NAB Show: ENCO To Add AI News Anchor To Qimera Virtual Production Set

At the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas (April 14-17), ENCO will showcase an AI-driven virtual anchor delivering live news from a realistic 3D virtual news set. This innovative presentation will be produced live from a virtual production studio powered by Qimera AR/VR/MR systems in combination with generative AI technologies. Attendees are invited to step inside this veritable virtual production universe at ENCO’s booth (W1743) in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

ENCO first unveiled its partnership with Qimera at NAB last year, where they debuted a complete virtual production. The AI virtual anchor is a new innovation for this year’s exhibit, leveraging AI models to generate virtual human anchors that speak with human-sounding voices. These are generated by ENCO’s new SPECai generative AI text and voice creation application. Specifically, the Qimera virtual production workflow will acquire and summarize a news story, delivered as synthetic speech through the virtual anchor.

Ken Frommert ENCO president said: “The convergence of AI with news production technology represents a significant step forward in that it introduces an automated way to create compelling, localized content in real-time. We fully expect this impressive technology to make a big impact in 2024 because it offers a broad, robust feature set with a simplified, intuitive user experience unseen in the marketplace.”

The Qimera virtual production environment “accelerates the learning curve by removing all the complexity from the process. The underlying Qimera technology generates realistic, real-time graphical sets by harnessing its integrated Unreal Engine, NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, and 3D asset library,” the company said. Other integrated features include virtual cameras, tracked/trackless camera systems, a 4-input switcher and DMX lighting controls.

As Qimera’s exclusive North American distributor, ENCO sells and markets Qimera’s virtual production technology and integrates it with ENCO’s automation, studio production and captioning product lines.