For this year's RBLAB 2020, France TV Lab teamed up with a number of companies, including Intel, Harmonic, VLC and Pixop, to explore the future of television.

France TV Lab was formed in 2016 and drives innovation at France TV in areas including design, new forms of management, new advertising formats and new content. Their stated goal is to create a space dedicated to reflection, knowledge sharing and best practices. Soon, they will implement a testing platform that will allow France Télévisions employees and the public to influence the implementation of new products through participation and responses to user tests.

At this year's RGLAB, the aim was to experiment with emerging technologies in the following four categories: 

Augmented reality: Enhancing the users perspective with augmented reality

Augmented quality: Revisiting images of the past in UHD thanks to artificial intelligence

Augmented speed: Showcasing video broadcast over 5G high-speed networks

Augmented interactivity: Providing the user their choice of viewing experience

Pixop's AI and ML-powered algorithms were tested in the augmented quality category. 

"We got an exciting opportunity to work on sports footage (thanks to our friends at Harmonic). Specifically, an SD NTSC clip in 16:9 aspect ratio from 2012," explains Jon Frydensbjerg, Pixop's CTO. 

"Considering this was archival footage, the quality was very good, both in terms of production quality and how it was stored. We applied our filters in a sequence, first performing very light denoising before running our Deep Restoration filter to produce an intermediate HD version. A final UHD 4K version was then produced by running our Super Resolution algorithm on the intermediate HD output."

You can read more about the results here. 

"We believe the partnership was fruitful and would welcome any opportunity to collaborate with France TV Lab and France TV in the future," says Morten Kolle, Pixop's CEO. 

"We also wanted to thank Vincent Nalpas, director of innovation products & services, Jean-Paul Chevreux, innovation engineer and Yves-Marie Poirier, innovation engineer for their support." 

Pixop teamed up with France TV Lab and Harmonic Inc to upscale older tennis clips for RGLAB 2020. 

Pixop Teams Up with France TV Lab 

Pixop has just received funding from the Danish Growth Fund for the second time. The first was received in January 2020.

"We're grateful to have the support of The Growth Fund to help grow our user base. We want to say a big thank you to them," says Morten Kolle, Pixop's CEO. 

The Danish Growth Fund is the Danish state's investment fund. It discovers and develops Danish startups in collaboration with banks, domestic and international private investors. 

Pixop is primarily self-funded with help from the Danish Growth Fund (Vækstfonden)

Pixop Receives Funding from The Danish Growth Fund

UNESCO declared October 27 the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage in 2005. This was primarily to draw attention to the fact that much of the audiovisual artifacts of the 20th and 21st centuries — including reels of beloved film and television — were in danger of being lost due to source degradation and obsolete technology. Despite this, effectively digitizing and modernizing decades’ worth of audiovisual archives has proven to be resource-intensive, time-consuming and expensive.

Jon Frydensbjerg and Morten Kolle set out to fix the problem in 2017. Inspired by recent advances in machine learning and AI, they went to work building a cloud-based video enhancement service called the Pixop Platform (pixop.com).

“We’re deeply invested in bringing classic stories back to life. Right now, reels of footage are gathering dust with very little hope of being broadcast again. Even if they are digitized and screened, they look dated and fall well short of what people have come to expect visually,” Morten Kolle, Pixop’s CEO, explains.

“We wanted to build a solution to solve that problem — one that was fully automated, consistent and better at enhancing and upscaling than manual methods for a fraction of the cost.”

Pixop recently worked with film distributor Screenbound International Pictures to upscale and enhance CI5: The New Professionals, a TV show from the 1990s.

As for how it works, Jon Frydensbjerg, Pixop’s CTO, explains:

“We applied a combination of classic noise reduction and proprietary deep learning algorithms to the letterboxed SD PAL digital master producing the 1080p HD version. In a nutshell, recent advances in machine learning provide us with a way of drastically enhancing degraded video.”

As for what the future holds, Morten and Jon are committed to breathing new life into as many classic movies and TV shows as they can.

Jon sums it up best: “Great stories deserve a second showing.”

Much of the world's film and television archives are in danger of disappearing. These entrepreneurs believe they have a solution. 

Pixop brings classic stories back to life

Color grader, post-producer and online editor 

"The most impressive thing about Pixop is the level of detail it is able to inject into old footage that would normally have to be discarded."

Every fifth year, thousands of Danes gather around their television sets to watch TV 2’s broadcast of the festivities held to celebrate the birth of their beloved monarch. Typically, there are speeches, iconic performances and many a “hurrah!” — all in honor of Queen Margrethe (nicknamed Daisy, for those not in the know).

However, with large gatherings canceled and royals the world over sheltering-in-p(a)lace this year, TV2 did the next best thing: they decided to air clips from her 70th and 75th celebrations instead.

There was only one problem: broadcasting tech and standards had improved vastly in that timeframe and they needed a way to enhance the clips to make them look more current.

A still featuring Queen Margrethe from the enhanced video. 

Bringing the past into the present with AI and ML

Enter Adam Bendixen: a color grader, post-producer, and online editor with over 25 years of experience. Adam works with some of the biggest names in the Danish media landscape and has worked with TV 2 for over five years now. His focus is primarily on two of their shows: De Største Øjeblikke and De Kongelige Øjeblikke, but he also works on special occasions like the Queen’s Birthday and Royal Run.




“There was an incredibly notable difference in the two sets of clips; I needed a way to improve the quality.”




“TV 2 asked me to turn clips from the Queen’s 70th and 75th birthdays into one cohesive program, but there was an incredibly noticeable difference between the clips from 2010 and 2015,” he explains.

“I needed a way to improve the quality of the footage, but it’s expensive and time-consuming to do that manually. Morten [Pixop’s CEO] and I have known each other for years and I knew what he was doing at Pixop [using AI and ML to enhance older video archives] so I got in touch.”

Pixop helped enhance and upscale the footage


“The footage needed to be deinterlaced, restored and upgraded to HD, with some light noise reduction.”



The Pixop Team was happy to help, and Jon Frydensbjerg, CTO, got to work immediately.

“The production quality was great — it’s rare that we get our hands on footage with so few inherent problems. There was really only minor degradation from noise and then some compression artifacts to speak of here,” he explains.

“The footage needed to be deinterlaced, restored and upgraded to HD, with some light noise reduction. So I spent about two hours on testing a small sample and project management. Then the footage was put through the requisite filters — mostly proprietary deep learning stuff — followed by a final encoding.”

A side-by-side comparison of the original (left) and enhanced (right) footage. 

“The thing that particularly impressed me was how much detail Pixop brings to the footage. Before we did the upscaling, it was quite significant when we cut from one show to the other. Now you don’t think about it so much,” he smiles.

And as for whether he would use Pixop again?

“Without a doubt! Pixop breathes new life into old material. Stuff you would otherwise throw in the trash. That’s a great functionality and not one that exists at this price point or level of convenience elsewhere.”

Original footage (left) versus enhanced footage (right)

Pixop helped TV 2 enhance and upscale videos of Queen Margrethe's 70th and 75th birthday celebrations, bringing royal history into the present. 

Pixop helps TV 2 bring royal history into the present

Honestly, I handed over some pretty scruffy material and wasn't expecting much. But all the TV shows that Pixop processed came back in such good quality that we could put them right back on air.

University Paris-Dauphine, Tunis is recognized by the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and offers courses in AI and data science. 

Pixop is part of the Danish Growth Fund (Vækstfonden), which works with banks and private investors to fund promising Danish startups. 

France TV Lab was formed in 2016 and drives innovation at France TV in areas including design, new forms of management, new advertising formats and new content.

Pixop is a part of the AWS Activate Builders Program, which provides startups with low cost, easy-to-use infrastructure needed to help businesses grow.

Pixop is a part of NVIDIA Inception, a deep learning and AI incubator which nurtures cutting-edge startups who are revolutionizing industries. 

Pixop works with Muvi, which enables media content owners to easily monetize their video and audio content beyond the borders of traditional advertising.

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Pixop's intuitive interface and AI/ML-powered algorithms make video enhancement a breeze. Built to empower creators and rightsholders to update and monetize their digital archives.

Video enhancement made simple

Pixop Teams Up with France TV Lab

Pixop Receives Funding from The Danish Growth Fund

Pixop brings classic stories back to life

Pixop helps TV 2 bring royal history into the present

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