Live captions for conferences — on the screen and in every pocket
An international conference has two language problems at once: what goes on the screen in the room, and what each person sitting in it actually understands. One machine at the production desk solves both.
What a plenary room costs today
- Booths, bodypacks and receivers are quoted per language per day, and someone has to collect and count them every evening.
- Each added language is another interpreter — or two, because they need relief — so the third language is almost never approved.
- Breakout rooms get no interpretation at all, because the budget went to the plenary.
- Anyone hard of hearing gets nothing: interpretation solves language, not access.
How it joins your production
The running order is written in advance, not on the day
Questions and votes are prepared in blocks weeks ahead, from a link, with nothing to install. On the day, whoever moderates just works down the list.
Room audio comes in on the card
The same feed you already send to record. One microphone on Accessibility, two on Event Pro, four on Broadcast.
Captions leave as NDI with a real alpha channel
Your switcher treats it as one more input and composites it over programme. Not a full-screen web page on a separate monitor — it is in the signal.
Or full-screen HDMI with a chroma key
For when the venue screen is not behind a switcher.
The operator sees what is being transcribed
A live transcript beside the signal with low-confidence words flagged, so you know how the event is going out while it goes out.
What the person in the seat gets
Scan a QR code and that is it
No app, no account, no sign-up. Any browser on any phone.
Pick a language, change it any time
More than fifty, simultaneously. The attendee decides, not the organiser.
Text, audio, or both
The phone can read the translation aloud through their own earphones.
No per-attendee or per-language charge
Five hundred people in twelve languages costs what twenty in one costs.
What you have the next morning
AI minutes
Decisions, agreements, action items with an owner and a due date, figures and commitments cited with the real time they were said. In whatever language you pick.
The full transcript
Plain text stamped with each line’s wall-clock time, plus SRT or VTT for the session video.
An audience report
How many devices followed each session and in which languages — the evidence a grant report asks for.
Why this is not the same as the rest
It goes in programme, not beside it
Most AI translation systems end at a full-screen web page on a monitor. This is an NDI source with a real alpha channel, composited over the picture.
It fails clean, never frozen
If the connection drops, the audience output fades to transparent. Never a stale caption or an error message on the big screen in front of a thousand people.
The audience asks and votes from their phones
And the question goes up on the venue screen when the moderator launches it.
Room codes are reservable in advance
Up to ninety days, so it can be printed in the programme instead of projected on the day.
Event Pro
Translation into fifty-plus languages and two microphones, which is the ordinary shape of a panel or an interview. Broadcast Multi-Mic when four people speak at once.
Frequently asked questions
Does it replace a human interpreter?
At most conferences, yes, at a fraction of the cost. In a legal or diplomatic negotiation where nuance carries consequences, no. The honest claim is that it replaces the interpretation nobody budgets for today — which is most languages at most events.
How many people can follow at once?
Measured against the deployed system: five thousand concurrent phones in one room with no refused connections. We recommend selling five hundred to a thousand per event, because above that latency starts approaching our own quality target. The real limit at a conference is usually the venue Wi-Fi, not us.
What if the connection drops mid-talk?
The audience output fades to transparent. Never a stale caption frozen on the big screen, never an error message.
Does it work across breakout rooms?
Yes. Subscription plans have no cap on simultaneous events, so each room runs its own session and its own code.
Other solutions
Run your next event free
One hour of full-featured captioning and translation, no expiry, no card — enough to prove it on your own rig before you pay.