Latest updates
-
I auditioned AI voices for TV continuity work and it went OK.
I previously wrote about using an AI to write television continuity scripts. Long story short, it turns out Chat GPT is pretty good at the task. The next skill that AI must conquer if it’s going to cut the legwork and cost in a continuity workflow, is voiceover. This post is about what happens when…
-
Working with an AI for writing continuity scripts.
There is considerable legwork involved in making pre-recorded spoken continuity for television channels. I’ve worked in the broadcast television industry since 1993. It seems to me that the talent and effort devoted to generating – daily, relentlessly and in bulk – those 20 second navigational announcements could be better invested elsewhere. The spoken continuity pipeline…
-
AI writes continuity links
Here is a link to an conversation with Chat-GPT where I asked it to write a continuity link voiceover script for an imaginary TV channel. I started off with a simple prompt for a 60 word now/next link, using raw title & synopsis data scraped from an EPG feed. It was inevitably clumsy at first.…
-
Customer #1 now live
The Backbeat system is looking after daily generation of data-based clips for transmission on a UK children’s channel. Moderated images and text come from the channel’s own website back-end. Delivery is to S3 for onward movement to a playout provider. The system runs in hands-off mode, with clips rendered and delivered as soon as new…
-
Can AI replace continuity workflows?
Can AI replace fiddly write / record / render continuity workflows? The answer is “maybe, it depends”. Here’s an experimental piece of continuity for an imaginary TV channel. The design department is on strike and the planning department is on strong medication. The script and images come from OpenAI, and the voice from Amazon Polly.…
-
AI to data to After Effects workflow test
Turns out it took one day to integrate with two OpenAI services and one from AWS. GPT3.5 generates limericks based on text scraped from a newspaper’s public RSS feeds. DALL-E provides the imagery, and Polly turns the limericks into audio. It’s a bit cheesy but it works and I was expecting it to take a…
-
Bulk data to After Effects
MVP ready for customer. Today I paused most of the AWS infrastructure that has been running during development and testing. The bulk data to After Effects engine is ready for its first customer and I need to focus on finalising the deal with them, not adding new features. I also finished a 35 second product…
-
Foundations done, ready for customisation
Work is complete on the main toolset for the rendering machine. We’re using the Serverless Application Model to build and test everything offline, then deploy to AWS. There are two APIs – one internal to run the rendering workers, the other public facing to integrate with customer and control UIs in the Sanity headless CMS.…
-
Render Kit POC development begins
Work has begun on Backbeat’s next generation After Effects rendering robot. The Render Kit will feature a customisable CMS where users can moderate their content before rendering, and have remote control over AE projects and render job templates. We’re also building it with containerisation in mind for multiple simultaneous renders in the cloud. We’re working…