ETC Releases Next Section of Virtual Production White Paper

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has released the second installment of its case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Section 2 of the four-part white paper is “Sound Mitigation: Performance Matters,” which features compelling interviews with “Fathead” co-producer Brandyn Johnson and former Sony Pictures executive Eric Rigney. The section also addresses “the challenges of recording clean dialogue on LED volumetric stages and in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) during production.” Click here to access Section 2 and the previously released Section 1, “Cloud Computing: Growth Without Bounds.” We’ll post announcements when the remaining two sections become available. Continue reading ETC Releases Next Section of Virtual Production White Paper

Meta Adds New Creative Tools, Features for Facebook Reels

Meta Platforms announced today that it is introducing new creative tools and features for Facebook Reels, including support for videos of up to 90 seconds, extending the previous maximum of 60 seconds. The updates arrive a few months after the company unveiled support for Instagram Reels of the same duration (news that followed TikTok’s jump in video length from three to 10 minutes in an attempt to more directly take on Google’s YouTube). Among the new creative tools include the ability to create Reels with trending templates and a “Grooves” feature that automatically syncs video to the beat of a song. Continue reading Meta Adds New Creative Tools, Features for Facebook Reels

Layoffs Are Under Way at CNET, Editor-in-Chief Steps Down

Weeks after CNET drew media attention for quietly publishing stories generated by artificial intelligence, the outlet announced layoffs of several longtime employees yesterday, representing about 10 percent of the public masthead. The move was reportedly made by Red Ventures, the private equity-backed media firm that acquired the tech news outlet three years ago. CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo will step down and transition to SVP of AI content strategy. The new editor-in-chief will be Adam Auriemma, who previously held the same position at NextAdvisor, also owned by Red Ventures. Continue reading Layoffs Are Under Way at CNET, Editor-in-Chief Steps Down

Ring Founder Announces His Shift from CEO to Chief Inventor

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff announced that he is stepping down as CEO of the company five years after it was picked up by Amazon. The inventor of the popular video doorbell says that invention is his true passion so he plans on creating new products for Ring as its chief inventor. Discord COO Liz Hamren has been named the new chief exec at Ring. “Liz has a long history in consumer devices and subscription services, building and launching some of the most innovative and beloved consumer products from Oculus to Xbox and more,” wrote Siminoff in a company blog post. Continue reading Ring Founder Announces His Shift from CEO to Chief Inventor

CES 2023 Report: Connection, Collaboration and Cooperation

What a difference a year makes. CES 2023 attracted more than 115,000 attendees from 140 countries to Las Vegas where 3,000 companies filled 2 million square feet of exhibit space. Among the major themes relevant to M&E this year were artificial intelligence, the multiverse, AR and immersive experiences, displays, mobility, IoT, and numerous policy and regulation topics. ETC@USC attended the convention with onsite and remote teams, once again blending its in-person tradition with a virtual presence. Our post-show report features extensive coverage and perspectives related to these key creative, business, and technology areas. Continue reading CES 2023 Report: Connection, Collaboration and Cooperation

YouTube CEO Wojcicki Steps Down After 25 Years at Google

After nine years as CEO of the world’s largest video-sharing platform, Susan Wojcicki announced last week that she was stepping down from YouTube, to be replaced by the company’s chief product officer Neal Mohan. The move comes after nearly 25 years of working for parent company Google, where she started as its first marketing manager (founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin famously set up Google’s early office space in Wojcicki’s Menlo Park garage). Wojcicki is known for leading the charge to acquire YouTube, co-creating Google Image Search and helping to launch AdSense, among numerous other accomplishments. YouTube’s number of average daily users has more than doubled under her leadership and content has expanded with new services such as YouTube TV, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. Continue reading YouTube CEO Wojcicki Steps Down After 25 Years at Google

Samsung Unveils Smartphones, Laptops at Unpacked Event

During Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco, the company introduced its $1,200 Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone, featuring a 200-megapixel camera sensor, an updated form factor, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, and major jump in storage. Samsung also announced updated Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus models with the same floating camera design of the S23 Ultra and pricing that matches last year’s offerings. The company’s new Galaxy Book3 Ultra laptop touts a 16-inch, 120Hz OLED screen and offers an Intel H-Series Core i7 or Core i9 processor and an Nvidia RTX 4050 or 4070 GPU. The Book3 line features Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and an Nvidia RTX 3070 GPU. Continue reading Samsung Unveils Smartphones, Laptops at Unpacked Event

ETC Short Film ‘Fathead’ Is Nominee for NAACP Image Award

The short film “Fathead,” produced by the Entertainment Technology Center@USC and shot at the new Amazon Stage in Culver City as an experiment in virtual production and collaborative, cloud-based workflows, has been nominated for a 54th NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Short Film (Live Action) category. The Image Awards celebrate outstanding achievements and performances in the arts from an African American point of view, and recognize those who promote social justice through their creative pursuits. This year’s awards will air live on February 25 at 8:00 p.m. on BET and various ViacomCBS networks. “Fathead” was directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production. Continue reading ETC Short Film ‘Fathead’ Is Nominee for NAACP Image Award

CES: Generative AI Is Having Its ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment

ChatGPT came too late (end of November) to make a significant impact on CES this year, but the cacophony of opinions about the generative AI model definitely made its way to Vegas. The timing was perfect. Just as the crypto crash left the hype industry paralyzed, OpenAI launched ChatGPT in what now feels like a nerdy and frustrating tech version of the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert in ’69 (with computer scientists as the Hells Angels). Make no mistake: this is a landmark achievement in machine learning — perhaps the single greatest since the 2006 paper by Hinton, Salakhutdinov, Osindero and Teh on backpropagation in deep neural networks. However, it’s critical that industries, including M&E, distinguish between hype and reality. Continue reading CES: Generative AI Is Having Its ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment

CES: Show Floor Reveals the Ups and Downs of Tech Trends

Connection, collaboration, and cooperation are three words that underscore almost everything we saw during four days at CES 2023. We anticipated this would not be a show of breakthrough innovations. Instead, we expected innovative ways to use recent advances. In broad categories, AR, haptics, and AI were much in evidence. Interesting light field displays and curved screens caught our eye. There were fewer cars but way more commercial vehicles and components driving “software-defined mobility.” TVs were secondary to connected ecosystems in Samsung and LG’s displays, while creators took center stage for Sony, Canon, and Nikon. Clear across the show, innovation may come from startups but to scale it takes giants. Continue reading CES: Show Floor Reveals the Ups and Downs of Tech Trends

CES: Matter Smart Home Protocol Marks Major Trend in 2023

While smart home technologies have often made a strong showing at CES, adoption has been hampered by issues of interoperability. This year at CES saw the widespread reveal of Matter (originally known as Project CHIP), a new smart home standard designed to support interoperability. Matter was originally announced in 2019 as a partnership between Apple, Google and Amazon to create an open-source smart home standard. Today, if CES 2023 is any indication, the standard is becoming more prevalent across a wide variety of connected devices and different product sectors. Continue reading CES: Matter Smart Home Protocol Marks Major Trend in 2023

CES: Dimension X Demos Bonfire Virtual Story Creation Tools

For the most part, exhibitors in the Gaming and Metaverse areas at CES 2023 didn’t touch on the latent problems with consumer adoption of the metaverse. While worlds like “Fortnite” and “Roblox” that draw consistently high MAUs do so because they offer fun mechanics, the many metaverse platforms on exhibit generally did not provide compelling reasons for why companies — much less consumers — should spend time in their worlds. Dimension X’s booth was a standout on the floor, however, as it showcased Bonfire, a soon-to-be-released tool to enable the seamless creation of narrative mechanics within virtual worlds. Continue reading CES: Dimension X Demos Bonfire Virtual Story Creation Tools

CES: Encoding Environmental Intelligence with New Chip Tech

The design of truly contextual experiences — whether for utility or entertainment — requires a knowledge of both the user and the environment they are in. This becomes especially relevant when we think of what it means to build interesting mixed reality experiences. CES this year showcased a variety of computer vision AI software tools oriented towards understanding environmental context. At Eureka Park in the Venetian, however, MantiSpectra’s chip sensor technology provided a peek into the benefits for user experience enabled by environmental intelligence arising from hardware. Continue reading CES: Encoding Environmental Intelligence with New Chip Tech

CES: Kardome Audio Solution Could Serve Virtual Production

The rise of virtual production stages has elevated the importance of finding a solution to echoing and sound distortion on the set. A company called Kardome that has created a sound isolation technology and “Spatial Hearing” solution for automobile cabins may have a solution applicable to the virtual stage. At CES, the company was demonstrating targeted speech and voice tech that brings clarity to speech recognition devices. According to Kardome, its “AI-driven Spatial Hearing and noise reduction technology facilitate a seamless voice recognition experience in any acoustic environment, from the quiet to the chaotic.” Continue reading CES: Kardome Audio Solution Could Serve Virtual Production