A rapidly evolving media and entertainment indus-try is discovering an ever-greater requirement to not only grow new audience numbers but also to find new ways of winning greater revenue from their existing customers – but how?

New ways of monetising media, analysing audience data and enriching the customer experience is the name of the game, and Microsoft products such as Azure Media Services and Video Indexer are driving the conversation. Read more in the pages that follow.

C O M M U N I C AT I O N S A N D M E D I A

92 w w w. t e c h n o l o g y re c o rd . c o m

F E AT U R E

Today’s media and entertainment firms are recognising that, in order to meet the needs of today’s demanding consumers, they need to deliver a more personalised service. Artificial intelligence, delivered via the cloud, is proving to be key

B Y L I N D S AY J A M E S

Getting personal

Imagine no longer having to browse endless TV channels in a bid to find what you want to watch. How amazing would it be if your content

provider knew you so well that it created dynamic TV channels especially for you, based on what it’s learnt from your tastes and preferences?

Thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), this scenario is now entirely possible. In fact, Canadian firm Zone·tv launched its new zone·ify multichannel video service in June this year, giv-ing users access to thousands of hours of fresh, curated, personalised video entertainment. The 13-channel service is also available on mobile and is coming to connected TV devices and pay TV this summer.

Zone·tv’s ambitious mission to take personal-isation in video content space to the next level is made possible thanks to the machine learn-ing power of Azure Media Services and Video Indexer. “We’re using Azure Media Services in a number of ways. I think probably the best one to focus on is Video Indexer. It really gives us that raw material, the enhanced metadata that can feed our AI algorithms and allows us to create

the magic that we do, is just a great example of the partnership we have,” said Jeff Weber, zone·tv CEO in a press release.

This is just one example of how the prolifera-tion of cloud services is bringing new AI oppor-tunities to media and entertainment firms across the globe. In its recent ‘Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions’ paper, Deloitte predicts that the cloud will dramatically accelerate the adoption of AI, enabling enterprises of all sizes to experience its benefits. By 2020, the penetration rate of enterprise software with AI built in, and cloud-based AI development services, will reach an estimated 87% and 83% respectively.

“So far, AI’s initial benefits have been predom-inantly accrued by tech giants with extensive financial resources, strong IT infrastructure and highly-specialised human capital,” said Paul Sallomi, vice chairman of Deloitte LLP and global TMT industry leader, in a press release. “However, the cloud will power increased efficiencies and better returns on investment, and we expect these benefits to rapidly extend beyond AI’s pioneers to the wider enterprise.”

93

“AI can enable collaboration by connecting people with the right skills and experiences and relevant content for a project”

Rainer Kellerhals, Microsoft’s Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry lead for the EMEA region, agrees with Sallomi. “While the new entrants to the M&E industry – Google, Facebook and Netflix – have put audience data capture, analysis and application at the core of their business models and platforms, most tra-ditional M&E companies have just started to use telemetry to capture data about how their audiences interact with their offerings. The number one application of audience data and ML in M&E today probably is recommendations engines, but the possibilities go far beyond this.”

Kellerhals says that content metadata is one example of its potential. “While AI can now help extract metadata from any form of content – text, images, audio and video, adoption in the M&E industry has been slow,” he explains.

Similarly, employee data can be put to good use, but only very few early adopters have achieved this. “AI can enable collaboration by connecting people with the right skills and experiences and relevant content for a project, building on Microsoft’s Enterprise Knowledge

Graph. It can also enable creativity through assisted image editing such as Adobe Sensei,” Kellerhals explains.

Kellerhals believes it’s just a matter of time before these applications are widely used. “The democra-tisation of AI is at the crux of Microsoft’s mission,”

he says. “Microsoft is making its Cognitive Services available to every customer and every partner through well-documented application program-ming interfaces (APIs). Contrary to IBM’s Watson, which can only be adapted to IBM engineers, and to Google, which takes the customer’s data and builds custom AI solutions to address the custom-er’s needs, customers and partners can use and adapt Microsoft’s Cognitive Services themselves.

M E D I A & E N T E R TA I N M E N T

94 w w w. t e c h n o l o g y re c o rd . c o m

F E AT U R E

Furthermore, Microsoft Cognitive Services come with pre-trained baseline cognitive models, which can then be extended and enhanced using the customer’s or partner’s own training data – with the custom extensions/enhancements remaining within their Microsoft Azure account.”

These aren’t the only advantages of what Microsoft has to offer. “Data is the currency that drives media and entertainment businesses, from advertising to subscription, freemium and micro transaction services,” says Jennifer Cooper, Microsoft’s industry strategy lead for Worldwide Media. “Audience engagement and content effectiveness can only be improved with the right data analysis. Microsoft’s Data+AI tech-nologies like Video Indexer and Azure Cognitive Services are just a few examples that allow media companies to have deeper insights into audience engagement and campaign performance. This helps drive better consumer experiences, reduce services churn and lead to increased revenues.”

“Microsoft offers an integrated platform to ingest, prepare, store, analyse and report data, which makes customer and partners more pro-ductive in developing machine learning (ML) and AI solutions, and shortens time-to-value,” Kellerhals adds. “Plus, Microsoft offers inte-grated solutions like Video Indexer which com-bines more than 24 Cognitive Services into and end-to-end solution for video indexing.”

Kellerhals is also quick to explain Microsoft’s eth-ical approach to AI. “We understand that AI should amplify human ingenuity and therefore needs to respect our customers’ data privacy,” he says.

By embracing the full extent of what Microsoft has to offer, firms can use AI and machine learn-ing to monetise media, analyse audience data and enrich the customer experience. “We’re seeing a wide range of applications such as ad targeting, contextual ad placement, churn pre-vention, content recommendations, experience personalisation, interactive content experiences and more,” Kellerhals says.

“The international news service Reuters, for example, is using machine learning to increase website engagement. Xbox, meanwhile, is deliv-ering new experiences by analysing hundreds of billions of game events each day. And Endemol Shine Group has automated its TV production of Big Brother with machine learning, using Azure Video Indexer to automatically index content. I’m excited to see many more applica-tions in the months to come.”

We asked a selection of Microsoft partners from across the globe about how AI and machine learning technologies are enriching the audience experience

Partner perspectives

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing us to automatically create as we capture. Our solution transcribes radio content to deliver searchable, discoverable audio and video. Machine learning and AI technologies enable automatic segmentation, topic and keyword creation. We use radio language processing which is our own twist on natural language processing – it builds on pure transcription as it’s structured and context aware. Let’s face it, big data is just a big bucket of numbers. However, by using transcription and face recognition data – teamed with data from talk show systems and social media – we can understand and enrich without needing much human intervention.”

Dan McQuillinManaging director, Broadcast Bionics

“The creative burden associated with personalisation is well-known. Typically, every element that could be personalised must be created and tagged with rules to be delivered based on what is known about an individual. With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning built into an easy-to-use content management solution, these elements can be created once and used everywhere. Meanwhile, the personalisation engine sources the best content for each person based on how they like to interact with a company. AI improves the content creator’s experience as well as that of the audience.”

Joey MooreHead of evangelism, EMEA and APAC at Episerver

95

M E D I A & E N T E R TA I N M E N T

“Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is rapidly maturing. Over the past few years we have seen a phenomenal growth in areas where these technologies can replace, or even surpass, humans. The applications for media firms have so far been centred around mitigating labour-intensive mechanical tasks like identifying faces or turning spoken words in to close captions and translations. The next phase, which is already emerging, is where AI and machine learning take on creative roles, complex tasks like analysing patterns and recognising behaviours to act as camera man or technical director. The automation that this enables can be a huge leap in democratising media production. With AI and machine learning enabling content creation, where labour costs have historically been prohibitive, professional level production capabilities will be put in the hands of anyone.”

“With social media networks encouraging everyone to share their own content, the number of reporters has increased tremendously as lay people become part of the information and entertainment chain. In this scenario, Audience News Gathering (ANG) for editors and reporters minimises the effort of finding the right person from the audience sharing outstanding content and go live with them during the show. The ANG helps bloggers gain more visibility, editors to easily reach out to excellent contributors, have better fact checking and the TV audience increases by interacting with their favourite shows. Available on the Microsoft Azure cloud, it uses Skype to easily call contributors and go live during an event.”

We use AI to deliver deep personalisation in three steps: “First, we use computer vision, deep learning and information retrieval techniques to identify and analyse different pieces of information about people, objects, emotions and other contexts in videos and tag with scene level contextual metadata. Second, we have created a user experience layer (as pictured) that gives viewers real time interactive access to every little detail in the scene. Third, we combine the output of the above two – content metadata and engagement data – and use a combination of sophisticated neural network models, heuristic-driven models and content models to deliver deep personalisation. That could be personalisation of content, advertisements or commercial offers for the audience.”

Pontus EklöfChief operating officer, LiveArena

Sharique HusainCEO and co-founder, Dive

Marco MontenovoCMS-DVS worldwide solution architect, HPE

96 w w w. t e c h n o l o g y re c o rd . c o m

Almost 20 years ago we, a group of Swedish broadcast veterans, got excited about the shift from analogue to digital TV.

The switchover promised an increased channel space, greater opportunity for niche channels and interactivity.

But the new technology didn’t meet our expecta-tions; it wasn’t a game changer. Instead we started looking at the internet’s possibilities for broad-casting. It turned out that low res, stamp sized clips –with little support for live broadcasting – wasn’t too impressive either.

However, true on-demand and live broad-casting was on the horizon – the internet could empower anyone to create media content. A bit of technology, teamed with a bit of creativity, and global TV channels were within reach.

As it turned out, it took a lot more than a bit of technology and a bit of creativity. A whole bunch of unfamiliar things were needed to replace what

previously had just been fixed by a production crew and a broadcast tower.

A huge leap forward came with the introduc-tion of cloud computing. As a long-term part-ner of Microsoft, we became an early adopter of Azure cloud and Azure Media Services. These technologies aligned perfectly with our vision.

Now, online broadcasting is not just about infra-structure and content management. It’s mainly about producing content. We’ve worked hard on this. Mixing broadcast technology with consumer products enabled us to create easy-to-use, yet professional, production solutions. And they’ve worked well. We had our customers producing more than 20,000 live events annually some 10 years after we had embarked on this journey.

Still, we were not content. We wanted to sim-plify broadcasting even further – and artificial intelligence (AI) presented an opportunity. What if AI could automate production, replacing the camera crew and the technical producer?

In collaboration with Dutch research institute TNO, we have created the LiveArena Broadcast Room, a fully automated, unmanned, live video production solution – HD video, crisp audio and smooth video mixing turned into a professional production without any human interaction.

By combining the two – automated production replacing the camera crew and a global cloud plat-form replacing the broadcasting tower – we have enabled and exceeded what we envisioned almost 20 years ago: anyone can have a TV channel.

So, are we done now? Far from it. We have come a long way from where we started but, with AI and machine learning, the next 20 years of online broadcasting will be even more game changing.

Pontus Eklöf is chief operating officer at LiveArena

The virtual director

A huge amount has changed in broadcasting over the last 20 years. And, thanks to the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning, there’s lots more exciting things to come

P O N T U S E K LÖ F : L I V E A R E N A

V I E W P O I N T

97

V I E W P O I N T M E D I A & E N T E R TA I N M E N T

Collaborative creativityI A N M A I N : T E R A D I C I

Secure, high-performance and scalable virtual workstations enable studios to tap into a global pool of on-demand creative talent

Prolific, on-demand and instant – in the Netflix age, these are basic consumer expectations for media and entertainment (M&E) content,

driving companies to produce and release ever-more content, more quickly. To do that, companies are looking to onboard high-class artistic talent quickly and provide workstations that deliver an exceptional user experience and the highest perfor-mance, whether working remotely or onsite. In this environment, the rise of virtual studios is enabling companies to accommodate geographic flexibility, leverage lower-cost regions and tax incentives, and retain talent outside of central locations.

But the industry faces unique challenges. The extreme-value intellectual property M&E compa-nies deal with is subject to attack from ideologi-cally motivated actors or pirate merchandising. To minimise threats, production studios, the Content Delivery & Security Association, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Trusted Partner Network put stringent controls on studio security policies to protect access to intellectual property. Unless implemented correctly, allowing collaboration on content increases the security risk.

Massive file sizes and data repositories present more hurdles. Transferring files from an artist endpoint to a processing resource such as a ren-der farm, or to another endpoint such as a review

station, hinders the ability to iterate quickly on content and increases security risks. The opti-mum solution is a secure content network with direct high-performance network access to ren-der farms and virtualised workstations.

Teradici Cloud Access Software meets the strict security demands imposed on post-production studios, while offering centralised workstation architectures in any Microsoft Azure region worldwide. This enables studios to provide crea-tive professionals the latest CPU, GPU and cloud render technologies, allowing them to work with emerging standards and new media formats at high frame rates with the same user experience as if they were working locally.

London-based VFX and animation studio Jellyfish Pictures, for example, is pioneering virtual studios supported by solutions including Teradici Cloud Access Software. Built on PCoIP technol-ogy, the software allows the studio to extend its environment to Microsoft Azure, enabling ulti-mate workforce flexibility when supporting new projects or reallocating resources for existing ones.

By leveraging large cloud render farms and the latest tools on the latest processors, M&E companies can develop more immersive con-tent at faster turnover rates. They can build virtual studios in attractive cities to compete with long-established ones, without the capi-tal expenditure overheads, real-estate burden and legacy low-performance infrastructure of on-premises datacentres. The most impact-ful sign of change will be the ability to take on new projects by rapidly onboarding talent from anywhere, without concerns over costly and time-consuming infrastructure expansion.

Ian Main is technical marketing principal at Teradici

98 w w w. t e c h n o l o g y re c o rd . c o m

V I E W P O I N T

Enabling a multi-screen experience

J U D Y M I S B I N : C E N T U R Y L I N K

When it comes to major sporting events, it’s no longer about just watching the game. Today, thanks to innovations in network technology, fans are engaging with events on an experiential level – in the stadium, at home and on mobile devices

Fans are the ultimate multitaskers, looking up stats during the game, posting on social media, texting their friends, and if they’re

in-stadium, downloading and interacting with special content through mobile apps designed to provide an even more immersive fan expe-rience. As one researcher put it, if there’s some-thing happening on the first screen, there’s probably something happening on the second screen, too.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to cre-ate a seamless experience for sports fans. The in-stadium experience is critical, as are the ele-ments required to broadcast the game to mil-lions – and in some cases, billions — of people all over the world and to a variety of devices.

So, what does this entire ecosystem look like?It seems like only a few years ago, having a

mobile device at sporting events was useless because everyone was using the same cellular network. This led to rampant congestion and a lot of frustration. Sports teams and stadium owners began to take a hard look at what they could do, and today, many locations have invested heavily in technology and network-ing architecture, including disaster recovery

components, that not only allows for enhanced in-venue connectivity, but also for a holistic, smart infrastructure.

Today, delivering the game beyond the stadium is key. By some estimates, more than 90% of professional football fans have never attended a game in person, so their game-watching experience is highly reliant on the quality of the broadcast. What seems like a simple broadcast requires an exceptional level of pre-planning and coordination among the stadium and surrounding broadcast locations, fibre broadcast networks, TV networks, over-the-top (OTT) video providers, streaming/IP networks, content delivery networks, cable and satellite companies and last-mile inter-net providers. All these parties are critical in providing sports fans across the globe with high-quality HD feeds of the game, regardless of where they are and what device they’re using to watch the event.

Also, many multitasking fans watch the game on their TVs while using other connected devices simultaneously. This makes it even more critical that every party in the broadcast ecosystem deliver the high-quality experience viewers expect.

All of this can be made possible with the Azure cloud platform, connected to the right networks, with the right experts creating mod-els where data is transmitted in milliseconds.

Judy Misbin is Strategic Alliances Director (Microsoft) at CenturyLink

“There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to create a seamless

experience for sports fans”

99

V I E W P O I N T M E D I A

The journey from data to knowledge

While radio produces a huge amount of media content each day, the channel isn’t as compatible with modern, digital technology as it could be. Broadcast Bionics is working to change this

D A N M C Q U I L L I N : B R O A D C A S T B I O N I C S

Radio is one of the most important media channels ever created. Since the early 20th century, it has given the public a link to the

outside world, enabling listeners to keep up with current affairs, experience sports highlights in real time and widen our music knowledge.

However, while the digital revolution has transformed our lives exponentially, radio has remained largely untouched. But if the industry is to survive, it needs to carve a new path for-ward in this new, digital world.

Using advanced transcription, it is now pos-sible to turn the spoken word into a readable document, making it more suitable for online use. But radio content is much more complex

than a transcription; it is a self-describing doc-ument with all the social cues a listener needs to consume and understand the content encoded within it.

At Broadcast Bionics, we are extending our Bionic Studio capabilities to harness the raw data that we’ve always been capturing and process it so that it can be searchable and used online. We

have added to natural language processing (NLP) to create radio language processing (RLP). This can analyse a spoken document, understand cues and cultural laws that are embedded within it and ultimately understand it.

The new capabilities will make structured metadata out of vast quantities of unstructured media and data by synchronising video and audio with the transcription to make it search-able. Understanding the content enables users to do more intelligent things to it; data can become information.

We can glean insights from it, enhance the listening experience by enabling users to skip forward, or provide personalisation by recom-mending similar content based on the insights. This will make radio more like the internet and YouTube with searching and linking capabili-ties, and less like traditional broadcast streams.

Having turned data into information our web-based solution, Bionic Portal, provides search and statistical analysis tools to take it one step further and turn it into knowledge.

We are currently working with production teams on how they can use data to improve their content. While it is still a novelty now, I believe having this data will become essential in the future. The industry will transform within the next few years; firms will use this data to create new ways for audiences to experience content, enjoy it and work with it.

Dan McQuillin is managing director at Broadcast Bionics

“The industry will transform within the next few years; firms will use this data to create new ways for

audiences to experience content, enjoy it and work with it”

Meet us at Microsoft InspireBooth #1512

AI live video automation for Offi ce 365

POWERFULLY AUTOMATED

PERFECTLY PROFESSIONALLiveArena Broadcast Room - anyone can produce live video.

• News• Presentations• Talk Shows• Town Halls