Trint News

The New York Times: An Investigative Arsenal

The New York Times — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 16:16:29 GMT

How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter in Washington, discussed the tech he’s using.

What are your most important tech tools for staying on top of your beat?

My single most important tool? Backup power.

It’s been an obsession of mine since my days as a homeland security and disaster reporter at The Times, when I covered the Sept. 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. I never leave the house without a portable power supply that keeps me going at least 20 hours. That means I carry an Anker PowerCore 20100mAh, which can charge my Pixel 2 cellphone at least seven times. I also have an extra six-cell battery for my ThinkPad X270 laptop, which already has a super-large six-cell battery built in.

AP to Automate Video, Audio Transcription with Trint

raffaele@zinc-group.com (Trint) — Wed, 30 May 2018 06:00:00 GMT

The Associated Press and Trint announced today that they will work together to automate AP’s video and audio transcription process, streamlining the news agency’s workflow.

AP video journalists across the globe will use Trint to transcribe recorded interviews and events for use in the video and text news report. The transcriptions are reviewed by journalists for accuracy before the content is published.

Launched in 2016, Trint uses artificial intelligence to quickly generate searchable transcriptions of audio and video that can promptly be verified and timed.

“Rolling out Trint across our video teams allows our journalists to work smarter and helps us deliver content faster. Our producers check the work rather than spend hours creating it, which frees up time to focus on the most urgent stories that need our attention,” said Derl McCrudden, AP deputy managing editor for digital and visual journalism. “We’re also able to assess the news value of some content much faster, and that means we’re getting the most important sound bites out to customers more quickly.”

In a pilot project, AP journalists in production centers in New York, Washington and London, as well as several bureaus including Mexico City, Berlin and Moscow, used Trint to transcribe audio and video from recorded interviews rather than doing so manually. The pilot found that video producers were spending more than 45 minutes per day on manual transcription. Using Trint resulted in a significant reduction in transcription time.

“We are thrilled to work with AP, the world’s most trusted news organization, in solving one of the most tedious, time-consuming and expensive parts of the reporting process,” said Trint founder and CEO Jeff Kofman, an Emmy-winning broadcast journalist and war correspondent (ABC, CBS and CBC News). “Our goal is to create a seamless and smarter workflow so journalists at AP and other news organizations can spend less time on laborious stenography and more time creating content. AP has shown us that Trint can increase productivity and allow their teams to focus on doing what they do best - reporting and publishing high-quality journalism.”

By merging two pieces of software — a text editor and audio/video player — into one, Trint glues the source audio and video to the text on the screen, making it possible to search recorded content by keywords, verify a machine-generated transcript in seconds, polish it in minutes and export it in multiple formats. With reasonably clean audio, accuracy rates can be better than 95 percent.

AP has integrated the Trint Enterprise application programming interface into its content management system, allowing easy onboarding via single sign-on. Trint Enterprise includes a customizable administrative dashboard, secure data encryption, an Adobe Premiere plugin, and the recently launched Vocab Builder, which lets users create a custom list of brand names, technical terms, and other uncommon words to make automated transcription even more accurate. Trint is also available on iOS mobile.

Trint will work closely with AP to incorporate feedback and update features to further enhance the product and streamline the transcribing, editing and publishing process.

About AP

The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP. On the web: www.ap.org.

About Trint

Trint is the first automated transcription service to combine a text editor and an audio/video player into one easy-to-use tool. Based in Shoreditch in London, UK, Trint was established in December 2014. It is backed by funding from the Google Digital News Initiative, the Knight Enterprise Fund and Hong Kong based Horizons Ventures and has been supported by BBC Worldwide Labs and Cisco. Trint is transforming the searching and sharing of recorded content in 13 languages with a unique collection of features that includes instant search of recorded content, easy speaker identification, instant timing, and a variety of formats for export as a text document or subtitles. For more visit www.trint.com. Follow Trint on Twitter (@TrintHQ) and Facebook.

Contact

Lauren Easton

Director of Media Relations

The Associated Press

212-621-7005

leaston@ap.org

For Trint:

Patrick Kowalczyk

PKPR

212.627.8098

patrick@pkpr.com

Jeff Kofman

jeff@trint.com

Startups: Trint Named Top UK Startup for 2018

Megan Dunsby — Tue, 22 May 2018 11:00:00 GMT

Tackling a pain-point broadcasters and journalists know all too well, this start-up provides transcription relief using innovative AI transcription software

Founder: Jeff Kofman
Founded: December 2014 (launched September 2016)
Website: trint.com

Anyone that works in the publishing and broadcasting industry will know that transcribing is the worst part of the job.

As an Emmy-winning former broadcast journalist, Jeff Kofman shared this sentiment. Having spent thousands of hours manually transcribing interviews, speeches, and news conferences, he’d often dreamt of something that would make it easier.

Surely there had to be a better way?

After attending Mozilla’s MozFest in London in 2013, Kofman came across a team of developers who were previewing experimental technology that glued recorded audio to manually transcribed text on screen in an interactive player.

This immediately caught Kofman’s eye and he wondered at the potential of using the technology to create automated-speech-to-text with a way to allow users to correct any machine-generated errors. He discussed this with the team and that started him off on a journey “to transform and disrupt the workflow of manual transcription.”

Trint was born.

The first automated transcription service to combine a text editor and an audio/video player into one tool, Trint can transcribe recorded content in 13 languages.

It offers a unique collection of features to make the process easier still, such as search of recorded content, easy speaker identification, instant timing, and different formats for export as a text document or subtitles.

So far, Trint has been used by over 100,000 people including those from top media organisations such as The New York Times and Vice News, creating over 500,000 transcripts.

For individuals, the cost of ridding yourself from manual transcripts ranges from £13.60 per hour of audio uploaded to £100 a month for 10 hours of audio uploaded (anything more costs £10 an hour).

While for businesses, you can purchase team accounts for two to 50 users, or enterprise accounts for bigger teams.

With a total of £3.8m raised since the business began, and a team of 25 staff, Trint is intent on transforming into an end-to-end publishing solution.

When will Kofman think the business has really succeeded? When Trint gets into the dictionary: “It will be when people say let’s Trint it or let’s check the Trint”.

Originally published here.

To experience firsthand what sets Trint apart, sign up for a free trial account - no credit card required.

Adobe Blog: Adobe Partners at NAB 2018: Creating connected experiences for thriving in the Age of Video

Sue Skidmore — Tue, 15 May 2018 17:06:29 GMT

The phenomenal growth of video around the world presents an incredible opportunity — and a daunting challenge — for content creators. To seize the opportunity, they need creative tools that empower them to deliver stories that stand out. To meet the challenge, they need ever-greater efficiency in their production workflows. Adobe and our amazing technology partners deliver.

Powerful alone, unstoppable together

Thanks to deep and ongoing collaboration between Adobe’s video team and our community of over 250 technology partners, customers around the world can work in an integrated production environment, whether they are a one-person shop, a boutique studio, or a global enterprise. APIs in the core Adobe video apps like Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Audition CC, Adobe Media Encoder CC, and other apps like Adobe Photoshop CC, allow our tools to connect and interact with partner technologies, giving the user a seamless, connected workflow. Ongoing dialogs with our partners for development, testing, and optimization ensure strong feature releases and keep our customers on the leading edge as the industry evolves. Within each of the Adobe video applications are open APIs, which are built to interact with our partner technologies to ensure seamless, connected workflows.

Like Adobe, over 100 of our technology partners are at NAB this year to show off their latest innovations and Adobe-integrated solutions to over 100,000 attendees here in Las Vegas. We wanted to share some of the highlights in this post.

Camera manufacturers: Adobe is announcing native support in Premiere Pro CC for several new formats.

Canon: Adobe is announcing support for Canon’s EOS C200 and the new Cinema RAW Light format in the new release of Adobe Premiere Pro CC. The C200 has instinctive controls and a touchscreen that feels like a smartphone. Booth C4325.

RED Digital Cinema: Adobe is announcing support for the RED camera image processing pipeline [IPP2]. RED’s new image processing pipeline unlocks the full potential of every pixel. IPP2 offers a completely overhauled workflow experience and encompasses all of the steps in the image capture process, from raw sensor data to final image output. You can learn more about this pipeline support in Adobe booth SL4610.

Sony: Adobe is announcing native Premiere Pro CC format support for the Sony VENICE 6K CineAlta Camera in the latest release. In addition, Sony will be showcasing their new XDCAM Air solution in their booth. XDCAM AIR is a cloud-based workflow solution for news production and includes a dedicated extension panel for Adobe Premiere Pro CC, enabling editors to instantly pull video shots from cloud storage into the local project. This allows production teams to prepare news video content in parallel with their camera teams, and deliver almost as soon as shooting is completed. Booth C11001.

GPUs, real-time graphics and control surfaces

AJA: The lo family delivers powerful workflows in a compact form, bringing flexible I/O and high performance to any compatible workstation or laptop. The latest small-form factor offering is the IO4K Plus. Lo 4K Plus is the cutting-edge of capture and output hardware available over Thunderbolt 3, offering a full set of professional video and audio connectivity with support for the latest 4K/UltraHD devices, HFR, HDR and single-cable simplicity with 12G-SDI and HDMI 2.0 I/O. Booth SL2505.

AMD: The latest release of Adobe Premiere Pro CC includes native support for Radeon Pro SSG GPU, designed specifically for video production, combining the high performance capabilities of AMD’s next-generation “Vega” GPU architecture with 2TB of NVMe storage onboard the graphics card. This GPU has the horsepower for demanding 4K and 8K video workflows, which allows for seamless editing of popular raw video files, giving editors unprecedented control of their projects while using the original high-resolution, uncompressed footage, and accelerating the production process. The Radeon Pro SSG is shipping in April in the Dell Precision T7920 workstation. Booth SL8224.

Bluefish444: This announces SMPTE 2022/2110 Video Over IP support with the latest versions of the Adobe Creative Cloud CC video apps. The Kronos and Epoch SDI, HDMI, and video over IP solutions from Bluefish are well-suited for professional video production with Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC, and the other Adobe video tools that are part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Existing Epoch customers will have the ability to capture SMPTE 2022-6 video over IP streams, directly within Adobe Premiere Pro CC, through standard off-the-shelf 10GB Network Interfaces. Booth SL9021.

NewTek: NewTek’s LiveGraphics is an entirely new, revolutionary approach to the creation of real-time motion graphics that does not require a proprietary hardware graphics engine. With LiveGraphics, content authored in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects is instantly available for live output from TriCaster TC1 and NewTek IP Series. Booth SL5016.

Sling Media: Sling Media will be demonstrating the integrated panel for Premiere Pro with their wireless multi-camera and live-switcher hub called SlingStudio. Users can easily export footage from a single storage device to Adobe Premiere Pro, which automatically time-aligns your files so you can begin editing without having to spend hours in post-production setup. Booth SU8113.

Tangent Wave: Tangent is introducing extended support for Adobe Premiere Pro from the entire Tangent control panel range. Many more parameters and functions within Adobe Premiere Pro CC will now be accessible from the panels. Along with speeding up repetitive editing tasks, this new support will be especially useful for the many Lumetri color grading tools in Adobe Premiere Pro, which are ideally suited for mapping, to physical knobs and trackerballs. Booth SU7814.

Media asset management solutions

Arvato: For the first time Arvato Systems will preview an on-demand SaaS edition of VPMS EditMate, the market-leading production asset management (PAM) for Adobe Premiere Pro CC. VPMS EditMate is the production asset management for Adobe Premiere Pro. EditMate offers an adaptive streaming engine that uses available bandwidth to deliver a high quality, full HD “proxy” — giving you the full Adobe Premiere Pro experience and toolset but without needing to wait for, or copy, large media files. Booth SU6714.

Dalet: Dalet introduces Dalet Galaxy five at NAB 2018. Everything in this new version pushes more advanced team collaboration. The integration with Adobe Premiere Pro CC has been expanded with two major features: the support of Adobe Projects as MAM objects, and sharing of the Dalet “CG on the timeline” model between the two platforms. Booth SL8010.

Join Adobe and Dalet at Dalet Pulse, Sunday April 8, at 5:00 p.m. at the SLS Hotel Las Vegas, for a reveal latest innovations and launches. Click here to RSVP.

Etere: Etere will be showcasing the latest plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro CC, which features seamless integration with Etere MERP solutions to provide all the professional tools needed from a single interface, without exiting the NLE environment. Booth SL5516.

Cantemo: Cantemo is announcing and demonstrating an integrated panel for Adobe in its cloud video hub, called “iconik.” The panel makes it easy to use Adobe solutions within iconik and, having initially been integrated with Adobe Premiere Pro CC, has now been extended to support Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Audition CC, and Adobe Illustrator CC. Integrating iconik with these solutions means that users can access and edit all their media files, and easily share and collaborate with others on their extended teams. Booth SL5007.

FlavourSys: Flavorsys, an independent software company delivering products designed to improve the day-to-day workflow of any content production facility, today announced that the latest version of their production asset management (PAM) tool Strawberry (v. 5.4) now offers more seamless integration than ever into the video apps of the Adobe Creative Cloud, a comprehensive set of interconnected software tools and services. Flavorsys is showing in the EditShare Booth SL8620.

IPV: IPV is announcing and demonstrating Curator for Adobe, which is an extension available for use in Adobe Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC and lets users benefit from access to their Curator asset management system directly from within their chosen post-production software. Editors can stream proxies directly into their Creative Cloud applications where they can also switch between low and high-resolution assets when needed. And during live and near-live operations, Curator Logger gives users immediate access to an asset’s live markers in Adobe Premiere Pro as they’re added to the Curator system. Booth SL4905.

Marquis Broadcast: Marquis will launch its new Premiere Parking software at NAB, which offers a fast and easy way for Adobe Premiere Pro CC users to be able to safely move, transfer, and share projects. Premiere Parking works alongside Marquis’ Worx4 Pro software which analyzes Adobe Premiere Pro CC Projects, identifying all media associated with the project and automatically checks the integrity of the project, identifying and highlighting any missing media and its last known location. Booth SU6225.

Storage

Facilis: The company will showcase the latest advancements to its FastTracker integrated asset tracking software and announce a new panel for seamless integration with Adobe Premiere Pro CC. First launched in 2016, FastTracker now includes many powerful features such as global indexing, automatic preview clip generation, index date/time window searching, and tag-specific searching. These features are now available in the shipping version, FastTracker 2.1. Visitors to the Facilis booth will be able to get a sneak peek at the upcoming version of FastTracker 3.0, which will include asset search and access via a web browser interface, and direct integration with Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Booth SL7920.

OpenDrives: The upgraded release of OpenDrives solutions’ media accelerator employs NVMe (non-volatile memory express) technology, the fastest form of flash storage currently available and twice as fast as the SSD technology previously used. Working with OpenDrives, entire teams of Adobe Premiere Pro users can point their project files, database peek-in cache, and media cache to OpenDrives’ Media Accelerator, allowing them to collaborate in real time with dramatically improved loading, scrubbing, and other operational performance. Booth SL2424.

Transcription

Trint: Trint’s new panel for Adobe Premiere Pro CC enables direct upload of footage to Trint for fast, automated transcription, giving users a quick and integrated flow for making audio searchable and creating captions for their media. Using Trint’s automated speech-to-text technologies, editors quickly get a machine-generated draft transcript that they can easily polish to perfect in the Trint Editor. Transcriptions corrected in Trint will be available in the panel, giving editors direct access to SRTs and WebVTTs from within Premiere Pro CC. Trint will be demonstrating in the Sprockit Booth N3735SP-A.

Originally published here.

We’re always happy to chat about the innovative tech we work on here at Trint, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for all media enquiries at victoria@trint.com.

Broadcast Beat: Trint At The 2018 NAB Show

Michael Robinson — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 15:27:28 GMT

Figaro Digital: Meet Jeff Kofman: International Journalist-Turned-AI Entrepreneur

Laura Marlow — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 15:17:39 GMT

Jeff Kofman is an Emmy-winning foreign and war correspondent who spent three decades working for major broadcasting networks such as ABC and CBC, reporting from across the globe covering some of the biggest news events of recent years, including the Iraq war, the Arab Spring, and the Libyan Revolution. In 2014, he swapped war zones for Zone 1, and founded Trint, the AI automatic transcription service that is saving his fellow journalists from hours of tedious, time-consuming work. Figaro Digital sat down with Kofman at Trint’s trendy East London office to discuss his motivations, experiences, and startup success.

Trint’s AI transcription software to add integrated panel for Adobe Premiere Pro CC in Enterprise Offering

raffaele@zinc-group.com (Trint) — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 08:00:00 GMT

London (April 4, 2018) - Customers of Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud®, will now have the opportunity to make their workflow even more seamless using Trint’s automatic speech-to-text technologies.

Fast Company: Reporting From War Zones Made Me A Better CEO

rema-5@trint.com (Jeff Kofman) — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 16:00:00 GMT

BY JEFF KOFMAN

I spent a lot time covering wars, but I’ve only panicked under fire once.

It was in March 2004. I was reporting for ABC News on a violent revolution in Haiti. We had an exclusive interview with the country’s besieged President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Early on a Sunday morning, my team and I drove through the scruffy streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, to Aristide’s office, our driver navigating a labyrinth of concrete barriers that circled the outrageously grand, French colonial Presidential Palace.

We approached the palace’s massive wrought-iron gates, and nervous guards approached us with their guns drawn.”The president is not here. Get out of here!” they commanded. We didn’t realize yet that there’d been a coup d’état the previous night, but we knew we needed to get back to our hotel–fast.

That’s when the gunfire started. We couldn’t see it and didn’t appear to be the target, but it was coming from the direction of the only exit we knew. Our driver didn’t know where to turn. I yelled, “We’ve gotta get out of here!”

Our security guy barked back, “Shut the fuck up, you’re not helping!”

I realized immediately that he was right: If we were going to find our way out, we needed to stay calm and think rationally. You can’t do that when you are panicking. Years later, as a tech entrepreneur (thankfully, a much less dangerous profession), I’d remember this crucial lesson—among a few others I picked up in war zones.

The worse things get, the calmer you have to stay

After 30 years as a TV reporter and foreign correspondent, I decided to take on a completely new challenge. With no business experience I set out to launch Trint, a startup focused on building software to automate the tedious workflow of transcription.

One day, Amazon Web Service knocked our platform offline with a worldwide outage. It was a Friday night, and I was at a trade show in Amsterdam–away from Trint’s staff. It would have been extremely easy to panic, but I remembered what my security guard said to me in Haiti. I needed to stay calm. I quickly got on the phone with our engineering and marketing teams to make sure we were closely monitoring what was happening and messaging our users. It was the best thing we could’ve done in that situation. Had I panicked, I might have been slow to act and watched a lot of angry customers abandon us for good.

Don't hesitate to ask dumb questions

During the Iraq War I was embedded with the Army, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force. Each branch of the military has its own culture, which can be daunting to penetrate. There’s an insider language and shorthand for armaments and procedure that spills off soldiers’ and sailors’ tongues naturally. It’s tempting to play along, but the wise reporter knows that’s a fool’s game: one slip and your credibility will vaporize. Better just to ask when you don’t know.

When I first began to raise investment for Trint I didn’t know the difference between a KPI and ROI. I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut until I found time to do some cramming. Of course, sometimes there’s no substitute for getting the answers from an expert–after all, if you don’t understand how a concept works in practice, you can get still it wrong if you’re relying solely on self-instruction. Luckily, I was surrounded by extremely patient board members and trusted advisers. Asking them basic questions probably saved me from some serious mishaps.

When in doubt, over-communicate

I spent much of 2011 reporting on the Arab Spring in Libya. For months the revolution to overthrow dictator Muammar Gadhafi had stalled. ABC News and others grew tired of the huge cost of covering a war in which nothing was changing. In August 2011, when Gadhafi’s regime looked like it was finally about to crumble, our team began to scramble to get back to Tripoli. We had to trek 36 hours from neighboring Tunisia to make it across the remote desert border into Libya, just as the sun was setting.

It was Ramadan, so a group of Libyans fleeing the chaos of Tripoli insisted we join them in their tent to break their fast. The invitation was so generous that, despite our looming deadline for ABC World News, we couldn’t say no. After a quick feast of savory meats, succulent melons, and sweet cakes, we excused ourselves and rushed into our vehicles, heading for the first town inside Libya where we hoped to spend the night.

Half an hour later, I picked up the two-way radio to check in with my producer in the lead vehicle: “Jeff for Bruno,” I announced. The response came back in heavily accented English from our local driver: “Bruno not with me, he with you.” We realized that we had left Bruno at the Ramadan tent, and we hadn’t checked in with each other to make sure we had everyone. When we got back, Bruno was calmly munching on a slice of watermelon.

When you’re reporting in a war zone, though, small failures of communication can have terrible consequences. Now that I oversee a team of 25, I make sure to over-communicate as a result. So much tension and misunderstanding is simply due to bad communication.

During my time as a war correspondent, I was taught a painstaking technique to probe for and navigate around potential landmines. These days, I’m grateful that the landmines I encounter every day are strictly metaphorical.

Originally published here.

We’d love to chat about the innovative tech we work on here at Trint, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for all media inquiries at victoria@trint.com.

The New York Times: How Canada's Tech Scene is Thriving (Including the Instant Pot)

New York Times — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 18:00:00 GMT

How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Ian Austen, a correspondent who is based in Ottawa, discussed the tech he’s using.

Lifehacker: I'm War Correspondent and Trint Founder Jeff Kofman, and This Is How I Work

Nick Douglas — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 15:23:00 GMT

Emmy-winning journalist Jeff Kofman has covered some of the world’s biggest news stories for ABC, CBS, and CBC, including the Arab Spring, the Libyan Revolution, the invasion of Iraq, the trapped Chilean miners, and the international war on the drug trade. Now he runs the company behind Trint, an A.I.-based automated transcription service that saves reporters, and many other workers, from hours of tedious work. He told us entering the business world, and learning how it works.