'AI Meets Media Forum': Ooyala and Microsoft bring together the media industry to face the challenge of artificial intelligence

Ooyala y Microsoft demuestran cómo la inteligencia artificial, la nube, la automatización de procesos y la gestión correcta de los metadatos pueden ayudar a los broadcasters y productoras a enfrentarse a una revolución marcada por un nivel de competitividad nunca visto.

They spread it y Microsoft organizaron el pasado viernes en Madrid un encuentro con profesionales de media y que bajo el título AI Meets Media Forum ambas compañías están organizando a lo largo de diferentes países. Por el momento ya se han organizado 23 foros en los que han participado más de 600 profesionales de alto perfil.

The objective of these forums is to promote a debate on the metadata management in media production and publishing, also applying the power of Artificial Intelligence. The approach is to bring together several leaders in video production operations to have an open dialogue about the pain points that broadcasters, studios and other content producers face today and how they are solving them.

Throughout all these meetings there is a common denominator marked by the lack of integration, insufficient communication between professionals and a lack of visibility and control. The challenges that arise are to adopt IP-based technologies, and to adopt advanced MAM systems but capable of creating efficient workflows. It is precisely in these aspects that the cooperation of two giants such as Ooyala and Microsoft can offer answers.

Phil Eade, Global Director of Ooyala, opened this AI Meets Media Forum focusing on the benefits that artificial intelligence will bringl, the changes that metadata management will bring and how the Ooyala Flex media platform and Microsoft Azure cloud services that make the most of artificial intelligence can add value.

Ooyala works in the media field with clients around the world such as Mediacorp, Viacomm, Sky Sports, RTL, Vudu, AccuWeather... collaborating closely with partners such as Microsoft, Adobe, Telstra, Infosys... in order to provide software and services that simplify the complexity in the production, streaming and monetization of content obtaining a greater return on investment (ROI).

“La televisión se está transformando, pasando a un entorno digital y esto requiere flujos de trabajo integrados y datos enriquecidos para obtener la mayor eficiencia, alcance y retorno”, comentó Eade.

Por su parte, Antonio Serna, senior sales Engineer en Ooyala, hizo un repaso por algunos de los proyectos en los que Ooyala ha trabajado en la optimización de procesos y workflows con Ooyala Flex como es el caso del broadcaster; con su tecnología Ooyala online video platform como es el caso de Mitele (Mediaset), la renovada Apùnt en la Comunidad Valenciana. En este caso, de la mano de Crosspoint está llevando a cabo un interesante proyecto de lo que será su nueva plataforma OTT y en el que Ooyala permitirá cubrir tanto back-end como live.

En otros casos, como Atresmedia o Movistar+, Ooyala ha permitido mejorar la monetización de activos tanto en OTT como IPTV.

In projects in which Ooyala and Microsoft go hand in hand, Ooyala offers an end-to-end workflow with video workflow optimization of around 70% as well as complete control of data and operations processes. For its part, Microsoft provides the security and scalability of Azure with advanced cognitive analysis and OTT (Azure Media Services) video processing tools.

“Oyala and Microsoft are building a video platform to help broadcasters and publishers optimize video production, publishing and monetization, and deliver better video experiences,” Serna stressed.

Phil Eade está convencido que “para un broadcaster, el entorno competitivo nuca había sido tan fuerte. ¿Dónde invertir recursos económicos y tecnolócios para diferenciarnos de la oferta? La tecnología es la clave para pilotar esta transformación”.

Eade, gracias a un sistema de votación en línea entre los profesionales asistentes a estos foros, ha tomado el pulso para conocer que nivel de implantación tienen actualmente los metatados en entornos de media, qué información se necesita para tomar decisiones de inversión informadas, dónde debería generarse la información correcta…

And the conclusions reached are that it is necessary to improve the technology and its performance, plan production and playout with the help of artificial intelligence, and visualize income and costs throughout all processes.

“Ooyala has tools to answer all these questions so that professionals gain competitive advantage and optimize their resources by making informed and timely business decisions thanks to correct information and metadata at different points of their media operation,” said Eade.

Artificial intelligence

Nobody doubts that the environment of Operation in the media world has never been as complex as now. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence and metadata is essential for automated decision making that speeds up processes by providing a more immediate response.

But the challenge is power collect and make decisions about metadata widely distributed across multiple devices, locations, databases, documents, applications, departments...

At this professional meeting organized by Ooyala and Microsoft, it became clear that we are still very far from using all the metadata available in companies at the same time and the challenge will only increase over time with more types of metadata.

A platform like Ooyala Flex Solution supported by Microsoft Azure can help in the challenge of getting the most value out of metadata in pre-production, production, import, processing, review/approval and content distribution.

To achieve the demanding commercial objectives that television and media are set today, the Ooyala Flex media logistics platform offers integration, automation and visibility.

in the cloud

Juanjo Carmena, Azure CDN EMEA Lead Microsoft, highlighted in this AI Meets Media Forum who from Microsoft have been working with clients for some time in broadcast environments, not only in distribution but also in content creation, already pointing to the cloud in processes such as the creation of backups in production or in contribution.

Carmena highlighted the importance of having an ecosystem between different partners, such as Ooyala, which complements Microsoft's Azure cloud.

And the most important thing in the future is which applications will be able to run on Azure or synchronized to offer new solutions to the media market.

“Only companies that have been able to adapt to each user “They will survive,” he commented.

"Microsoft is investing in cloud, but not cloud only in an Azure environment as a service infrastructure, but we have to be able to transform the businesses of each vertical sector and adapt our services and software and knowledge of our people to help take these steps in the digital transformation: optimization of operations (cloud, artificial intelligence, big data, IOT...), how to engage with audiences; and transform services," he added.

In line with the strategic agreements that help create the enabling ecosystem, Carmena highlighted that in addition to Ooyala, Microsoft works closely with industry giants such as Avid, Adobe, Imagine Communications or Publicis Groupe.”

The R&D of Microsoft is currently working on automations and artificial intelligence dando como resultados muchos servicios que ya están operativos en diferentes grados de madurez: transcripción de audio (obtener automáticamente el texto de audio y transcribirlo generando subtítulos), detección visual de elementos que aparecen en el vídeo, identificación de rostros, detección de caras (para crear una máscara si fuera necesario en caso de menores, por ejemplo), extracción de keyframes y keywords, reconocimiento de la voz humana, análisis de sentimientos, identificación de contenidos inadecuados para niños… Además, es de reseñar que el avance en todas esta herramientas de inteligencia artificial es progresivo día a día gracias al uso del massive learning ya que las máquinas aprenden de los usuarios.

One of the most important factors for adopting the cloud in broadcast environments (besides price) is the impact of latency. To help correct this, Micorsoft has an infrastructure divided into 42 Azure regions with more than 150 data centers spread around the world. Each data center can have more than 100,000 servers, so in a single region Microsoft can have up to half a million servers.

Success stories

To close this AI Meets Media Forum, some success stories were presented in which Ooyala technology is revolutionizing the medium. One of these examples is found in the Australian rugby league. The NRL has realized the advantages of publishing the numerous contents generated by its teams through all types of platforms, strengthening the community of fans through the web, applications and social networks and internationalizing its activity.

Ooyala has enabled the NRL to increase process automation so that its production teams can focus on what is really important: generating value.

Now, all metadata is in the same system, accessible according to the privileges of each user, and Ooyala technology is responsible for automating processes, managing metadata, and assigning tasks so that the 37 teams can access the material. All of this is done in the cloud using Ooyala Flex and Microsoft Azure.

In just three months since the implementation of the system, the NRL has significantly increased production speed, being able to generate between 3 and 4 times more projects than before with the same staff.

In a corporate environment, we find another interesting case in Audi (UK) donde Ooyala ha permitido facilitar la administración de sus activos de vídeo, comprender mejor el comportamiento de los visitantes de su web y publicar sus vídeos directamente en sus agencias, website, site móvil, aplicaciones, canales sociales…

Ooyala entendió las necesidades del uso de metadatos en los activos de Audi. El secreto fue crear un flujo de trabajo en el que en cada paso los metadatos se importan, crean, ingestan, transforman y entregan en el momento adecuado.

Otros dos casos de éxito los encontramos en Zone.Tv, an entertainment platform for pay TV in the US and Canada, which has significantly improved the review of its content and syndication through automatic processes on social networks and on its own platforms; and at Zoomin Tv, an Amsterdam-based online producer and multi-channel network (MCN) that has managed to reduce production and distribution costs with Ooyala Flex with metadata that runs across multiple systems and remote locations.