metadata

A Sinclair/Sony/Avid experiment aims to optimize news photographers’ field time by immediately logging metadata into cameras in the field, while Starlink and 5G rollouts continue to boost reliability in more remote scenarios. Above, Vislink’s MVP Streamur Live Streaming App in action, allowing reporters to broadcast into the production workflow using a mobile device.

Creative productions must follow two masters: the concept and the budget. Technology can now be configured so it avoids getting in the way of either. From editing, to media asset management to postproduction, tools can enhance creativity, while making life easier for professionals working on a project. 

Distributed production can deliver more of the angles, replays, graphics and insights that viewers want while tuned into a game, match or other competition. To maximize what goes on screen, supporting technology must use automation and metadata to make it easy for producers to access exactly what they need to work on at exactly the right time.

Vendors are emphatic that content metadata holds myriad value for broadcasters, increasing video’s findability and searchability, tracking rights and protecting against deepfakes and using AI to make the entire process easier. Above: An example of using machine learning to identify objects in video with correlating time markers. In this way, users can search across video with increasingly sophisticated queries such as “2 Persons + 7 Cars” to show all matches across an entire content library.

Tech executives from Warner Bros. Discovery, Sinclair, Hearst, Vizrt and Vice Media Group told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week the public cloud’s appeal is growing for content sharing and archiving workflows but cautioned the entire metadata process needs more care and attention to maximize cloud storage’s advantages.

Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has launched VideoAI, its metadata generation platform that will be offered as a software service to content providers, MVPDs and advertisers. The technology — which has been in development for years and in use at Comcast, NBCUniversal and Sky —  automatically analyzes video assets to identify and tag onscreen moments (hard cuts, black frames, transitions, etc.); audio events (silence, specific sounds, etc.), and much more to support enhanced understanding of video content.

Technology executives from WarnerMedia, Sinclair and Hearst said at a recent TVNewsCheck webinar that they’re tackling the content management challenge amplified by the pandemic by using cloud storage and leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve indexing and searching.

New tools are making it easier for viewers to submit video — and transfer rights — to TV stations. Groups like Gray and Tegna say simplified UGC has boosted engagement, and expanded coverage without increasing staff. Above, user-generated content appeared throughout Gray Television’s WECT Wilmington, N.C.’s coverage of the Surf City Fire story last year. (Source: Jacob Robert Younce)

Artificial intelligence has been touted for several years as a potential tool for cleaning up the metadata in broadcasters’ archives and making old clips more easily retrievable. COVID-19’s role in scuttling much live programming may finally push AI’s value for MAMs into the foreground.

Artificial intelligence continues to help news organizations automate more taxing workflows. AI is making ongoing progress with autoclipping to generate news and sports highlights, metadata tagging and accelerating live research and real time content indexing. It’s also pushing into new fronts like delivering smooth slow motion without a super slow motion camera. Above: AI drives EVS’s new Overcam for offside camera positions during soccer games and reduces the need for camera operators for those locations.

Experts say the broadcast industry’s transition to IP infrastructure is likely to dominate this year’s show in Amsterdam. But there’s still plenty of room for developments in the cloud, artificial intelligence, OTT, cybersecurity and more to keep technologists busy on both the show floor and in its conference rooms.

For more IBC 2019 coverage, click here.

Broadcasting’s top tech practitioners are focused on improving the speed and use of metadata. ABC’s Tish Graham: “Whether it needs to be a linear piece, or it needs to be OTT or some type of digital piece, we need to build the backend systems and automate them as much as possible to be able to move that content wherever it needs to go, and to be reliable.” And metadata is also essential to find content in an archive or to direct OTT distribution, plus efficient use can also lower overall storage costs. (Photo: Jill Altmann)