Exclusives

XL8’s Live Subs platform uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) to power its translation and subtitle engine and its integration with Zixi’s Software-Designed Video Platform (SDVP) enables users to offer live broadcasts in 725 languages to customers in 120 countries, according to the companies.

On Aug. 8, during the Joint Partner webinar “XL8 Live Subs Speech to Text and Translation Enhancing Global Reach of Content with Zixi SDVP,” the companies demonstrated how XL8’s advanced live subtitling and translation for real-time broadcasts achieve using proprietary translation algorithms trained on media content, delivering unparalleled accuracy.

The companies also explained how integrating the Zixi protocol natively into the XL8 platform enhances performance and how Zixi’s ZEN Master offers a unified control plane to send and receive streams directly into XL8’s platform, reducing friction and simplifying operations.

“Today, we’re going to talk just a little bit about Zixi; we’re going to go into depth about XL8, who their company is, what their technology does,” John Wastcoat, SVP, business development and marketing at Zixi, said at the start of the webinar.

“XL8 creates real-time subtitles that are powered by AI, delivering unparalleled translation accuracy, based on … proprietary translation algorithms that they have trained on live media content so that you know it’s reliable,” he told viewers.

Meanwhile, the integration with Zixi “enables XL8 users to offer live broadcasts in 25 languages to customers in 120 countries that feed content natively into the XL8 translation from anywhere in the world using Zixi,” he said.

Zixi offers an “ultra scalable platform that is contributing and distributing today thousands of streams across the globe,” according to Harjinder Sandhu, director of product marketing at Zixi.

“This is powered by 15 years of experience and innovation, Sandhu said, pointing out: “This is not something new that is being experimented [with] today. Zixi has the expertise and the innovation of all the patented technologies that it has in its arsenal that are required to deliver content over IP networks reliably. And, in doing so, it is able to reduce the cost of your content delivery, whether it is traditional, which is satellite or fiber, or even other industry options within the IP space. Your cost is reduced by 50 to 75 percent.”

The Zixi platform also decreases risk because it is “bringing in that expertise and it is making it future proof by supporting all the different protocols that are available,” Sandhu said. “That makes it a safe choice and it’s easy to implement.”

The reduction of “overall egress costs over 50 to 75 percent over industry options… makes it a very straightforward choice,” he went on to say. That’s why the Zixi-enabled network has been “adopted by a thousand-plus media customers [and] 400-plus partners that is able to deliver a hundred thousand live events in a hundred countries and over 20,000 live linear channels,” he said.

The Zixi platform is “much more than a protocol,” Sandhu told viewers, noting it is “comprised of much more than that.” It is a “modular architecture that comprises of ingest, platform processing, monitoring and analysis and, most important, a control plane and orchestration.”

He went on to say that “bringing that egress cost down to 50 percent platform essentially [pays] for itself [and] we do that by compressing packets.” That, he said, is “helping us move closer to a zero net emission goal and significantly reduce your processing costs.”

Before a demonstration was provided, John Butterworth, VP, sales engineering at XL8, said his company has “seen continued growth” in the over-the-top market. “We kind of started commercial operations just a little bit before the pandemic. But we saw real growth in content.”