Speechmatics announces Red Bee Media partnership and launches Sounds Feature at IBC

Speechmatics had two exciting announcements leading up to the show, one being a partnership announcement with Red Bee Media, part of Ericsson.

Speechmatics attended IBC 2018, the world’s most influential media, entertainment and technology show from 14-18 September in Amsterdam. The exhibition showcased cutting-edge technologies built for the media and broadcast industry and attracted over 57,000 attendees and 1,700 exhibitors from 170 countries worldwide.

Red Bee Media is taking the most accurate Automatic Speech Recognition technology (ASR) on the market and channelling it through its bespoke Subito Live subtitling platform to provide same-language subtitling for social media and other unregulated channels, making it accessible for deaf and hard of hearing. Speechmatics was showcasing its recently launched Sounds Feature, a new addition to its current speech-to-text offering, extending the Custom Dictionary feature and providing even greater granularity, accuracy and personalization of transcriptions for media and broadcast companies. Sounds supports broadcasters by delivering highly accurate transcripts, allowing the speech engine to understand the difference between word pronunciations and the way they are written. It was fantastic to see so many of our partners at the show, all of which have integrated the Speechmatics speech technology to provide greater access to their customers, be this through subtitling capabilities, providing transcripts, and much more. Some of the partners included Digital Anarchy, Red Bee Media, Tedial Media IT, Broadcast Bionics and Screen Subtitling Systems. Videos of our integrations can be found here.

Ian Firth, VP Products at Speechmatics said, 

“Showcasing our new features and products to demonstrate how we are solving issues in today’s market has been extremely powerful. It’s been a pleasure to power many of our partners and their breakthrough products at IBC 2018.”

One key highlight from the show was being presented with a highly coveted stand design award. Speechmatics was voted as one of the 9 best stands out of over 1,700 at the conference by a panel of 18 judges.

The award criteria took into account many aspects including the design, use of space, nature of the available demos, presentation, atmosphere and more. I was really excited to receive the design award and have it presented to me by the Chairman of IBC

The show was a great success with customers and prospects in admiration of the accuracy and ease of use of the new Sounds Feature. Angus Knights, Customer Success and Sales at Speechmatics commented on the show,

“Having made our debut exhibiting at IBC last year, the momentum at this year’s IBC was extremely exciting. It has been a fantastic venue to demonstrate some of our latest features, a chance to see more visitors to our booth in awe of the real-time transcription demo, and a truly valuable opportunity to spend time with our existing partners, checking in to see how speech technology is continuing to make an impact on their businesses. The sheer number of partner integrations at IBC was extremely positive in itself. But the feedback from some of those customer demos and the jaw-dropping reactions they were getting was unbelievable.”

Another notable takeaway from the show was securing a speaking slot at the IABM Future Trends stage. Speechmatics’ Machine Learning Engineer, Will Williams, teamed up with Red Bee Media’s Emerging Technology Lead in Access Services, Hewson Maxwell, to discuss subtitling perfection and whether it will ever be possible using ASR. The talk comprised of the challenges Red Bee Media still faces when using ASR for subtitling pre-recorded or live content, as well as information on how Speechmatics is addressing these problems. Key challenges outlined included issues with uncommon vocabulary, punctuation and specific dialects and accents. Watch the presentation below. Like what you saw? We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a joint Webinar with Red Bee Media that will deep dive into the topic of subtitling perfection when using ASR. The Webinar will be held on 17 October at 3:00 PM (BST) with Will and Hewson. Interested in joining the Webinar to learn more about subtitling perfection using ASR? Register here. Georgina Robertson, Speechmatics