IBC2025: Highlights That Actually Matter

IBC2025: Highlights That Actually Matter
Photo by Red Morley Hewitt / Unsplash

We spent four packed days at the RAI walking halls, watching demos, and comparing notes with customers. Here’s the short version of what stood out—and a few links if you want to go deeper.

What we noticed on the floor

  • ST 2110 is firmly “real world.” Sessions at the IP Showcase focused on real deployments (hybrid production, NMOS control, IPMX in practice), and vendors kept shipping gear that assumes IP is the default.
  • AI moved from shiny to useful. Beyond MAM and QC automation, AI showed up in everyday tools. One practical example: FFmpeg 8.0 “Huffman” adds a built-in Whisper filter for on-device transcription and captions—handy for searchable archives and compliance.
  • Three AI jobs that made sense everywhere:
  1. Automatic metadata enrichment (captions, summaries, tags) built into workflow tools.
  2. Semantic video search—ask in natural language, get the time-coded clip you need.
  3. Real-time object recognition at the edge for alerts and assistive UIs.

What the wider crowd was buzzing about

  • JPEG XS / ST 2110-22 has matured. You could see it in both silicon and test/monitoring: intoPIX + Altera pushed denser, more efficient cores, and Leader added native XS analysis alongside uncompressed 2110/SDI. This is the kind of plumbing engineers rely on.
  • Cloud/hybrid is just how teams work now. Between AMPP-centric partner demos and the AWS showcase, the story was pragmatic: interoperable tools, open APIs, and workflows that can move between on-prem, cloud, and in-between.

The show in one chart-worthy line

IBC reported 43,858 visitors, 1,300+ exhibitors, and 600 speakers (September 12–15, Amsterdam). Slightly down on last year’s attendance, but focused—especially around Future Tech (AI, private 5G, cloud-native, sustainability).