Grabyo’s 2024 Wrapped

It’s that time of year again when we reflect on the year behind us (and all shamelessly copy the format of a well-known music streaming service). In this blog we cover all of our highlights from this year, including exciting new live production and live clipping features, customer case studies and events from across the world.

10 years of Grabyo

In 2024 we celebrated Grabyo’s 10th birthday! It’s been a decade of hard work from an extremely dedicated team, and we’d like to thank every one of them. Since 2014, we’ve worked with the world’s most successful media brands across sports, news and entertainment, powering high-profile events on every continent.

As part of our 10 year celebration, members of our team gave interviews on their personal highlights and experiences at Grabyo.

You can check out our full 10 year anniversary celebration here.

Grabyo in action: 2024

PSA

Ahead of the LA28 Olympic Games, which will see squash included as a discipline for the first time, the PSA is evolving its digital content and distribution strategy to capitalize on a huge moment for the sport.

With a modest-sized media team, PSA continually innovates its workflows to service every platform with live content and it will be working to execute a wide-ranging content strategy in the lead up to LA28.

To achieve these aims, PSA scaled its use of Grabyo, leveraging a number of recent upgrades to our platform including AI logging and automated highlights, powered by Magnifi.

N+

In June 2024, Mexico’s General Election took place. This election was set to grip the country for a number of reasons, as over 98 million eligible voters were set to choose between 70,000 candidates for 20,000 public offices.

Televisa and its news unit N+ recognized the importance of this election cycle and decided to scale its news coverage output and deliver more live updates to the people of Mexico.

N+ turned to Grabyo to extend its live coverage with alternate broadcasting and restreaming. Its digital team sent clean versions of N+ broadcast feeds into Grabyo Producer, then reoptimized the feed to vertical format, added new graphic overlays and replaced broadcast ads, then delivered streams to TikTok and Instagram, all within Grabyo.

WWE, UFC,PBR

WWE, UFC and PBR are three major sporting brands across sports and entertainment that are long term partners of Grabyo. Social, digital and marketing teams within these organizations use our platform to create, edit, distribute and monetize live streams and VOD content across social media.

Each brand is known for a dynamic and innovative social media strategy, reaching and engaging fans with localized, tailored mixed-media content across multiple regions and platforms.

At the time of writing, the three brands cumulatively boast over half a billion social media followers and subscribers on official accounts, spanning the entire globe. Here we will explore the specific strategies and Grabyo usage of each organization, highlighting key components and successes of each.

Pushing the envelope in cloud production: AI-powered tools

Cloud production platforms are well-positioned to take advantage of new-generation AI tools and software to enhance and streamline workflows.

This year, we’ve added a number of AI-powered upgrades to our platform.

AI DVR logging

In partnership with Magnifi, the automated highlights generation platform, we’ve built an automated logging workflow to provide video editors with an AI co-pilot for identifying, logging and publishing highlights from live streams. When live streams are sent into Grabyo Studio, our live clipping platform, the AI logs every key moment with markers in the DVR with pre-set metadata. Editors can then quickly find, clip and publish key moments instantly.

Currently this workflow supports logging for over 30 sports, with new sports continually added.

AI highlights generation

Building on our AI logging capabilities, we also released a streamlined highlights and compilations workflow. Using computer vision, key moments are identified by AI and logged in the DVR of each live stream with video markers. Users can select markers for publishing clips instantly, while multiple clips are configured by the AI system, based on editorial guidelines, then automatically populated in a video highlights project.

All of our automation workflows are designed to retain editorial control for users, curating content for faster editing and publishing.

AI live captioning

Our new automated live captions feature uses speech-to-text AI to generate closed captions, in real time, for live broadcast outputs in any supported format -including SRT, Zixi, RIST, RTMP and RTP. Our users also have the ability to transport video securely using AWS Elemental MediaConnect.

Enhanced live production workflows

We’ve also been busy building new live production tools for Grabyo Producer, enabling media organizations to deliver live content to broadcast, FAST, OTT, social and digital platforms.

Multi-action key bindings

We’ve also added further functionality to custom automations across Grabyo Producer. Multi-action key bindings allow you to perform a sequence of up to 15 actions with a single input from your keyboard or hardware device. This could be anything – bring a replay on air with a wipe transition, while taking the current camera off air, then replace graphics. The possibilities are near limitless!

Advanced audio mixing

This year we released our new audio mixing interface, which offers broadcast-quality audio mixing in a web-browser. This also comes with support for multi-track audio inputs and outputs, powering localized production workflows.

Producer Gateway for local equipment and hardware

At IBC 2024 we launched our new desktop app, Producer Gateway. The gateway application serves as a bridge to local IP networks for production teams. For security reasons, browser-based applications cannot access all devices, equipment and peripherals on a local network, which limits production integration for some TV galleries or venues.

We’ve developed our gateway app to allow production teams to securely connect all local production equipment to the Grabyo cloud ecosystem, at ultra low-latency. Producer Gateway will open opportunities for production teams to connect tools such as tally lights for local cameras and utilize a wider range of input devices and hardware control surfaces with two-way integrations.

Remote commentary and dynamic text overlays

If that wasn’t enough, we topped off the year by introducing enhancements to remote commentary and dynamic text overlays, streamlining workflows for live production teams. Key updates include advanced controls for managing remote guests’ audio and video inputs, ensuring high-quality live streams, and a guest text chat feature for seamless interaction during live broadcasts.

Additionally, the platform now supports editable text overlays, allowing for customizable and dynamic graphics, such as name and location straps, without the need for multiple uploads. These upgrades enhance live production flexibility, leveraging tools like Singular.Live and Flowics for advanced graphical integrations.