A few hours ago, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the acquisition of iSIZE, a London-based company founded in 2016 focusing on machine learning applications for video processing. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Sony claims it will benefit the company's R&D and its video streaming services. Indeed, iSIZE's website reveals three main products, two of which are directly related to that: BitClear and BitSave. The former is an AI-based video processing technology that cleans up compression artifacts such as ringing, blurring, and artifacts from heavily compressed content.
REAL-TIME
On NVIDIA RTX, T4, or V100 GPUs, BitClear can operate over multiple input video assets in real-time (at 25/30 fps). Allows for video upscaling, all with as little as 5ms processing latency on GPUs or high-performance CPUs.
CONTENT INDEPENDENT
Processes any highly compressed content and produces a higher-quality output that improves the value of the asset. It operates on all types of content.
SUPERIOR QUALITY
Revives to the maximum possible quality without affecting the artistic intent of the original creators. As video encoding noise is applied across the entirety of each video frame, it operates on the entirety of each input frame, and it is not a region-of-interest approach.
FUTURE PROOF
Scalable neural network architecture that can scale to high volumes of content and is ideal for cloud as well as on-premise deployment
The second iSIZE product is BitSave, which the company describes as an AI-based 'perceptual optimizer' that allows encoders to produce higher quality video at a lower bitrate.
EFFICIENT DELIVERY
Offers up to 50% reduction in video bitrate over the state-of-the-art at the same or improved visual quality. Boosts the compression efficiency of any video codec and runs on client devices with minimal or no additional overhead
CODEC INDEPENDENT
BitSave technology is compatible with any codec, including AVC, HEVC, VP9, AV1, and even the upcoming AV2 and VVC, with increased gains in bitrate and quality offered for newer standards
SEAMLESS INTEGRATION
Single pass processing per content for an entire ABR ladder. Requires no change in encoding, delivery or decoding devices. Compatible with any existing video coding infrastructure
SUSTAINABLE STREAMING
Allows simpler encoding recipes, offers significant computational and energy efficiency, allowing for sustainable video streaming at scale.
Clearly, both of these technologies can be very useful for Sony as it attempts to improve its own streaming technology. Just recently, Sony launched the PS5 cloud streaming feature earlier this month, just ahead of the upcoming release of the streaming-focused PlayStation Portal handheld. In the future, it is conceivable that the new streaming tech (which supports 4K, unlike Microsoft's xCloud) could land on PCs, too.
By the way, iSIZE's third product could very well be of interest to Sony's PlayStation Studios for game development. Called BitGen, it allows live generation of photorealistic 2D/3D avatars.
NO OFFLINE TRAINING & NO DEEP FAKES
Avoidance of deep fakes by ensuring faithful rendering of what is captured by the camera. AI-based rendering and structure extraction in latent space; No offline capture and training.
ONLINE PRESENCE AT MUCH LOWER BITRATE
Decreasing bitrate by 3-10x in comparison to state-of-the-art generic video encoders (AV1, HEVC) for the same visual quality.
ACHIEVING NEAR-ZERO LATENCY
5x lower video latency. 5x lower transceiver power. Uninterrupted remote presence under poor wireless signal conditions. Significantly better Quality of Experience -> increased user engagement time.
A ROBUST AND USER AGNOSTIC SOLUTION
Scale out to millions of users with the use of a single model. Bespoke models can be tailored to content: conversational, IoT, infrared, multispectral, etc. Deployable across devices.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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