Estonia, Innovations, Markets and Companies, Technology

Tests for the live broadcasts produced using AI-powered cameras will be taking place this weekend, between 17 and 19 May, when test matches for the Estonian and Finnish women’s volleyball teams are held in Audentes Sports Hall in Tallinn. The games will be held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting at 6:00 pm (Eastern European Summer Time) and can be watched athttps://levira.com/ai/, Levira announced.

“With an AI camera, the sports competition is broadcast without human interference, and the AI controlling the cameras takes the role of the director. AI broadcasts are the future of TV programmes, because they allow events to be followed better, and from the point of view of production costs, this is a reasonable solution. In this way, it is also possible to bring to viewers sports competitions that have until now been too expensive to broadcast,” said Levira Media Services Development Manager Martti Kinkar.

“Levira is actively working on installing AI cameras in other sports halls in Tallinn and elsewhere, too. Our aim is to create opportunities for AI broadcasting of sports competitions and practices all across Estonia,” said Andres Tarto, who is in charge of Levira’s AI camera project.

Birjo Kiik, Head of TV and Multimedia Content at Telia Eesti, added that with the help of the innovative technology, live broadcasts from various sports halls and sports competitions would be shown on the Telia LIVE special channel. “Today it is possible to cheer for women’s professional tennis tournaments via Telia LIVE channel, but through our cooperation with Levira, we will broaden the choice of exclusive content even more. Thanks to AI cameras, we will be able to live stream a variety of ball games.”

Kiik added that testing for the new solution would take place at the coming weekend. All those interested can watch the video recordings from the testing via the Telia Video on Demand Service as of next week. In the future, AI cameras will provide live images for the Telia LIVE channel.

The Telia LIVE special channel can be viewed by all Telia TV service subscribers, which includes more than 200,000 Estonian homes.

According to Helen Veermäe, Secretary General at Estonian Volleyball Federation, both the federation and the women’ national team are happy to partner Levira and Telia in the launch of a really revolutionary technology. “Presently our women’s volleyball is experiencing an upward trend. It’s of special significance that after the Estonian women’s national team qualified for the first time to the European Championships final tournament, for the first time in Estonia a new technology is used for broadcasting the games of women’s national team”. 

During sports broadcasts, the artificial intelligence follows the movement of the ball and the player, and automatically selects the most exciting plays that a sports fan would want to watch. In the field of AI broadcasts, Levira’s technological partner is Pixellot.

“The technology behind the automation is from Pixellot, the leader in AI-automated sports production solutions. Pixellot’s unmanned multi-camera system covers the entire field and follows the action automatically using cloud-based AI to analyze the video from field producing a TV-like experience with zero people in the loop”, said a representative of Pixellot. 

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