From SDI to IP: How Broadcasters Can Simplify Captioning in the Cloud

From SDI to IP: How Broadcasters Can Simplify Captioning in the Cloud

The move from SDI to IP broadcast production environments is very much underway across the globe. A 2022 survey reveals that 65% of broadcasters have already migrated at least part of their infrastructure to IP.

As the future of broadcasting, IP promises a wealth of benefits. This includes increased flexibility, scalability and the power to create unique new services that simply aren’t possible in an SDI environment.

Wherever you are on the road to IP adoption, the need to caption your broadcast content remains the same. Not only to ensure you satisfy compliance requirements, but to also make your content accessible to your full potential audience.

And as you gradually migrate to an IP broadcast environment, the flexibility of the captioning solutions you choose is crucial.

How Ai-Media Bridges the Gap Between SDI and IP

As the world leader in captioning, Ai-Media’s solutions are designed knowing that the needs of every broadcaster are different, and those needs change over time.

For that reason, Ai-Media’s captioning solutions are future-proofed for any captioning requirement — applicable to any SDI or IP solution; covering all media connection architectures and standards; and supporting your content with captioning software, hardware and infrastructure all the way from source to screen.

Ai-Media can provide an end-to-end solution to help you easily transition from SDI to IP captioning workflows. Unlike other vendors, we provide all the next-gen cloud encoder technology and captioning services you need in one place. This means you avoid the time-consuming and costly need to integrate third-party solutions into your captioning workflow.

Cloud Caption Encoding with iCap Alta

Ai-Media’s iCap Alta encoder is the answer for any organization looking to leverage the benefits of captioning in IP video environments. A fully virtualized, API-powered pure software system, iCap Alta provides a resilient workflow for captions across both compressed and uncompressed IP video.

iCap Alta is designed to help broadcasters seamlessly transition from hardware-driven SDI workflows to software-controlled IP video environments. It helps save time and reduce costs with streamlined, next-generation workflows that are software-driven and native IP.

iCap Alta is configured for processing either MPEG Transport Streams, SMPTE 2110 or CDI uncompressed IP video. And the solution also supports SRT protocol, which helps enhance the security, resiliency and quality of your video when streaming over unpredictable networks like the public internet.

Some of the world’s leading broadcasters use iCap Alta to caption their content reliably, flexibly and securely. The solution makes it easy to broadcast high quality video with captions for any need – whether for a TV broadcast or an over-the-top content platform.

iCap Alta + Premium Human Captions: A Winning Combination

When broadcasters combine iCap Alta with Ai-Media’s Premium human captions, they get an easy-to-manage solution that delivers streamlined cloud workflows and highly accurate, reliable captions.

Premium captions are Ai-Media’s top-tier captioning offering. Generated by our skilled and experienced human captioners, this service delivers the highest accuracy of all our captioning solutions at over 99.5%.

Through our Ai-Live service, Premium captions can be delivered remotely to any screen or web-enabled device. They maximize accuracy even with difficult to understand speech thanks to our expert team, who can phonetically spell out difficult words. Our team also provides professional round-the-clock support, coordination services and monitoring.

How Ai-Media’s Lexi Provides a Reliable “Plan B” for Broadcasters

For many broadcasters, there may be times when our Premium or other third-party human captions don’t make sense. For instance, for those broadcasts with lower caption accuracy requirements or when the cost of human captions is an impediment.

That’s why in addition to our Premium captions, many of our broadcast customers also use our LEXI automated captions as a cost-effective and reliable back-up solution. This “Plan B” is made easy through an affordable SaaS subscription that allows you to conveniently switch from Premium to LEXI captions whenever the need arises, quickly and without hassle.

The world’s leading automated captioning solution, LEXI achieves greater than 98% accuracy – far exceeding that of ‘out-of-the-box’ automated captions. It provides the perfect “Plan B” for broadcasters – not only as a cost-effective alternative, but also as a failover in instances where Premium captions may not be available.

Ai-Media Provides All the Next-Gen Tech You Need

When you add all these solutions together, broadcasters finally have a complete end-to-end solution that offers full coverage, high quality live captions at low cost. And not only that, one that’s supercharged by the cloud, automation and APIs.

Contact our expert team at  to learn how our next-gen cloud technology can simplify captioning for your broadcasts.