Page 35 - SPiCE Magazine (September 2019)

34 The SPiCE Magazine • The Best of SPi Global: Going Strong @ 40 The SPiCE Magazine • The Best of SPi Global: Going Strong @ 40 35

Beyond Infinity the media services industry and to be a market leader in providing end-to-end services for the audiovisual
Updates on Infinity Awards winners industry worldwide”.

Only two months after its rollout, SPiCAPs gained its first client. Within nine months, its 10-member team
The Infinity Awards is running on its fourth year now. By the end of the year, we will award the next batch of winners brought in 45,000 USD in revenue, thus “converting a simple idea into a revenue-generating model for
whose projects we expect to implement and contribute to operational effciency and revenue generation. Here we
SPi Global”. According to Ajit, SPiCAPs did not only “open a new and steady stream of revenue for SPi Global”, but
give updates on some past winners of Infinity Awards that have been implemented and have shown business results.
also a new door for extending its services to the media industry.
InX Editor In May 2018, only a year after the project’s launch, SPi Global landed a US$2 million contract with HOOQ, a

leading on-demand streaming services provider. Using SPiCAPs, SPi Global will be rendering translation, sub-
The InDesign XML Editor, or InX Editor, is an innovative project
titling, and smart dubbing services for the company, beginning with Hindu dubbing, followed by Tamil, Telugu,
designed to eliminate InDesign limitations and simplify typesetting
Thai, and Indonesia languages in consequent phases.
XML requirements by allowing users to complete XML corrections

and typesetting requirements within InDesign. This also helps Initially made possible by only one team member who specialized in big media, the SPiCAPs team grew into a
prevent XML production dependency for new inserts and existing 28-man group that, to date, has completed over 300 hours of subtitling in more than 20 languages and gener-
updates for all type of workflows including TAPS. It ranked third ated approximately 600,000 USD in revenue.

in awarded projects during the Infinity Awards. Gejaraj Raja, who
The team is constantly expanding and improving its processes to further accommodate media-related services
spearheaded the project, said that winning the Infinity Awards
such as audio description and smart dubbing, particularly for the gaming industry.
helped enhance coordination among team members and “proved that combined efforts will never go vain”.
RoboReader
InX Editor’s Phase I module was rolled out in June 2018 and adopted for live production projects. Based on

studies and feedback from production leads, Gejaraj’s team continued to refine the module and add more Despite the use of skilled editors, proofreading documents can be a
features. This resulted to Phase II, a more advanced module that has been adopted by production teams time-consuming and error-prone task. To ensure faster turnaround
that utilize InDesign for typesetting. The upgrade resulted to a reduction in TAT and improvement in XML times and greater accuracy in the process, RoboReader – an auto-

quality and earned well-deserved praise by clients. mated machine learning-based proofreading system - was launched

Since its implementation, InX Editor has been responsible for bringing in 30,000 entries – a number that is in 2017.
expected to rise as Phase II becomes fully implemented across all production teams in Manila and India.
A recipient of the Sao Khuê Awards, RoboReader was designed by
Gejaraj’s team continues to enhance the module and will soon be releasing Phase III.
Infinity Awards winners Bharathidasan Rajaraman, Vijayakumar
SPiCAPs Gnanasekar and Venkatesh Soundararajan to learn from files previously proofread by humans and identify

potential errors in a document. It also eliminates typesetting layout rules during proofreading – an important
As audio-visual content grows into a trillion-dollar industry,
requirement for publishing clients.
the need for an effective and economical subtitling tool
becomes more important. Since its release, RoboReader has been rolled out to three accounts and has garnered positive feedback from

users. Using the tool, insights gathered by Operations has enhanced capabilities in deploying computer vi-
In March 2017, SPiCAPs (SPi Captioning Services) was
sion-based projects and serve as a basis for developing future projects.
launched to provide the best quality, cost-efficient, and
time-saving subtitling services to media providers across As one of the first machine learning tools to have been deployed in the company, the project is often used to
the globe. The tool can be utilized for any video format and showcase SPi Global’s unsurpassed technologies and capabilities when pitching new projects to clients.

supports multiple languages.
RoboReader will soon be deployed as part of the QC suite for use in different accounts. An improved version is
Project founder Ajit Nair explains that the goal is to create a tool that will serve as SPi Global’s “launch pad into currently being developed, which will surpass existing features.