How Clevercast Makes Multilingual Live Streaming 99% Accurate And Cheaper: Q/A With Cto Bruno Ketelbueters

Human interpreting and subtitling for live streaming events can be expensive, and cutting costs using AI is still far from ideal, as accuracy is still below 90%.

Clevercast has developed the only dedicated solution on the market to provide multilingual closed captions for live streams with over 99% accuracy at reduced costs.

In this interview with Website Planet, their CTO, Bruno Ketelbueters, explained to me how he thinks AI will transform the streaming industry and why his company will be one of the frontrunners in making live video streams accessible to a global audience, by offering real time audio translation and subtitling to non-native speakers and hearing-impaired viewers.

The main topics discussed:

• How open source technologies have been key to Clevercast 10x growth in recent years
• Why 98% of Clevercast’s customers never look back (including TEDx, Allianz, P&G and more)
• The importance of timely, tailored, human support in the context of live streaming

Introduce yourself and your company

Clevercast, founded in 2005, is an industry leader in delivering innovative video streaming solutions. We have extensive expertise in video production and streaming and use it to develop solutions and services that add comprehensive value to live and on-demand streaming. We offer a feature-rich streaming platform to companies and organizations, as well as niche solutions for e-learning and marketing purposes.

Our revolutionary way to automatically add high-quality audio translations and multilingual subtitles to live video broadcasts makes live streaming video accessible to everyone, no matter what language people speak, by combining our streaming expertise with the new capabilities of AI technologies.

In recent years our sales increased over 10x, starting from the COVID pandemic, when there was a huge increase in demand for streaming, and more specifically live streaming. On top of that came the AI boom, which allowed us to design solutions that were not only innovative but also practical, responsive to real customer needs and user-friendly. We also received several recognitions for our innovations and won Streaming Media Awards for both our solution and services.

What problems are you solving for your customers and audience?

We are able now to increase the quality of multilingual live streaming while reducing costs – something that was not thought possible until recently. Traditional interpreting and subtitling done in real time by language professionals are very expensive and require a lot of manpower. Although these traditional solutions are not error-free, they still offer better quality than first-wave AI solutions for speech-to-text, where accuracy is often less than 90%.

Most AI streaming solutions face a common problem, namely that AI features are only integrated as an afterthought, leading to a decrease in quality and reliability. We solved this by developing our own cloud architecture that integrates AI at all levels of the streaming process, allowing us to provide multilingual closed captions for live streams with over 99% accuracy.

Comparison of the Accuracy of Live AI Subtitling by Clevercast, YouTube and Vimeo

But our customers can still overcome the current limitations of AI by combining it with real time human correction. This feature is particularly valuable for high-profile events, where achieving 100% accuracy and maintaining high-quality translations is paramount. For me, this is key to our success, as customers can have rock-solid confidence in the quality and reliability of the audio translations and closed captions that Clevercast delivers.

Clevercast is also designed to be so simple that anyone can use it. All one needs to do is send a live broadcast to clevercast.com and copy the embed code for our multilingual video player to the event’s website or platform. That’s all it takes to offer a global live stream with an unlimited number of languages. Alternatively, people can also use our webinar solution for a customizable event page and features such as registration and interactivity.

Finally, we have built a reputation for delivering exceptional customer services. Leveraging our experience, we help clients with various aspects of video production and streaming technology. The importance of great support is often underestimated, especially in the context of live streaming where timely assistance plays a crucial role. If necessary, clients can also hire professional interpreters and caption correctors through us, or let us manage the live stream.

Which types of companies benefit the most from what you offer?

Our solutions are used by companies in all industries that want to broaden their audience or require specific functions. They can be integrated into corporate environments as well as used for one-off events.

Clevercast is an especially powerful live streaming platform for all kinds of purposes:

• E-learning
• Events
• Conferences
• Training
• Media and entertainment
• Internal and external communication
• Worship

And a whole lot more…

Without Clevercast, multilingual live streaming would be a very expensive undertaking where accuracy and quality would leave much to be desired, especially for live streams that require many languages or high overall quality. No other solution comes close.

Our multilingual streaming solution is fundamentally different from the meeting solutions offered by our competitors.

Meeting solutions must deliver real time translation to online speakers with absolutely no delay, but they cannot provide sufficient context to AI engines, and this results in significantly lower accuracy. Moreover, they are not scalable for larger audiences and cannot be used on most mobile devices.

For multilingual events, where there may be hundreds of thousands of viewers, Clevercast is really the only choice. The same goes for AI subtitles. Clevercast offers the same quality of closed captions that people are used to from Netflix or television, even for live streams. By this I mean not only the accuracy of the speech-to-text conversion and translation, but also the synchronization of the captions with the video stream, the look and feel of the captions, the length of the text and how it is divided into lines, etc. None of this is possible with meeting technologies, which require every word to be shown as soon as it is spoken.

What makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?

That’s simple: the quality of our solutions. All customers who have tried a similar solution say that the quality of Clevercast in general is great and the quality of our AI-generated multilingual live streams is simply amazing. They always feel confident that the closed captions and translations are accurate and reliable. This allows them to offer multilingual live streams to non-native speakers and hearing-impaired viewers, who were previously excluded or had to settle for a makeshift solution at best.

The option of having language professionals correct the AI speech-to-text conversion in real time, before it is added to the live stream, is another greatly appreciated feature that is almost invariably used for high-profile events, where perfection is desired and the cost of hiring language professionals is only a fraction of the total budget. I don’t know of any other platform where this is possible, and indeed this is something potential clients are usually very curious about.

That said, simplicity, intuitive interfaces and the customizability of our multilingual video player also score high with our customers.

We also receive high praise for the quality and flexibility of our support team, especially from customers with many live streams or complex needs. Even though we offer a self-service solution, we are always ready to help our customers. In my opinion, this is definitely an important factor in our success.

Many new customers come to us after hearing positive recommendations from satisfied customers and partners. Some have needs for which there is no obvious solution, but for which we can still find one thanks to the flexibility of our technology and the ingenuity of our engineers.

Since you started, what helped you grow and retain your audience?

Our multilingual and AI streaming solutions are mainly responsible for our explosive growth in recent years. It helps that we are the only company that offers a self-service solution for multilingual live streaming with transparent pricing, that is also suitable for one-off events. All our competitors consider multilingual live streaming as a project, with high overhead costs or a very expensive annual plan as their only option.

With SEO and targeted advertising, we can reach many potential customers. We mainly target people who are actively looking for one of our niche solutions. We try to keep the barrier to entry for new customers low: people can try our solution right away and we respond quickly to their questions. We also have a newsletter to trigger existing and potential customers when new features are added to our solutions.

Advertising through social media does not bring us much return. We are a B2B company with very specific buyers and ads in social media do not allow us to reach our target audience. This is a common problem with ads: without the context of a trade journal or very clear wording, they mainly reach end users who often get the wrong idea about our solutions.

In fact, new customers usually find us during their search for streaming solutions with better quality or one of our unique features. Once they try Clevercast, they rarely leave.

Less than 2% of customers switch to competitors, and we regularly see that after using one of our niche solutions, customers also start using our more general streaming solutions. This demonstrates the loyalty and satisfaction within our customer base. It also amazes me every time how many potential customers manage to reach us through word of mouth.

What tools are you using to run your business and daily activities?

It’s not really a tool, but I would say the most important thing for our company is the concept of open source. We use open source technologies for just about every aspect of our business, from software design and development to internal communications and sales. It allows us to innovate and evolve quickly, without major costs and vendor lock-in.

Our streaming architecture, designed and developed in-house, is largely based on open source technologies and open standards. This makes us much more flexible than competitors who rely on third-party solutions. We try to stay away from proprietary software and technologies: these do not offer enough flexibility to stay innovative.

In the field of AI technology, our approach is dynamic and proactive. Developments in the field of AI are moving fast. We constantly monitor and refine our existing solutions while actively seeking opportunities for improvement. This commitment to innovation aligns with our dedication to providing the most advanced and effective AI solutions.

Although not open source, we are happy to make an exception for Slack. We use it both for internal communication and to provide support to our customers, for which it has proven to be very suitable.

What perspective do you have about where your industry is headed?

The streaming industry is a very dynamic sector, with constantly changing preferences, technological innovations and new players entering the market. Over the past decades, the main focus has been on improving the visual experience, with 4K and even 8K streaming, and providing immersive experiences such as virtual and augmented reality.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in demand for hybrid and real time solutions beyond conventional live streaming. And the rise of AI has made it possible to incorporate significant added value into existing streams without too much cost.

I expect these trends to continue in the near future. It is only a matter of time before AI becomes more ubiquitous and its application goes beyond understanding and enhancing content. At some point, I expect AI to become an integral part of streaming technology itself. This integration promises to change the landscape, provide innovative opportunities and take the streaming experience to unprecedented heights.

There is no doubt that streaming services will continue to expand globally and that live streaming will remain a key focus. The increasing prominence of interactive and real time engagement features will reshape the way audiences interact with content. As technology advances, the traditional distinctions between real time and adaptive streaming technologies will continue to blur. This convergence will result in more seamless and responsive experiences, where users can actively engage with content as it unfolds, contributing to a more dynamic and immersive streaming environment.

What’s in the roadmap for your future?

Until now, we have been mainly a European company, although we have worldwide customers from Japan to Argentina. We are currently expanding into North America and Asia-Pacific. But even in Europe, where most of our customers are, there is still a lot of room for growth.

Traditionally, we have focused on offering Clevercast as a cloud solution. This strategy remains unchanged. However, we are also gradually expanding our services division, which offers all-in live stream management. In this way, we can cater to companies with a lack of online video or live streaming experience looking for end-to-end solutions.

On the technology front, we plan to continue adding features and improving the quality of our multilingual live streaming in the near future. We expect companies to gradually start using AI-generated captioning for all live and on-demand content. AI caption quality will continue to rise, leading to more confidence in it as a standard solution. In addition, closed captions are increasingly required by international accessibility regulations. For audio translation too, we expect customers to increasingly make the switch to AI, as the distinction between human and AI-generated voices narrows and audiences are increasingly getting used to the latter.

In the long term, we want to increase the role of artificial intelligence in our streaming architecture and offer new innovations based on AI. The possibilities for this are endless, such as personalizing content, providing predictive analytics, enhancing the viewing and listening experience, providing interactive experiences, and so on. The most important thing for us is to make choices that lead to real progress for customers and users.