What are the challenges faced by broadcasters? Introducing examples of solutions provided by Microsoft

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Challenges in video content production faced by the broadcasting industry

With the expansion of multi-device environments, expectations are rising in the video industry to solve long-standing management issues and create new business models.

On the other hand, in the field of video content production, it is often seen that processes that incorporate advanced IT are not optimized. Broadly speaking, there are three issues that can be considered in the broadcasting industry that can be solved by IT:

Increased man-hours for managing a huge number of video contents

When producing video content, a huge amount of video data must be stored as a base. Managing the information you need, such as movies and sounds, in such a way that it can be quickly retrieved is both extremely important and difficult.

Metadata is assigned when searching video data, but in many sites this input is done manually. This not only increases the amount of man-hours required to manage content and makes it inefficient, but also increases the possibility of simple errors such as input errors or oversights.

The need to properly extract video content

The issue of how to smoothly navigate to the video content you want to watch from a large number of videos is important not only for video editors and creators, but also for the end users (viewers). Without good quality metadata, searches on recommendation engines will not be as effective as expected.

Video content, which consists of vast amounts of information such as video and audio, requires more advanced solutions. Improving the accuracy and speed of content extraction will make it possible to perform multiple edits simultaneously, further streamlining the video production process.

Delay in streaming playback due to real-time broadcasting

Real-time multi-screen distribution and global streaming, such as sports broadcasts and game scenario playing, require longer connection times depending on the number of simultaneous operations, sometimes causing delays. Increased waiting time can reduce users’ QoE (quality of experience) and lead to lower evaluations of the content itself.

Taking into account potential delays in content delivery also limits scalability and requires significant cost and time to develop content. This can also be a major stumbling block when it comes to designing customer engagement strategies.

Examples of Microsoft support for broadcasting industry issues

We will introduce the solutions that Microsoft actually provides to address the above-mentioned issues in the broadcasting industry, with a particular focus on “Microsoft Azure.” Microsoft Azure is a solution service that supports the entire media value chain for video content. Another big appeal is that many of its functions can be used on the cloud. By building a system with the necessary scalability, you can edit video content without having to prepare large-capacity storage or high-performance devices.

Efficient indexing of video content using AI

The usefulness and potential of AI functionality is also recognized in the broadcasting industry. AI for Media, one of Microsoft’s Azure services, combines video media and artificial intelligence technology to provide new content creation solutions through more efficient data usage and practical analysis.

In particular, a major strength of AI is that it can instantly extract vast amounts of data such as objects and people in a video, audio, text information (subtitles, etc.), and emotional analysis. By indexing this information, creators can easily search for the data they need.

The extracted data can be managed as metadata, such as facial expressions and emotions for characters, language and topics for transcription. Grouping and tagging can also be automatically detected. Additionally, through index creation and recommendation functions, it guides the creation of content that is more closely aligned with the user’s interests and preferences. By utilizing time-specific metadata for each customer, advertisements can be recognized more effectively.

Simultaneous editing of real-time video footage is now possible

By saving video data to cloud storage through Microsoft Azure, you can continue shooting in real time and simultaneously edit the video in a remote location. You can also index your data. By doing so, it is possible, for example, to detect specific prohibited words in the production of video content for television, or to implement compliance measures such as mosaic processing on the spot to protect privacy.

The resources necessary for cloud computing are also provided in advance. You can transfer large amounts of data and work simultaneously on Azure without worrying about overloading your workloads. Even if the filming and editing teams are located in completely different locations, video data editing can be done seamlessly and stress-free. In this way, Microsoft Azure can further evolve the video production process and add new value.

Since there is no need to bring equipment such as work PCs, speakers, and storage to the site, and there is no need for editors to visit the site, there is a significant reduction in not only time but also costs. However, moving all workflows to the cloud is not realistic as it would be costly and time consuming. Another major advantage of Microsoft Azure is its high affinity for both on-premises (in-house operation) and cloud computing.

summary

In the future, content production will be faced with the challenge of classifying, managing, and migrating vast amounts of data due to the diversification and increasing capacity of video distribution media. By using cloud-based Microsoft Azure, you can improve work efficiency and reduce costs when editing video data. By making full use of advanced IT such as AI, its practicality will continue to improve.