“The project focuses on the development and validation of Mixed Reality solutions to improve the interest and participation of the television audience as well as the generation of more attractive content”, says Francisco Ibáñez, R&D Project Manager at Brainstorm and Coordinator of AdMiRe. The project has been successfully completed and AdMiRe has been properly validated by the three participating broadcasters: NRK (Norway), TVR (Romania) and Premier Media (Ireland).

With a simple App installed on a cell phone, tablet or laptop, jointly developed by UPF University (Spain) and Brainstorm, the audience is captured perfectly. Their stream is sent to AdMiRe’s servers where the silhouette of the captured person is extracted. The AdMiRe project integrates, among others, the NVIDIA Maxine silhouette extraction algorithms to be able to capture the audience on any background (without the need to use green screen). The integration of the audience, guests, collaborators or presenters is done with the Brainstorm InfinitySet graphic solution, which requires the use of NVDIA graphics cards for its correct keying, and the background extraction and super resolution modules developed by EPFL University (Switzerland). The captured person can remotely participate in the TV shows as if they were physically there.

Javier Montesa, Technical Coordinator of the Project, explains that “AdMiRe incorporates highly innovative video capture, processing and transmission technologies, as well as super-resolution and background subtraction technologies in order to bring the viewers to the television sets in the most realistic and simple way possible, through the use of mobile devices”. Unlike the current technique that allows remote participation in television programs through a simple video, AdMiRe has achieved that the viewers can be perfectly integrated into the scene as if they were physically on the set, generating an excellent visual perception for the audience. AdMiRe also allows broadcasters to save costs by bringing collaborators and guests to TV sets and supports the European Commission’s “green deal” policies.

Francisco adds that “with the AdMiRe project, Brainstorm has taken the first step towards the future remote production of television programs by integrating presenters, guests and collaborators from different parts of the planet into the same program, interacting and participating as if they were all physically together and being practically imperceptible to the audience”.

Brainstorm has also integrated and validated AdMiRe with Disguise (UK) for XR (Extended Reality) studio technology based on LED screen. The whole validation process has been designed and developed by NTNU.

The progress of the project and the results obtained can be followed on www.admire3d.eu as well as on the project’s social networks.

The new H2020 5G-PPP Phase 3 project 5GMediaHUB “5G experimentation environment for 3rd party media services” began its activities in January 2021 with a kick-off meeting held virtually, in which the 17 consortium partners from 11 European countries, comprising of large companies, SMEs, Universities and Research Centers, discussed the plans regarding implementation of the project over the next three years, acknowledging the significant role and potential of 5G. The project is coordinated by the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) from Barcelona, Spain, a leader in 5G research in Europe.

The 5GMediaHUB project’s objective is to develop a testing and validation environment over two existing 5G experimental platforms located in Barcelona and Oslo, in order to create the 5GMediaHUB Experimentation Facility which will constitute an elastic, secure, trusted, all-in-one and multitenant service execution and Network Applications (NetApps) development environment.

5GMediaHUB will offer 3rd party application developers, such as service providers, the opportunity to experiment, test and validate their media applications by using the 5GMediaHUB Experimentation Facility. This will reduce the time needed for an enterprise to make its services available to end-users. The outcomes of the project will benefit the European media industry considerably, particularly SMEs, enabling it to become a force to be reckoned with at a global level.

“In 5GMediaHUB we capitalize on the experience from previous 5G projects in network slicing and orchestration. Existing well-established 5G platforms will be extended during the project in order to test 3rd party media services to enable the EU to achieve its goal of becoming a world leader in 5G”, stated 5GMediaHub Project Coordinator Christos Verikoukis, Research Director at CTTC.

The use cases that will be tested are Immersive Augmented, Virtual and Extended Reality applications; smart media production; and smart media content distribution. The outcomes of the experiments will offer valuable information and insight regarding the 5GMediaHUB Experimentation Facility performance.

“The 5GMediaHub project will allow Brainstorm to use, test and validate 5G technology with its virtual reality and augmented reality graphic applications for the broadcast sector,” adds Francisco Ibáñez, R&D Project Director at Brainstorm Multimedia.

Learn more on this project visiting www.5gmediahub.eu/