The 39th annual conference of the European Association of Regional Televisions – Circom was held in San Sebastian, Spain on June 1st and 2nd. Hosted by EITB, the Basque Radio and Television, this conference was a valuable experience for media professionals at all levels.
Steinar Bjørlykke, Head of Technology & Development, NRK Central Region and Francisco Ibañez, R&D Project Manager at Brainstorm Multimedia, presented the AdMiRe project and its results to an audience of more than 200 regional TV professionals from all over Europe. The presentation, which can be viewed at the following YouTube link, had a great diffusion in the broadcast sector with a very positive feedback from the audience.

On April 15-19, the NAB Show took place in Las Vegas (USA), a fair where the world’s main innovations in the media and broadcast sector are exhibited. Brainstorm was present at the show with its own booth, presenting its main innovations in VR/AR/XR technology.
At the NABShow Brainstorm was invited to give a lecture in the Create Theater where leading companies present their main innovations. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity, Brainstorm presented the AdMiRe project which impressed the audience.

On March 8, 2023, the Sense-IT team at NTNU was host for a delegation of researchers, educators and entrepreneurs in the XR domain from Slovenia. The delegation was ending a collaborative research project (under the EEA agreement) with colleagues at NTNU. As part of this Sense-IT arranged a comprehensive lab tour of our Digital storytelling, Immersive media and XR related projects. The delegation consisted of 18 visitors with an additional 3 from NTNU.

Next, on March 10, Sense-IT was host for a seminar with participants from Universitetsavisa (NTNUs internal newspaper) and members from the NTNU communication department (Graphic design and Social Media responsible). The seminar ran for a full day with talks on Immersive Journalism and XR activities in the first session. This was followed by a hands on brainstorm on how the participants could benefit from using XR. After lunch Sense-IT arranged a comprehensive lab tour of our Digital storytelling, Immersive media and XR related projects. The delegation consisted of 7 visitors with an additional 6 from NTNU.

From AdMire, we set up the complete system with a remote mobile phone. The participants were able to be teleported to a meeting table with a talent. The others were observers and interested participants. The demonstration spurred a lot of interesting discussions and reflections.

The AdMiRe project has been presented during last week (January 30 to February 3) at the ISE show in Barcelona at the XR stage that Brainstorm installed together with the Spanish company AlfaLite. During the hourly demonstration show, the AdMiRe project has been presented as a success case for the future commercialization of the results obtained in the project. AdMiRe will continue to be promoted at events where Brainstorm exhibits and will be finalized to become part of the company’s product portfolio.

Last October 17th, 18th and 19th, Brainstorm represented the AdMiRe project at the Stereopsia Conference. Javier Montesa, Technical Coordinator of the project, presented AdMiRe together with other European projects of the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programs. In this conference we had the possibility to see what other projects are doing and we were able to identify possible synergies to advance the research and development carried out in the AdMiRe project.

A few months ago, Brainstorm, as coordinator of the AdMiRe project, applied for the European trademark for the product resulting from this EC funded project. Due to a large number of collisions, the trademark with the text AdMiRe could not be applied for, so it was decided that the trade name and, consequently, its trademark would be admiXRe. This name includes the concept of eXtended Reality (XR) and avoids any collision with other commercial products.

This will be the trademark used when the product starts to be marketed.

Last Tuesday September 27th took place the final review of the AdMiRe project at the Disguise facilities in London. The Project Officer and the two expert reviewers were able to see, in situ, the demonstrations of the AdMiRe system and its integration with the Disguise Extended Reality system. These demos consisted of three different use cases of the AdMiRe system on an extended reality scenario: audience capture from a laptop (head and shoulders), audience capture from a tablet (two thirds of the body) and audience capture from a mobile phone with a green background (full body). The integration of the audience into the Extended Reality scenario was seamless with a very fluid interaction between the presenter and the people captured and teleported to the stage.

The feedback received after the review from the reviewers and the project officer was extremely positive and encouraged the consortium and industry partners to continue the project by bringing it to the market and helping broadcasters, streamers and other sectors to benefit from AdMiRe.

During the month of August, AdMiRe has generated and distributed among its subscribers its fourth newsletter which includes the most representative news of the development of the project in the last 6 months. This newsletter is also accessible through our website, in the specific newsletter section (http://www.admire3d.eu/newsletter/) where we can find all the newsletters generated during the development of the project.

In this same web page you have the possibility to subscribe to our biannual newsletter and be informed of all the progress of the project.

Click here to access directly to our last newsletter.

After the successful validation of the AdMiRe project by the end users (NRK, TVR, Premier Media), some case studies have been generated. In these studies the experiences and conclusions of the validations carried out by each of the companies that will use the system in the very near future to bring the audience and collaborators closer to the television programs have been collected.

These case studies are very useful for future AdMiRe users as they gather all the experience obtained by the end users in the use of AdMiRe in the project and the feedback obtained after its use.

The case studies can be found on the home page of the AdMiRe web site (www.admire3d.eu).

On the third week of June, a validation day for the Admire system was organised at the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK’s facilities. Several members of the company such as editors in chief, news anchors, head of operations and producers, all of them external to the project itself, participated by viewing and evaluating videos and demonstrations of the Admire funcionality. They had the opportunity to asses the quality of captures of teleported participants with green background and also without it, applying the background subtraction and super resolution IA algorithms.

Relying on NTNU’s methodology, based on validation theory and QoE modelling and assessment, NRK assesed the potential for using the project into live broadcasts. Three main factors were adressed: (1) How the technology can be integrated into traditional infrastructures, (2) If the quality performs to a broadcasters standards and (3) How the workflow provided is viable for participants into news and debate shows.

The tests showed that the editorial staff and producers accept the workflow and consider it brings value to the published content, while there were some relevant findings: the importance of introducing proper guidance to the participants and to clearly inform the audience about the format of the program – teleported participants on stage.

Scene composition with AdMiRe