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Five Ways to Use Futuristic AI Right Now

December 22, 2020 By Ashley Nichols

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the entirety of 2020 — though we don’t blame you if that’s what you were going for — you have probably been inundated with blogs and posts talking about the “new normal” or “these unprecedented times.” This won’t be one of those posts. Mostly. We at Sony like to refer to this time, instead, as the “new now.” Knowing what we know now (in the “new now”), there’s a lot we wished we had in the realm of technology when COVID-19 first emerged. But, as it turns out, many of the technology solutions we needed all along already existed! One of them is the REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance from Sony, who must have had a premonition when it released the product prior to 2020; the REA-C1000 has been a triumphant success to enable continued meeting, teaching and worshipping together when we can’t actually physically be together.

The device uses artificial intelligence (but think more imaging and recognition and less freaky “I, Robot” movie scenes) to add upgraded features to PTZ cameras that revolutionize the presenter and audience experience — transforming how content is delivered and received. Global pandemic or not, the REA-C1000’s features, which we’ll break down below, can absolutely be put to use for hybrid applications today. What’s more, they’ll still be relevant when we are all back together and breathing the same recycled air.

Read on to see how the REA-C1000 Edge Analytics Appliance, Sony’s AI-based video analytics solution, brings us five ways to use AI in video presentation content — not just in the future but right now.

1. Handwriting Extraction Technology

Many homes are currently home to e-learning with elementary or middle school-aged kids. This presents some real challenges for the students and the teacher when trying to show complex problems or concepts to remote participants. This is a perfect example of where using AI in video makes perfect sense — to enhance education. The Handwriting Extraction feature license on the REA-C1000 can help.

Using the handwriting extraction feature would allow the presenter (the teacher) to use a standard white or black board to write on or solve problems behind them. As they finish, the REA-C1000 picks up the writing and creates an overlay in front of them on screen.

The instructor is still in the shot, standing “behind” the information and pointing out important features, without blocking the audience’s view of the information. The image above shows the overlay at around 30% opacity, but that’s adjustable based on the comfort level of the instructor/students. It can even be dialed up to 100% for camera-shy presenters.

2. Keep Presenters and Speakers in Frame At All Times

PTZ cameras have come a long way, but using AI technology alongside PTZ cameras pushes the possibilities further. Using four points of recognition — motion detection, face detection, color pattern recognition and shape recognition — the REA-C1000 uses highly accurate critical thinking to take the place of a human camera operator. The device’s PTZ Auto-Tracking feature license is as straightforward as it sounds — but where Sony has done it right is that the REA-C1000 requires no external lanyards that can be lost or broken.

The ideal application for this technology is your conference and/or house of worship cases with someone on a stage that may want to move about. Or in your lecture or training halls where, again, someone may be moving back and forth to gesture, turning their back to the audience but still remaining in the shot. The camera will pan with them as they walk back and forth, even when others join them on stage. That one-to-one relationship makes Sony’s solution unique while remaining budget-friendly, because the auto-tracking license is actually free with the purchase of the REA-C1000 until March 31, 2021. The feature will require a Sony PTZ camera (which you were probably going to use anyway, right?) due to the software coding.

3. Involve the Audience

The third REA-C1000 highlight that brings futuristic AI to video right now is its Close-Up by Gesture feature license — allowing you to involve your audience as much as you would the presenter. This is an excellent feature for the hybrid classroom or town hall, offering two points of view: one camera focused on the main presenter and another camera focused on the audience. When an audience member stands to speak, the REA-C1000 will zoom in on the speaker until they are finished and sitting down again.

4. Create Great Content — Without Specialists and Extreme Costs

Next up, possibly our favorite feature bringing AI to video presentations today, is the REA-C1000 Chroma Key-less CG Overlay: a budget-friendly way to create a studio or green screen without the green screen. With this feature, you can create amazing content in real time without a dedicated studio or specialized content creators. Using AI, the REA-C1000 can use any-color static wall to create a background of your choosing. These backgrounds can be aesthetically pleasing images, videos or even dynamic presentations. Any content, images or videos you can access with your computer, you can use as a background using this feature. Then, use your computer monitor as a focus monitor to gesture.

Why does this matter? Because having full-scale studios on-site can be incredibly — and we mean incredibly — costly: Between cameras, lighting and the real estate itself, you’re looking at five- and six-figure totals. Alternatively, many companies or individuals are choosing the “Airbnb of studio rentals” model, renting studio spaces by the hour or day. Looking at that cost structure in cities like New York City or Los Angeles, a rental studio space can be anywhere from $50 to $70 per hour for up to four people. Additional equipment — like the camera, one production light, the green screen, etc. — runs anywhere from $10 per item to $250 per item, or it’s priced per hour (source: peerspace.com).

If you’re a business that regularly produces training videos or commercials, or you wish to regularly present a professional live session but have limited resources, the REA-C1000 is the perfect middle ground between full-scale broadcast studios and third-party rentals. And the Chroma Key-less CG overlay feature is ideal for low-budget “studios” as a way to record professional-looking videos.

Sony’s solution draws anyone who wants to give the best, most immersive presentation possible while we cannot meet in person. Think of this in the context of corporate video production. Or even consider something as out of the box as a real estate professional giving a “live” tour of a space, not just on an iPhone. Taking into account the current climate of caution over contamination, owning the equipment to use at your disposal is still an invaluable resource that pays for itself over a handful of these rentals, and ten-fold over creating a full-scale production studio.

5. Focus Area Cropping

The fifth and final feature we’ll share today that allows for futuristic AI tech right now: Focus Area Cropping. This one may seem to have less of a wow factor than some of the others, but it has great importance when you or your client are trying to create a special experience for the audience and the presenter but don’t have the staff for a controller — or the budget for extra heads or other expensive hardware or software. Whether you are streaming your worship service over a web platform (which the REA-C1000 can do with its RTSP/RTMP port) or, when we are back in large groups, hosting a conference with a keynote speaker, you can be sure their movements, body language and facial expressions will be captured to emulate the full experience, no matter what.

In the “new now,” the REA-C1000 is — dare we say it, despite our earlier stated dislike for overused buzzwords — a true game-changer for so many applications; it creates impactful video presentation content that previously would have required significant time, expenses and human resources to produce. It’s hard to fit all the proof points into one story, so don’t just take our word for it: Check out this case study from the University of Hiroshima on how the school integrated Sony’s solution into its daily routine for professors teaching via multiple campuses simultaneously.

Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast on the Edge Analytics Appliance — it covers specs, use cases and more. And when you’re ready, reach out to your Almo sales rep to see a live demo of the product and get more information.

Note: The five features discussed today require the one-time purchase of a license for that feature. But good news: You get a 60-day trial for each feature with your purchase of a REA-C1000 device to test it out for yourself.

Ashley Nichols, CTS

Business Development Manager
Email: [email protected]
Toll-free: 888.420.2566 x6229
Fax: 267-350-0351

One Meeting Planner’s Challenge Post COVID – the Answer is Short

December 18, 2020 By Melody Craigmyle

At a recent gathering of professional meeting planners, they tapped into my AV industry experience to discuss how to keep people socially distanced but not have to rent a ton more meeting space while providing a great AV experience. I told them the answer was short… short throw!

I recently had the privilege to be involved in a meeting planner’s conference with a mix of agencies and in-house corporate planners to discuss the business of getting back to in-person meetings. Part of my role at Almo is to help plan and produce our own E4 Experience traveling show among dozens of other smaller tradeshows, events and summits with the help of an amazing events team. As the turmoil of COVID continues to linger, we all compared notes about “how are we going to do it… and SAFELY?”.

One major expense for any event is the rental of the meeting space – it’s usually wrapped into a package with catering and sleeping rooms but when you have a local event like an E4 Experience, the meeting space rental can be pricey. My fellow meeting planners there do not have the advantage of their own “house AV” comprised of many CTS Certified business development managers such as Brian Rhatigan to help spec and design the most effective solution.

The usual gold standard for a meeting is rear projection for that “wow” factor of the big stage with multiple screens without seeing that ugly stand and hoping someone does not walk in front of it, trip on a cable(s)… you get the picture. However, we all know that takes up a lot of space. Now that we have to socially distance six feet apart and still want that wow factor and NOT break the bank on meeting space, we’re lucky to have in our arsenal the short throw projector which, if used properly can still provide the “wow”.

Epson’s PowerLite Pro L series offers a full line of high-bright laser projectors ranging from 6,000 lumens up to 30,000 lumens, all with optional interchangeable lenses including those for short throw applications. When it comes to rear-projection, a typical projector will require about 25 feet of clearance behind the screen. This can be reduced significantly by using one of Epson’s short throw lenses shrinking the required distance down to under 10 feet. For a 75-foot-wide ballroom this gives you an additional 1875 square of usable space while maintaining the clean and clutter-free look of rear-projection.

My meeting planner colleagues were also discussing various ways to produce more revenue for sponsorships or reduce the cost of printing large signs and paying for rigging for, in many cases, union labor (not to mention the environmental impact of all that vinyl in landfills). I introduced them to the Epson LightScene laser projector to empower them with the creative freedom and flexibility to tell the client’s story, in the way they envision it. Forget the old gobo lights!!! Engage your audience by designing a visually compelling and immersive experience.

It was SO great being IN-PERSON with these folks! The ideas flowing, exchanging terrific keynote speakers, wonderful venues – there’s nothing like being in person. As part of the AV industry, I was thrilled to share some new tech with them to help us all get back together.

LESS IS MORE. ONE SECRET TO ALMO PRO AV’S SUCCESSFUL 10 YEARS.

June 3, 2019 By Brian Rhatigan

As Almo Professional AV prepares to celebrate 10 years in operation as business unit of Almo Corporation I feel grateful and proud to be part of this great organization. Looking back to 2009, at the origination of the division we had no vendor partners and no customers while today we have thousands of loyal customers and amazing partnerships with approximately 50 of the most desired manufacturers in the industry.

While many key factors have contributed to our mutual success with our customers and vendor partners, one key driver is our intentional strategy to keep our line card relatively narrow and focused compared to other distribution companies. When it comes to displays and projectors we aim to partner with a wide range of vendors to support the demand in the marketplace, however in other product categories we have chosen to partner with only a small number of manufacturers that we feel to be the best in class. This strategy has helped Almo to remain important to our existing partners as well as enabled us to better support a more narrow set of vendors.

With this, you won’t see very many new vendor partnerships announced by Almo each year. However, when it makes sense for a new partnership in the eyes of Almo and the potential vendor and we feel the partnership will bring value to our loyal customers then we will move forward with a new product offering. The last six to nine months we have found ourselves in a situation where there were several new partnerships taking place including D-Link, Ecler, VDO360, and Vivitek.

If you have had the opportunity to attend any of our recent E4 Experience events you likely heard our keynote speaker Gary Kayye talking about the emergence of AV over IP solutions. If you think about it, all sorts of professional A/V products now have a network port and can live on an IP network. The addition of D-Link now gives our customers the ability to include the networking solutions (i.e. switches, wireless routers, etc.) along with the rest of the gear they are sourcing from Almo for their given project.

Ecler, while probably not a familiar name to you here in the United States has been providing high quality commercial audio solutions in Europe for over 50 years. Through our partnership as the exclusive distributor in the United States Almo can offer our customers high quality proven products including loudspeakers, amplifiers, DSP, mixers & more at competitive pricing all while helping dealers to maintain healthy margins on their projects.

When it comes to soft codec based video conferencing, Zoom has taken the world by storm so it’s only natural that manufacturers are offering products that integrate with soft codec platforms. One of the challenges is including different components from different vendors that may or may not be tested or certified by Zoom potentially leading to support issues post installation. One of the things that attracted us to VDO360 was their single SKU, single box ZoomRoom kit that includes the camera, audio conferencing, PC, tablet controller and all required cabling, leaving out only the display.

While we were already well served with our existing projector manufacturer relationships, the addition of Vivitek adds a little more depth to our line up and will provide our customers with quality projector hardware at price points that may have not been previously available, with strong programs to enhance dealer’s margins.

Please visit www.almoproav.com or contact your Almo Account Manager for additional details on these solutions. Next stop, InfoComm 19. Register with code ALM123 for a free pass.

Score an A+ with Panasonic

May 21, 2019 By Angie Greene

Hi All! First-time blogger here! As I’ve been pondering what I wanted to share with you, it occurred to me, spring is here and the Education season is right around the corner. Of course, the other reality hit me “where did Jan., Feb., Mar., and Apr. go this year”…time really does fly.

It’s timely that Panasonic recently introduced a new line of LCD Laser portable projectors specifically designed to support a wide range of education and business applications. The PT-VMZ series of products offer PT-VMZ40U – 4500 lumens and currently shipping, and

PTVMZ50U – 5000 lumens and just beginning to ship. The next on its way to begin shipping in June (just in time for Education) is the PTVMZ60U – 6000 lumens. They feature 20,000-hours of consistent brightness and color accuracy. These lasers feature 1.6x zoom lenses great for short throw-distances and support wide vertical/horizontal lens-shift to achieve flexibility for various installations to include small classrooms, meeting rooms, and limited spaces with multiple projectors. Panasonic’s DIGITAL LINK connection, based on HDBaseT, transmits video, audio, and control signals through a single LAN cable for distances p to 492’ for Full HD & and 164’ for 4K video. It makes for a simple and cost-effective installation while delivering consistently high quality video! If it’s 4500 – 6000 lumens project, Panasonic has a solution for you with this series. I’ve only given you a sampling of the features on the VMZ series. There are a lot more bells and whistles worthy of your time to check out! Panasonic is running a mail-in rebate program to receive the wireless module (AJ-WM50) for FREE when purchased from Panasonic authorized dealer. Please reach out to me if you are interested in learning more about this Panasonic product or others!

Contact our Panasonic Specialist, Angie Greene, to learn how to grow your business with cutting edge technology that excels in any application.

Angie Greene, DSCE
888-420-2566 x6209 | agr[email protected]

How to deliver the ultimate cure for your customers

February 27, 2018 By Arlene Grimm

OK y’all, this is my first time as an Almo Blogger. Or is it Bloggist? Filipino by birth, East Tennessean by the grace of God, this Filbilly sometimes doesn’t rightly know what term to use.

However, I do know the difference between these two terms: Pro AV Pharmacist vs. Pro AV Physician.

I was at Walgreens one evening to stock up on a few vitamins, and I overheard a man ask the pharmacist if he could give him something for hiccups. The pharmacist promptly reached out and slapped the man’s face!

The man exclaimed, “What’d you do that for?”

“Well, you don’t have the hiccups anymore, do you?” said the pharmacist.

The man said, “No, but my wife out in the car still does!”

Questions are the answers.

To me, a pharmacist is someone who fills a prescription … someone who dispenses a medication or a fix. A Pro AV pharmacist would be a reseller whom, for example, when asked by his/her end user for a quote on a 5000 lumen WUXGA projector, simply provides the prices of a few projectors fitting that description.

A physician is someone who asks diagnostic questions to uncover every symptom/point of pain/challenge and provides the necessary treatment to remove the issue, address other situations which may affect the patient, and avoid future reoccurrences. Compare that to a Pro AV physician, a reseller whom, when asked by his/her end user for a quote on that 5000 lumen WUXGA projector, would ask questions such as:

What’s the application? How many hours per day will the projector be in use?
What type of lighting is in the room?
What kind of content is being presented?
Is there a projector screen already installed? What’s the gain on that screen?
What size is the screen? What’s the aspect ratio?
At what distance will the projector be installed?
What are you connecting?
How far away is your source?
What’s the budget?
How are you mounting the unit?
Who’s doing the installation?

When you ask the questions necessary to present a solution, you might find that the product your customer originally asked for doesn’t fit the project requirements.

Here’s a situation to keep in mind when your end user tells you that he/she wants a quote on a solution he/she saw online. One day, a reseller asked me for a quote on a TV by specific part number. I started by asking him, “What’s the application?”

He quickly dismissed my questioning by saying that the end user has a small budget and that’s what he asked for. I asked him again, “What’s the TV being used for?” He said it’s being used for surveillance. I said, “Surveillance, as in 24 hours a day?” He quickly realized that the TV he asked for wasn’t designed for 24/7 operation and thanked me for saving his petooty. Remember, don’t just fill the prescription!

You can also be a hero when a customer asks for a quote on a consumer TV to be installed in a commercial setting.

After asking questions about the project requirements and—if you determine that the consumer TV will fit the commercial application in terms of brightness, hours of operation, and budget—educate him/her by saying, “The 1-year manufacturer’s warranty reduces to 90 days when the TV is for commercial use. Do you want to upgrade your service coverage to a 2-, 3-, 4- or 5-year extended warranty?” Asking the right questions and educating your customer on consumer warranties could avoid a costly situation if the displays were to go funky after 90 days.

Almo Services: your partner to deliver the full package.

It’s absolutely critical to ask a lot of questions so you can provide a total solution. Always add the mounts and extended warranties (when it applies) onto the quote. Ask what other essentials are needed—cables, signal flow, control systems, audio. Ask who’s installing the job. (If you’re not able to provide that service, let Almo Install be an arm to your team!) Ask who’s creating the content on the digital signage project. (Not your area of expertise? Almo Content will do it for you!) Ask who’s programming the control systems. (You don’t have a programmer to do it? Almo Control is your resource!) Ask about their current phone, internet and TV service. (You can earn a monthly revenue stream as a provider through Almo Connect!) If you’re not familiar with these accompanying products and services to complete the project, your Almo account manager can help you!

Learn the latest for FREE!

Whether you’re already calling yourself Doctor AV, or if you’re still developing your expertise in the Pro AV space and want to become a better Pro AV physician, attend one of our FREE 2018 E4 Pro AV Tour stops to learn about the hottest technology and trends:

Washington, DC – March 6
Dallas – April 24
Boston – September 21
Nashville – October 26

Stethoscope and lab coat not required.