transcripts are going beyond accessibility as well. Accessibility is really, really important. But we are getting to a point right now where everybody's life is incredibly busy. You've got a million different things to do. AI here is just increasing the requirements and it feels like nobody has any time anymore. We are going to, within a very short period of time, be in a world where every single interaction is recorded. Whether you go to the doctors, whether you go to, you take your cat to the vet where they're sort of, you are going to parent, teacher evening at, at school, all those, it makes sense to have those, I mean, where, where it's sort of, it's safe too and sort of not confidential information. Have those conversations recorded and get automated notes and actions from them, which will just make everyone's life much easier. We're already saving clinicians millions of hours in not having to write notes, but that can apply to every kind of government meeting you might have. Michelle: I like that you bring that up because I, you know, there is a balance, right? There are some things that are environmental that you have to try to control to increase accuracy, but as the technology advances to help us, like. We can, you know, create these custom libraries. And then that's also going to help not only with the speaker identification, but with the accuracy when one of those speakers says another speaker's name. Right? So we're, they're all kind of tied together, and I get a lot of concerns about people wanting to make sure that everything is not necessarily just accurate, but also unbiased. And I think the thing that you're bringing up about everything being recorded is actually helping that cause, as opposed to getting in the way of it. Because now we don't have to rely on our own memory, which might not remember all the specific details. We can actually go back and say like, what, what was actually said about that? And, move forward with all of the correct information. So these are the things that we're going to see at NAB for those going to the show. For those people, where can they find you when they get to Las Vegas? Ricardo: Yeah, this is the one I always forget to plug as well. So thanks for the reminder. No, we're at booth N1304. So in the North Hall. And there you'll be able to see a whole range of different things. Everything from, as I mentioned, on device speech, speech recognition, live captioning to the custom dictionary, to the speaker diarization, to be able to give the system three seconds of your voice and it for it to be able to recognize who you are immediately. Obviously we will delete it afterwards. No worries about that. But, yeah, they're, they're the main things we'll be demonstrating as well as how we're partnered into various sort of enterprise workflows as, as well. Michelle: So folks are going to NAB and they're curious about, you know, demystifying anything that they might not know about speech to text or any of the AI transcription that is being so widely used right now. They can just head on over to your booth and get their questions answered. Thanks so much, Ricardo, for joining us today. I hope we can bring you back on the podcast because there's so many interesting things to continue to explore in this category of our, of our solutions tour. I hope you'll come back and see us again. Ricardo: Anytime we'd love to. Pete: And finally, distribution and accessibility. You're stuck with Michelle and I for this one. This is where all the work upstream actually reaches residents. We're closing out the tour with what's new from Cablecast and MediaScribe. So first let's talk a little bit about the problem of concurrent coverage. Some smaller cities might have one council chamber, one meeting on Tuesdays, and that's it. Others have multiple things happening all the time, including concurrently. So more meetings, same number of channels, same small crew, but trying to do more coverage, trying to do. More with less, which I think we talked a little bit about last year. So these teams that are being asked to cover more meetings live, but they typically only have one or two channels that they get to work with. So they common work around. What we see a lot of people doing is just simply streaming the overflow meetings to YouTube or another third party platform. The problem with that workaround is you lose all your cable cast native workflows. So you're recording your metadata, obviously, replay scheduling, series management, archival, storing that for later, et cetera. So that creates a messy post-event cleanup, including like manual file transfers, dragging and dropping, re-uploading reimporting, retagging. I think that's it. But all of this is falling on an already stretched team just to cover this quote unquote extra meeting. It's two sprawl, so now you're managing two separate systems for content that should really all live in one place. So introducing Cablecast LiveBridge, brand new for NAB. You can stream overflow events without ever leaving Cablecast. Super exciting stuff. So Live Bridge is a new cloud-based live streaming service, built to solve this exact problem. So you can send a live feed directly to Live Bridge via an encoder or OBS. It packages the stream for HLS delivery and pushes it to Cablecast OTT apps, internet channels as really live programming. So one of the key benefits, is that recordings automatically come back into Cablecast as MP4s. So replay scheduling, archival metadata, things that I mentioned before, all of that will stay in track, intact without extra manual steps. You can also simulcast to YouTube if you need it. But Cablecast will stay the system of record. So it's designed for existing Cablecast customers, coming later this summer, summer of 2026. At the end of the day, kind of bottom line, you can cover that second or even third meeting, without bolting on a separate workflow. What do you think, Michelle? Michelle: I, I'm excited about LiveBridge, you know, for all the reasons that you just talked about and also because it's the first time in Cablecast that you can promote a live event like in and of itself, ahead of time. So that hasn't been something that's widely available on solutions outside of these like major platforms like, like YouTube or Facebook. And so now you can do that in your own, on your own website, on your own streaming app. And then you can still be in these places where there's a large audience like YouTube or Facebook and then, you know, keep everything, like you said, in your own system of record, in your own native workflows. And so I just think it's a really powerful thing that a lot of people are gonna really enjoy. We also talked about accessibility. We, we talk about accessibility a lot on this podcast. And you know, last year a lot of it was about around captioning. You know, as we heard from Ricardo, like the speech to text has gotten so good even with recognizing people who are, you know, maybe speaking English but with a strong accent or another language with a strong accent. It's really impressive. But there's also been this kind of hole in the market on how to use AI to help with people who are blind or low vision. So we've got captioning for folks that have, you know, hearing impairments, and now we're finally starting to see AI being developed in a way that can help folks with visual impairments. And that is coming in the form of descriptions of video. So AI can actually, like, take a look at a video, analyze all the, the non-speech stuff that's going on, you know, the visuals that are important. Generate descriptions of those things that can be, you know, injected into, into the video itself and help folks who are, say, watching a city council meeting and need to understand what's on the slide that's being presented. Or they need to understand like who the person is that's talking. So you've got, you know, a little tool that'll read that, that person's name and the graphics, something like that. So, that's a really powerful thing that we are excited to bring to the MediaScribe product this year. So last year we launched MediaScribe the, the platform, and it was largely focused on your live captioning workflow. And now we have MediaScribe Narrate that will help you with the audio description requirements that folks are gonna have to adhere to under the new ADA Title II web rule that is coincidentally coming up right around NAB time, they actually pretty much coincide. So if you're waiting till the last minute to deal with that, you need to check out some solutions. You're gonna be at NAB, you can come check it out there. We've also, you know, got some options for you to check it out if you're not going to NAB too. But I believe that's already in our in our show notes if you guys wanna check that out. So that's what's coming to Tightrope and that's gonna cover, you know, a big part of your distribution and accessibility video compliance com components. So have we, do you think we've covered it all, Pete? Like how did, how did we do, we covered a lot of ground. Pete: Check. Yeah. I give us, I give us an A+. Michelle: If we're grading ourselves Pete: no, I'm, I'm super excited about. Don't mind if I do. You know, I'm, I'm super excited about Narrate, MediaScribe Narrate, because I've talked to a lot of people that, that are already trying to stay ahead of the curve and maybe already doing audio descriptions, but they're doing it manually. And so, you know, people that will take like, a sixty second video, like something they built for social, and yeah, this, this takes an hour. Right. To, to do descriptions for that, by hand. Right. Michelle: You mean like writing them. Pete: They're watching the video. They're, Yeah. scripting it, recording it, editing it, and you know, obviously in the, in the publishing and kind of getting it out as a deliverable. And so the things that I've seen MediaScribe Narrate do, can save a little bit of time, can save a little bit of time. Michelle: A little bit. Yeah. A ti a tiny little bit of time. Pete: Right, I, you know, it's, it's funny you say that 'cause like, there's, I say tiny bit as a joke, I've done, I, I've worked with people to do like a two or three hour meeting and we'll run it through and, you know, four minutes later, like, okay, like, send me the MP3. Like, it's, it's actually super quick. The way that our platform is, is set up, so I look forward to showing it to people or people checking it out. Michelle: I haven't actually gotten to see it as much as you have, so, i'm probably gonna be looking at it a lot when we get to Vegas too. So we've, we've covered a lot of ground here in this episode. I hope that you all have found it useful, whether you're headed to Vegas in a few weeks or not. And, you know, if you are headed to NAB, we were going to have all of the information, like booth numbers, product links, contact info, and all of that for you in the show notes. So go ahead and take a look there on whatever platform that you are looking at, and also you can come and find us in West Hall in Booth 1642. Come say hi. You can also, you know, check out what we've talked about here today or just, you know, come, come tell us you listen to the podcast. We love to hear that. We love to meet the people who are, you know, out here that we're making this content for. Every year so far since we've made it, I think this is season, this is season three. Every year I've had people come up and be like, Hey, like this, this episode was so great. Like this, this helped me out. You know, this one about like remote meeting workflows. I listened to it like three times, you know? So I, I hope that this stuff is really actually practical for you guys and that we're making a change for you or giving you access to things that you wouldn't be able to find otherwise. Pete, what do you want folks to do? Pete: Well, like I'm super excited that I was back on the podcast. I'm gonna try to make it like my, goal to be on more than just right before NAB. So. So we'll see. we'll see how that goes. Michelle: We'll talk to the higher ups. Pete: But yeah, I would say like, see, see if we can, if we can make it happen and see how, if they approve of of this one. Yeah, so I'm looking, looking forward to that. And I would say like, there's of older podcast gems that we've got, that obviously are still very relevant. So feel free to like, to give a listen to those. And if you've got an idea of like a future topic, like I, I would love to hear it. I know there's a lot of ideas that we throw around of, of what we can do in the future, but, we'd love listening to what people are actually out there maybe confused about or need more information about, and seeing what we can do to kind of solve those or close those gaps. Michelle: Yeah. And, we did mention like compliance, accessibility a lot in today's episode. We have a lot of content about that as people prepare for this ADA Title II deadline coming up in April. So do take a look at past episodes as this is your first time on our podcast and hopefully we, we have some answers for you. If you found this episode helpful, we hope that you will please share it with a colleague. Maybe like, subscribe, leave us a review. These are all really helpful things, and we hope to have you back here again for the next episode of the Government Video Podcast.