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What Have We Learned About Remote Working With Video — Part 1

Posted on January 21, 2021August 28, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

Remote working: the challenges for video production

In 2019, remote working was a foreign concept. We were all happily working side-by-side in our workplaces: brainstorming ideas in the boardroom, solving problems at team meetings and enjoying chats with colleagues at the water cooler.

But in 2020 the world changed. The coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe and we suddenly had to embrace working from home.

Home offices were makeshift at first, with some people working on laptops balanced on their laps as they sat on their beds. But as the impact of the virus worsened, we’ve all had to look at longer term solutions.

In many cases, getting a suitable chair, desk and eye-level monitor was the easy part. Reimagining work processes that previously involved face-to-face collaboration and access to technical experts was trickier.

Video production is a classic example. So when remote working and video production have to go hand-in-hand, what does everyone need?

Phase 1: it’s all about getting up and running.
Phase 2: it’s all about sharing, collaborating and distributing faster and easier.

One option is virtual workstations but they require business-grade bandwidth to work and very few remote workers have that at home.

So the ideal solution is a cloud-native Video Content-as-a-Service platform.

Big team / dispersed collaborators

In the office it was easy enough to drop in on the editor to review something, call IT if you needed a file reformatted, or bump into the client services director to ask for an opinion. That’s all changed.

What hasn’t changed are deadlines and it has become increasingly difficult to share and collaborate on content. That’s why working on a cloud platform with proxies (generally 1% the size of an original piece of content) is the key to collaborating on video remotely — it streamlines the process of sharing, reviewing, annotating, searching and approving video content.

Technology needs to be an enabler — and uncomplicated

Working with video has traditionally been managed by editors, camera operators and engineers. But it doesn’t need to be.

Just as the UI of a smartphone can mask incredible computer power, the UI of video processing platform like Overcast can mask a lot of tech.

If you need your content to distribute on the web, mobile, social, in-store screens, broadcast TVs (it doesn’t matter what) then it should be as easy as pushing a button and automating all the tech processes. And it is!

Fast and efficient Review and Approvals

Reviewing and approving content was often the slowest part of the video lifecycle. Whether it is new content being created, or archive being reworked, getting senior eyeballs on the content can slow the process to a snail’s pace.

The concern in relation to remote working is whether that review and approvals process would be even slower. But not so — depending on the platform you choose.

Some companies use Slack and Teams, which are fine for Word docs but are not designed for video — because when you really want to make changes you need to be able to draw on the screen or log the timecode.

This is all automated on Overcast — and you can also audit when the reviewer has screened the content.

In the second part of this blog post, we’ll look at how to make metadata work for you, how to increase speed to market, and the importance of security in a remote working landscape.

So tune in then and in the meantime enjoy not having to commute to work!

Digital Transformation: 8 Principles of Video Content-as-a Service

Posted on April 29, 2020August 21, 2024 by Philippe Brodeur

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how that business works.

Video is core to digital transformation. It changes the status quo when it comes to communicating internally with staff and externally with partners and customers.

Video Content-as-a-Service (VCaaS) makes video accessible to all. It reduces cost, reduces the time it takes to get content to market and increases revenue opportunities.

If businesses and enterprises want to truly embrace video at the heart of their organizations, then the following 8 principles should future-proof processes while enabling speed and scale.

1. Video is a collaborative business

Creating professional video content is complex. From a 1-minute product video to a 2-hour movie, there is one workflow that is core to creation and often forgotten – collaboration, review and approvals.

Collaborating on content was traditionally done in an edit suite with an editor. That is no longer the case. We can now do this remotely – even on a smartphone – making it possible to accelerate the production process.

(Note: on average, a one-minute professional video takes 12 days to get to market – Adobe)

2. Video content should be secured

Video content created by organisations is normally subject to commercial objectives (studio movies, product descriptions, advertising, etc) and/or privacy regulation (CCTV, HR, training, safety, etc).

We need to secure content on-premise, in the cloud, and in transit. Audit logs should allow content owners to track the details of content lifecycles.

(Note: more than 1 billion personal medical images and videos were made public last year)

3. Avoid the BIG HIT when managing legacy technology

You may already have a DAM (digital asset management platform), a MAM (media asset management platform) a PAM (production asset management platform) a CMS (content management system) an ECM (enterprise content management system) or another 3-letter acronym. And the thought of bringing on new technology fills you with dread.

But what if:

You integrated with the existing tech stack to get moving quickly
Roll out the new system incrementally without having to suffer the pain of a “big hit”
Use simpler tools so that more employees can manage the content
Scale your operations to be able to deliver video content to new channels from a single point of truth
Ultimately shutter the systems that you no longer need

4. Service infrastructure needs to be modular

Content management is changing daily. It is no longer possible for organisations to manage large monolithic infrastructures along with siloed services – it’s simply not scalable.

To future-proof your technology roadmap, new infrastructures should be cloud-native, API-orientated solutions that orchestrate micro-services and are able to be containerised on-premise.

The separation of content from the presentation layer is key – it means with APIs you can deliver the same content to multiple platforms without duplication.

5. Support new channels of distribution

Content is distributed everywhere, by multiple types of organisations and for multiple reasons. The number of channels, devices and methods of using video is expanding rapidly.

Content management solutions need to support all “tier 2” customer interactions including:

Sales
Social
Apps
Partner networks
In-store experiences
Immersive experiences like AR and VR
…and much more.

6. Content systems need to support the developer and business users

Developers are able to access APIs or services that allow them to maintain a “single point of truth” for the content while making it possible to easily develop new channels of distribution.

Business users have easy access to a “single pane of glass” that allows them to easily manage content across multiple channels without needing specialist training or audio-visual qualifications.

7. Use AI and Machine Learning to reduce complexities

Standardisation of video formats will not happen any time soon. Compression, frame rates, pixels, codecs – working with video is more complicated than other file types.

New developments in AI mean that we are automating and optimizing many mundane technical tasks (like transcoding). By automating these tasks, we are expanding video management within organisations to less technical employees creating efficiencies.

We use AI and machine learning to analyse video content to allow the automatic development of subtitles, image recognition, compliance and other solutions that make it easier to search and find content.

8. Digital Transformation includes embracing video

By 2021, 90% of global organisations will rely on system integrators, agencies and channel partners to design, build and implement their digital strategies. Currently, less than 1% of eCommerce sites are video-enabled whereas virtually all social is now video.

Organisations use video for everything from Marketing to HR, Product, Corporate Communications, Training and much more. It is no longer the role of the IT department or if you are lucky, the audio-visual department to manage video content. Everyone who operates a PC, laptop or Mac can manage video just as they would images or word documents.

Video Content-as-a-Service (VCaaS): The Key To Digital Video Transformation

Posted on March 11, 2020August 22, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

Key digital transformation challenges

Businesses need to keep changing and innovating in order to be competitive. Such transformation in the digital age involves the integration of digital technologies into all areas of an enterprise, fundamentally changing how that business works.

Video is one such fundamental: it provides many opportunities to improve how you communicate internally with staff and externally with partners and clients. But, even with the democratization of video, it’s still expensive and time-consuming. So, how can you future-proof your processes while enabling both speed and scale?

What is VCaaS?

The tech world is a world of acronyms and here’s another one for your collection: VCaaS. It stands for Video Content-as-a-Service and this is how it will revolutionise your video management processes:

What VCaaS will do for you

1. Improve collaboration

Collaboration, review and approvals are essential to the workflow, regardless of what kind of video/film content you are creating. But if your team members are spread out in different locations, getting approval from all stakeholders can takes ages, thus delaying time to market. So, facilitating collaboration, review and approvals remotely is the key to speed to market.

2. Ease the pain of legacy technology

Most businesses already have a digital asset management (DAM) platform (or its close relations: MAM, PAM, CMS or ECM*). But does it do what you need it to or is it slowing you down and costing you money?

Legacy technology that was adapted to work with the cloud rather than being “cloud-first” is definitely one of the biggest headaches for businesses. But if you integrate it with technology that will gradually replace it with a simpler, more effective platform that delivers video content to new channels from a “single point of truth”, you can scale to your heart’s content.

3. Support new channels of distribution

People want to consume video content on the platforms and devices of their choice…and the choice is extensive. New channels are coming on stream all the time; for example, TikTok has recently seen a surge in popularity as the go-to video app for young people.

Businesses need to be able to support all “tier 2” customer interactions, including sales, social, apps, partner networks, in-store experiences, immersive experiences like AR and VR, and much more.

4. Make video less complex through AI and Machine Learning

With the ever-increasing number of channels and ways to use video outlined above, it could be a nightmare trying to output a video in dozens of different formats due to compression, frame rates, pixels, codecs, etc. But recent developments mean AI can take care of the mundane technical tasks like transcoding. Yippee! This means that non-techies can execute such tasks, which will create efficiencies for your business.

In addition, AI and machine learning can analyse video content to allow the automatic creation of subtitles, image recognition, compliance and other solutions that make it easier to search and find content.

5. Happy developers and happy business users

Gone are the days (thank goodness!) when you had to have a masters degree in coding, technology or editing in order to be able to create, manage, collaborate on, or output video.

Now, developers can access APIs/services that facilitates them to maintain a “single point of truth” for the content; and — as an added bonus — it’s possible to easily develop new channels of distribution.

Business users don’t need specialist training or audio-visual qualifications: they’ll have easy access to a “single pane of glass” that allows them to easily manage content across multiple channels.

Transformation through VCaaS

So, to transform your business while embracing video as a business tool, why not request a demo of Overcast to see how Video Content-as-a-Service will work hand-in-hand with your DAM to save your business time and money, and will save you a bucketload of stress?

*Definitions:

DAM: digital asset management platform
MAM: media asset management platform
PAM: production asset management platform
CMS: content management system
ECM: enterprise content management system

Video Content-as-a-Service: Manage Video Content Better

Posted on February 25, 2020August 22, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

Managing video content

In 2018, the global Enterprise Video market size was US$3.68 billion and it is expected to reach US$10.4 billion by the end of 2025 (MarketWatch). Staggering, eh?

This continuing explosion in the popularity of video has made it a must-have tool for publishers, broadcasters, brands, creatives, agencies and, of course, video tech companies.

When teams in an organisation produce video content (and it really doesn’t matter how much), they need to be able to easily access it, re-use it, collaborate on it, and share it on various platforms in different formats. But video content is complex so existing content management systems don’t cope with it well and can be very problematic when you want to scale your operations.

Key challenges

In Gartner’s report on how to use Content-as-a-Service (CaaS), it identifies the key challenges as:

New channels emerge and, to support them, we create new silos of content, causing fragmentation and increasing complexity;
Businesses looking to move away from monolithic architectures and large, single-vendor implementations must choose a home for their customer-facing content.

Content-as-a-Service vs DAM

These challenges may not be solvable through the digital asset management (DAM) system — in fact, your DAM may well be your biggest problem. So let’s take a look at five ways in which CaaS is fundamentally different from a DAM:

CaaS is in the cloud — DAM started on premise and is legacy technology;
CaaS provides micro-services — it’s not a monolith;
Easy to use — no need to be a librarian or highly trained;
Low cost — you only pay for what you need;
It’s a service — not a product. We describe Services in what they do. Whereas we describe Products by how they look.

Now here’s the techie stuff

Content-as-a-Service is the creation, management and delivery of content via a headless approach, usually, an API serving JSON, decoupled from presentation tiers. In digital commerce, this often also combines elements of PIM and WCM.

Er…thanks for that, Gartner. For those of us that don’t speak techie, could you draw us a picture?

Uses of Content-as-a-Service

Enhance and improve existing content channels without re-platforming.
Extend content to new channels while retaining consistency and continuity.
Consolidate multiple content silos into a single, cross-channel service.
Deliver part of an API-oriented architectural approach for new digital initiatives.

Solve the problem

CaaS provides an emerging solution to the problem of managing video content. Some include DAM capabilities and/or video integration. We’d be delighted to explain more about how Content-as-a-Service will work with your existing DAM to help you save time and money on video management. Just click here to start the conversation.

Exercising Your Inner Hollywood: How Video Content-as-a-Service Helps Organisations Scale

Posted on January 31, 2020August 22, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

A challenging remit

Video will account for 82% of Internet traffic by 2022 (Cisco). But such an explosion in video creation and distribution brings significant challenges in terms of managing it.

Is your video content stored on hard drives? How can teams collaborate on it? How much technical expertise is needed to manage it? How can you find the videos clips you need? Are the files sizes too big to handle? Are you duplicating clips unnecessarily? Can you distribute in lots of different formats? Does your video platform integrate with your other technologies? Is your video strategy scalable?

Solution: Video Content-as-a-Service (VCaaS)

The answer to all of the above — and the secret that will save you from major headaches — is VCaaS. Sounds like it could be a different type of ailment, just as debilitating as a migraine, doesn’t it?! Well, VCaaS stands for Video Content-as-a-Service and it has the Midas touch in terms of managing video.

So let’s look at what VCaaS is and how it can solve your problems.

In simple terms, Overcast — which is a VCaaS provider — facilitates you to manage video (and other digital content) from a single platform and allows you to easily integrate your existing technology.

No more silos

Up until recently, video was siloed in organizations and was managed by engineers and editors. Now, with advances in automation and artificial intelligence services, video can be managed across an organisation by employees with little or no technical knowledge.

The new distribution landscape

There are now so many channels through which video is delivered — broadcast, web, social, apps, affiliate networks, in-store, stadiums. Previously, when organizations introduced new distribution channels, they would also create new content pipelines. But this led to silos and file duplication, which is a costly way of working. Now we can work from a “single source of truth” and manage it with a “single pane of glass.”

Facing the challenge of scaling up

Nowadays, all businesses are exercising their inner Hollywood — financial institutions, multinationals, publishers, sports organisations and enterprises (to name but a few) are publishing more and more quality video content because consumers demand it. But the challenge is being able to easily access it, re-use it, collaborate on it, share it or sell it on different platforms. Video content is complex so it’s not surprising that existing content management systems struggle with it…and this impedes scalability.

Speed to market

The cloud has revolutionised the way we create, manage and distribute video. But legacy technologies are hampering progress. It can be difficult, expensive and time-consuming to swap out a legacy system. So the good news is that Overcast integrates with your existing partners and platforms, allowing you to get started quickly. Then, if you’d like to, you can replace those systems naturally over time.

We’d be delighted to show you how Video Content-as-a-Service will save you time, money and headaches, so click here to request a demo.

End-To-End: What Does It Mean and Why Do So Many Media Organisations Claim To Do It?

Posted on October 1, 2019August 27, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

It used to be when you went to a broadcasters’ conference like IBC or NAB you would meet vendors who sold cameras, graphics, encoders, transmission systems and even satellites. But that has all changed since video started migrating to the cloud.

As the use of video becomes ubiquitous, so too does the creation of video tech solutions to help you create videos efficiently and distribute them. But a quick walk around IBC this year and it’s clear that the messaging is anything but clear.

The IBC Show in Amsterdam is a global media, entertainment and technology trade event — one of the biggest in the world with more than 60,000 attendees. When we were there (as a select partner on the AWS stand), we almost got confused ourselves.

Okay, so this company “delivers” your video to your audience — straightforward, right?:

Oh, but, so does this one:

And this one, but in 4K:

This one is smart or so it says. But it’s actually a satellite company:

Here’s another one who’ll deliver:

Isn’t this delivery without using the word “delivery”?:

Whew! “Delivery” is back. We thought we’d lost it:

Well, at least this one’s different:

But what does this company actually do?

Answers on a tweetcard, please, to @Overcast_HQ

Why Invest In Corporate Video Technology?

Posted on September 26, 2019August 27, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

Enterprise Video Explosion

The use of video as a business tool is exploding in popularity, but what’s also constantly expanding is the range of ways in which video can serve a business to foster more engaging communication with workers and share business intelligence with co-workers, customers, partners, prospects, vendors and shareholders.

However, as enterprises scale up their video production, many find it very difficult to manage, particularly in terms of making it easier for teams to collaborate and speeding up reviews and approvals.

“Killer Application”

Enterprises using video are all searching for that single “killer application”. In order to find a video management solution that matches your company’s needs; you need to take an honest look at the uses of the technology that will be most meaningful to your day-to-day business activities.

A recent study by Wainhouse Research entitled ‘Preparing Your Enterprise For The Intelligent Video Era’ identified the most common use cases for one-to-many video in the workplace.

What Do People Watch?

Figure 1: Viewership of Specific Online Business Video Applications

Employee training ranks as the most frequent application of online video viewed in a business setting. More than half of respondents (55%) reported they’d watched an online training video at some point in the year leading up to the survey. Another 51% of all respondents reported viewership of education courses supplied by outside providers.

The second most popular type of business video was executive presentations, viewed by 52% of all respondents. Marketing applications were also widely consumed with marketing webinars (48%), descriptions of products for sale (47%) and product launch events (44%) all drawing widespread viewership in the workplace.

Investment = Results

The increasing consumption of live video by business professionals illustrates the need to invest in top class streaming technology. The survey found that 19% of respondents watch live business video via their PC on a daily basis, while another 28% watch at least weekly.

Figure 2: Frequency of Viewership of Live Business Video via PC — Segmented by Organization’s Annual Streaming Technology Budget

It emerged that the higher an enterprise’s investment in video streaming technology, the greater the number of people who viewed live business video on a daily or weekly basis. That figure was a cumulative 25% at companies whose annual spend was less than $10,000. But these viewership totals proliferate at organisations spending more than $100,000; 33% of respondents reported daily viewership of live business video via their PC with another 36% saying they watch live video at work at least weekly.

What To Invest In?

Wainhouse Research concludes that those seeking to champion the implementation of video within their organisation should pay specific attention to the communications priorities of top management and implement technology solutions best-suited to address the key issues they have identified.

Future-proofing video technology investments needs to be a key consideration. Therefore look for solutions that feature an “open” architecture for integrating with other technology solutions.

When To Invest?

But when is the right time to make this investment? Enterprises may procrastinate on this decision for any number of reasons, including fear workers aren’t skilled enough in video production or because they’re waiting for the “perfect technology”.

However, any delays in deploying streaming solutions mean losing chances to enhance corporate communications and build a competitive advantage. The video revolution is here and the time to invest is now!

Creating Content: Personalization Versus Speed

Posted on January 7, 2019September 29, 2022 by Fiona Ashe

Digital technology has revolutionised the film and video production industries, confining celluloid to a handful of highly-funded Hollywood movies. But more importantly for the business sector, it has democratized video production: now it’s as common for enterprises to make videos as it is for film studios to make movies.

The era of personalization

But this is not just the video age, it’s also the era of personalization. In the same way that no-one wants their doctor to treat them the same as the other patients in the waiting room, consumers want brands to see each of them as an individual and create content they feel was authentically made and designed just for them. This is how brands create a connection with people.

So how are brands doing in terms of creating personalized content and what barriers are they facing?

How well are brands doing?

Adobe recently published a survey on The State of Creative and Marketing Collaboration, which set out to uncover how creatives, marketers, advertisers and IT professionals are working together to keep up with the fast pace of content creation and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

They surveyed more than 1,000 people in those roles, mostly in companies with more than 500 employees.

The results show that brands are struggling with content creation, in particular the length of time it takes to turn personalized content around. The survey reveals that it takes brands, on average, 17 hours to create a single piece of short form content! This rises to 27 hours to create a single piece of long form content, such as video. It takes companies, on average, 12 days to take a single piece of content to market!

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

What’s stopping us?

The survey also looked at the barriers to personalization of content: the time investment needed to create and iterate content comes out on top. Other issues which surfaced include requests for minor changes and the difficulty of tracking feedback about each version created.

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

“Is this approved for publication yet?”

All of these conclusions suggest that brands’ review and approvals process for content is slow and clunky. Delays in getting content reviewed and approved for publication means slower time to value.

Therefore, a streamlined, efficient workflow is required. A cloud-based video asset management platform like Overcast HQ allows you to notify your colleagues and clients when you’ve shared content with them. Then — instead of wasting time getting people together for meetings — they can view and review your videos in one place, facilitating a speedy approvals process.

It’s also super-easy to identify which part of the video they’d like tweaked since all comments are time-stamped. In addition, instant commenting — like instant messaging — allows you to collaborate in real time with your team, colleagues and clients, which is another big time-saver.

How well do professionals think they’re doing?

Adobe’s survey reveals a disconnect between how colleagues from different departments perceive the effectiveness of the content workflow. 54% of IT professionals believe content creation and delivery are very well coordinated, but this contrasts with just 28% of marketing executives.

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

Another fascinating insight is that the number of agency and brand creatives, advertisers, marketers and IT professionals involved in content creation and delivery has increased significantly in the past few years: 75% more in the case of IT professionals!

How can we do better?

This is an astounding increase across all roles and it shows the centrality of creating content — in particular, personalized content — in the business world today. We must all become creators and publishers. In order to do that efficiently and effectively, we need to learn to manage content better.

The Cutting Edge Of Sports Production Technology

Posted on December 10, 2018August 27, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

SVG Summit

Are you involved in any aspect of sports production, content creation or distribution? If so, why not swing by the SVG Summit 2018 at the New York Hilton Hotel today and tomorrow (10th and 11th December). There’s so much to check out in terms of the latest in digital sports video technology such as augmented reality, machine learning, workflows, digital ad insertion and the impact of 5G.

All Hail The Cloud

As in previous years, the SVG Summit will feature a Cloud and Virtualisation Workshop. This seminar will be full of tips and tricks about cloud-based production and media asset management workflows which are being used by sports-media organisations. It will give insight into how the cloud, virtualisation and SaaS are transforming video production.

This transformation will be discussed by a panel that will include Scott Bounds of Microsoft and Rick Gilpin of Google Cloud. They’ll talk about how the entire video-production ecosystem is undergoing a makeover: from storage and editing to encoding and transcoding and beyond.

Cutting Edge Technologies

Another fascinating panel discussion will explore what’s new for digital sports content creators and distributors. 5G cellular connectivity is on the horizon; AI is putting its stamp on the clipping and enhancing of highlights and social media content; and UHD/HDR streaming has the potential to make a big difference to those live streaming to compatible Smart TVs. Experts will share what needs to happen next.

Video Workflow

Every minute counts when it comes to getting post-produced content out across social media and other digital channels. Your team’s creative vision is challenged by tight timelines. Your business obligations might not match internal resources. So what do you do? A case study at the summit will show how production teams at MLB Network have adopted an agile workflow to get both internal and external stakeholders reviewing media faster from the first version to final delivery.

Keynotes

The summit will also feature keynotes by some of the biggest names in sports TV.

Brad Boim will talk about how heading into the 2018 NFL season, NFL Media upgraded its asset management system to enhance metadata tagging with the ingestion of GSIS data, Next-Gen Stats and Speech-to-Text transcriptions into their MAM. This extra metadata has enabled producers to run deeper searches within the database.

Charlie Ebersol, who has created a new American pro football league, will give a presentation on how video production and distribution technology will play a key role in it.

Fresh off a busy year when NBC Broadcasting/NBC Sports Group broadcast the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, its chairman Mark Lazarus will reflect on the successes and challenges of 2018 and examine issues and opportunities facing the live sports production industry.

Fan Engagement

If you’re interested in how to fill stadiums for matches, then don’t miss the panel discussion on how teams in the New York area attract fans to the stands game after game, using tech tools from larger-than-life video displays to mobile gaming.

AR, AI and Machine Learning

Other panel discussions will look at new ways to use Augmented Reality technology, camera tracking and data visualisation to give much more impact to a sports production and whether 1080p HDR sports production workflows are the sweet spot in terms of cost and performance.

There will also be a Sports Content Management Workshop exploring AI versus machine learning. It will tease out how major sports-media organisations are leveraging AI and machine learning for speech-to-text and translation; object and facial recognition; automated personalisation and content discovery.

Trends

The 2018 SVG Summit is also the go-to place for one-on-one conversations, case studies, tech showcases and insights into trends shaping the future of the sports-media business.

Overcast HQ CEO Philippe Brodeur will be at the SVG Summit 2018 and would be delighted to show you our video platform. If you would like to meet up with him and chat about all things video, please tweet him: @PhilippeBrodeur or email philippe@overcasthq.com

How Does Your Technology Stack Up?

Posted on October 26, 2018August 27, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

Tech Stack

During tech awards season in Ireland one technology award that you may not have heard of is the Stackies. The what? The Stackies! They are described by Scott Brinker, chair of the MarTech Conference (which presents the awards) as “the coolest awards programme in marketing!” It’s an accolade for companies who demonstrate the best marketing stack in terms of insightful concept, business alignment and clarity of purpose.

So what is a marketing stack? Well, it’s the collection of all the different software you use in marketing (marketing automation, social media management, content management, CRM, advertising, DAM, video, SEO, etc.)

If you were to analyse all of the different marketing technology tools that you’re using across your organisation, you might be surprised to discover just how many there are. Having this information is very useful strategically because you can then assess the purpose of each piece of the stack jigsaw and decide whether it serves the overall functionality of your stack.

How big is your stack?

The Stackies provide a very valuable opportunity to learn from market leaders. In 2017 the awarding body published 57 marketing stack illustrations, including Microsoft’s stack, which uses 44 platforms and Cisco’s, which uses 40.

^{Microsoft Marketing Technology Stack courtesy of MarTech}

If you hear companies claiming that they provide an end-to-end solution, you’d be well advised to check out their stack since very few actually do.

You’re probably familiar with CMS (content management systems) — WordPress is a good example. It’s used by companies to push out content. Within that platform, the content needs to be managed: drafted, edited, formatted, cross referenced through hyperlinks, combined (images, text and video), and published.

But how do you create the content that you wish to publish through a CMS and what kind of management does that entail? You’ll need an asset management system with a stack that’s designed with your workflow in mind. You’ll need to import media (images and video files), edit them, collaborate on them, store them, share them with stakeholders for review, get approval, export them in different formats and archive them.

How does a stack help consumers?

Stacks, if well designed, make tasks easier.

Overcast has created a comprehensive and strategic technology stack to make it effortless for you to manage your digital assets, in particular video assets. In fact, our stack makes it as easy to manage video as it is to manage a Word document.

The technology that we use in our stack includes AWS (Amazon Web Services) which features the best storage and voice-to-text functionality in the market. We also use the JW Player, which is first-class software that embeds videos into web pages.

Some other celebrity appearances in our stack include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AVID, Video.js and Mailchimp.

We have also combined these renowned leading technologies with our own proprietary software. For example, we use artificial intelligence to facilitate people to search their video clips for objects, settings, colours, events, words, sounds and facial recognition.

The integration of these and the other technologies in our stack create a streamlined, smart, easy-to-use video management experience for all of our clients. Want to make your work life easier?

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning = Faster Video Creation?

Posted on October 18, 2018August 27, 2024 by Philippe Brodeur

Can you really use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to create video content faster?

To be honest, the more I hear and read about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning the more I think people are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I honestly don’t believe most people know what they are talking about or what AI and ML actually are. So I set about setting myself a task to define them and then explain why Overcast is investing so much in them.

One of our advisors Hugh O’Byrne (a former senior IBM head of Digital Sales) started by telling me that everyone has actually got it wrong. What most people are talking about is “augmented” intelligence — i.e. they are talking about machines that can help (not replace) humans in the workplace. Machines might be able to learn and get better at doing manual tasks, but ultimately the work being done still needs a guiding human hand so it is augmented.

Understanding AI and ML

So if we keep that in mind, here is how we define AI: “Artificial Intelligence” is the science of making computers good at doing tasks that were previously done by people.

It’s pretty broad and probably covers what so many people claim as their “AI solution”. So, perhaps what is far more interesting is “Machine Learning”, which is a subset of AI and focuses on the ability of computers to use large sets of data to “learn” about a task and improve the performance of those tasks over time.

If you take these two statements for what they are, it’s actually machine learning that is far more interesting and far more powerful. AI has been talked about pretty much since the beginning of computers — but machine learning has only been possible since the introduction of large data sets that can lead to machines being “trained” or, in fact, “training themselves” according to a set of rules.

With video we are at the early stages. Up until now, very little data existed about a video that was not inputted manually. Sure, you could get technical details like length, file size, codec and things like that, but anything descriptive about the story had to be entered manually. That’s the metadata.

It’s all about business needs

Recent advances in AI and machine learning have enabled all of this to change. We can now extract a considerable amount of “descriptive” data that in turn can be used for a number of different content solutions.

A short list of what data we can extract from a video includes:

Voice to text
Image recognition
Scene recognition
Facial recognition
Sentiment recognition

This is just a short list of the information that can make it easier to do a number of tasks. Caption creation, search, archiving, metadata enhancement and compliance are just a number of tasks that machines are getting better at doing without the need for human intervention.

Ultimately these advances in AI and Machine Learning should help to solve problems for creatives who waste much of their time on mundane tasks like searching for content, wondering if brand guidelines are being adhered to and even putting captions with the right punctuation on their content. You know, real business needs.

The result: yes, AI and Machine Learning can help make video content faster but it takes time for the machines to learn so it is taking time for the accuracy of these solutions to be able to be deployed at scale.

Does Size Matter?

Posted on October 8, 2018August 28, 2024 by Fiona Ashe

“Video consumption grows 100%+ every year” — YouTube.

The global online video platform in media and entertainment market is projected to grow at an annual rate (CAGR) of 17.5% from 2018 to 2025 (— Allied Market Research). Businesses will ignore it at their peril.

In our last two blog posts, we explored search and collaboration, as well as management and video production. Once created, video needs a home to live in (storage) and a destination to go to (distribution). Today we are talking about one of the fundamental challenges — size of video files.

Size matters

How big is Big Video?

1 hour of 4k (cinema-resolution) video shot for a 30-second TV ad is equal to 300GB — this is more than can fit on the average computer! To put it in further perspective, 1 year of CCTV video for an average police department amounts to 1.5PB (which is approximately 80,000 Harry Potter movies in HD)!

PB? What on earth is a PB? Well, a petabyte — or PB — is a crazy large chunk of data. You’re on first name terms with a gigabyte (GB), right? And you may have been introduced to the terabyte (TB). A TB is 1,024 times bigger than a GB. Sounds like a lot? Think about this: the Hubble Space Telescope generates about 10 terabytes of new data every year.

So, getting back to the question: what is a petabyte? A single PB is 1,024 TB — or more than 1 quadrillion bytes! That’s a heck of a lot of data.

“1 PB is equivalent to over 4,000 digital photos per day over your entire life.” — Lifewire.

So if you’re generating a lot of video content, it’s easy to work out that you’re going to need a lot of storage space and the cloud might be your best option.

Cloud is the champion

Using a cloud-based platform provides more advantages than just storage. It facilitates you to share media across projects, groups or channels and to respond quickly to partners, distributors or clients.

No doubt you’ll be channeling a particular promotional campaign though your social profiles, website, email marketing software and you’ll want it to look amazing on mobile. So you need all of these to work off the same set of base assets for that campaign.

Getting your video out there

And then there’s outputting. How many versions of your video do you need? Disney has to create 234 versions of every film it produces to accommodate the aspect ratios of the various distribution channels (cinema, broadcast and streaming) and to supply versions in different languages for worldwide distribution.

Once you’ve decided on the number of versions you’d like to create, then there’s the quandary of formatting each one. How do you export your video file in formats optimised for YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and all of the other different platforms without a degree in transcoding or bribing a highly-skilled technician? The secret is (shhh, don’t tell anyone): choose a platform that does all of this heavy lifting for you. And preferably one that automates it.

“81% of businesses say video increases sales.” — Optinmonster

Saving $$$

With the time saved on collaboration, reviews, approvals and outputting of your video assets — not to mention the cost savings on sending “urgent” DVDs/drives via FedEx or UPS — it’s a no-brainer to use a streamlined platform to manage your video projects. One login, one solution, one happy you!