Gestmusic will perfect VAS, its virtual audience system

The virtual audience project VAS (Virtual Audience System) that Gestmusic (Banijay Iberia) promoted in the middle of the pandemic will become a product for the global broadcast industry thanks to a development promoted by European funds Next Generation.

Specifically, the objective of the project is to host all the software of the VAS in the cloud and achieve audio and video quality standards that allow the viewer to enjoy, from their own home or anywhere else in the world, through a mobile device, an interactive and totally immersive experience in cultural events.

Some of these improvements are the integration of audio binaural (binaural hearing is achieved by hearing through both ears); the increase of the quality video; the reduction latency (in the field of digital television it is the delay of audio and video signals), or increase security in content distribution to avoid appropriation and piracy of the signal by third parties. The use of Immersive sound and picture quality They will improve the user's perception of being in a real environment, by emulating the sound conditions they would have on a television set or at a concert, for example.

To obtain this new version of the VAS, it is necessary move from current operation and their associated limitations (in addition to the hardware and physical equipment dependency), at a 100% solution on line, for producers and viewers. With this objective, technologies will be implemented cloud computing and high-performance computing, and will be based on high speed internet with the formats 6G o Wifi 6.

In this way, we seek to resolve future social distancing situations and responds to the consumption habits of the population, increasingly accustomed to following events by streaming. The digitization of this technology, in addition to being a key tool to grow as a business, can have a great impact on the audiovisual industry for the interactive and totally immersive experience it entails. In addition to improving the viewer experience, it allows remote virtual participants to collaborate.

Guest Music (Banijay Iberia) plans to offer this enhanced virtual audience system starting in 2025.

The first steps of VAS

At the time of the arrival of Covid-19, Guest Music (Banijay Iberia) y RTVE They were in the middle of broadcasting the season 11 of Operation Triumph. In March 2020, due to the state of alarm decree, it was necessary to interrupt production of the program, so the producer saw the need to propose a alternative to the presence of the public on the set for the live galas.

It was then that the technology department of Gestmusic (Banijay Iberia) developed a virtual audience system based on Zoom and in screens (up to 49 viewers in 7 x 7 grids) to recreate the virtual audience experience on the show's set with viewers from their homes.

A month after the interruption of OT 2020, the VAS was used for the first time in the four galas remaining of the talent show and, later, for the concerts that the artists of the last edition of Operation Triumph offered in the WiZink Center from Madrid.