Spiideo unveils industry-first product updates underscoring significant advancement in AI-automated sports broadcasting
After closing a $20 million funding round last month, Spiideo has revealed several industry-first technologies, evolving its Spiideo Play product with multiple angles, instant replay, a highlights studio and updated AI, marking the official transition to Autocast 2.0. With these updates the company aims to remove all the friction from the role of camera operator, producer, director and commentator with the support of AI, delivering seamless production capabilities that rival traditional broadcast.
These new features are designed to improve visual and editorial broadcasting quality, enabling users to capture the dynamics of each match better bringing spectators closer to the action.
Powered by Spiideo’s flexible range of AI cameras, multi-angle autocasting takes advantage of Spiideo’s Autofollow to track any game moment from the perspective of multiple, well trained manual operators. This will provide teams with a cost-effective option to broadcast fixtures at any level. For example, Spiideo’s autodirector for baseball smoothly switches from a centre field camera capturing the full diamond to the home plate as each ball is in play without the need for any input.
CloudStudio Next is a fully web-based next generation platform, which allows the user to pitch the slider somewhere between fully automatic and AI-assisted production. Operators have the option to let AI take control, or divide roles such as commentary and replays between colleagues sitting anywhere in the world.
Users can choose between two viewing modes: Production Mode, which sees what goes out to the viewers, with smart controls to switch camera angles, run replays and trigger graphic overlays; or Pressbox Mode, which allows operators to move the camera freely without affecting the production.
Key game events are already marked in Spiideo Play, either by CloudStudio, manual operators, by plugging into automatic data sources from scoreboards, Spiideo’s AutoData or through Spiideo’s event API. With Instant Replay, goals, smart plays and other moments can immediately be prepared as highlight clips and replayed from a new perspective. Further, the same Spiideo cameras used for both broadcast and analysis are also capable of being used for officiating purposes, with Spiideo’s video assisted referee product Spiideo Replay.
After all full games are captured with Spiideo’s AI cameras and broadcast live, automatic data is then combined with the video ensuring every detail is stored and is able to be filtered later. With this information, Spiideo’s system accurately cuts short form content which can then be published across multiple channels. With multiple angles available, and the option to reframe any moment from Spiideo’s virtual panoramas, Highlight Studio allows users to create world-class personalised short form content at scale.
Spiideo’s autocasting is not possible without its unique AI model. Autofollow is built from scratch and trained to follow the gameplay in a natural way for any given situation, allowing any sport to be broadcast without the need for manual operators.
With the latest AI update (the third generation of the model) customers will be able to cover all games from multiple angles, in a high-definition resolution. This new generation of Autofollow will identify events and phases of fixtures with high precision, which is crucial to furthering the evolution of automatic production.
Spiideo co-founder and CEO Patrik Olsson commented: “The advent of autocasting has made high-quality live streaming incredibly cost-effective, creating a low barrier to entry for broadcasting lower leagues and niche sports, in an increasingly inflated media rights market. These new features will further our aim to deliver compelling sports content and we are proud to continue to lead this transition to automatic sports production.”