BCA Show Preview - 116

116

SUNTEC SINGAPORE

A part of

MARINA BAY SANDS * SUNTEC SINGAPORE

SHOW PREVIEW | 26-28 June 2018

AWS Elemental to Feature
Machine Learning
Andrew Thornton, - APAC, AWS Elemental, discusses the company's latest
developments and what it has planned for BroadcastAsia 2018...
BroadcastAsia: Has the show come at a
good time for the media industry? Why?
Andrew Thornton: BroadcastAsia arrives
at a perfect time for the industry to come
together and showcase innovation in media
technologies and audience experiences.
2018 is a year of big events such as the
Winter Games, the Commonwealth Games,
and the upcoming football World Cup, where
broadcasters can showcase groundbreaking
innovations on a global stage. As adoption of
cloud-based video technologies accelerates,
our customers are seizing on these and other
events as opportunities to deliver compelling
new viewing experiences.
InB: What do you think are the key
developments in, or threats to, your market
sector at the current time?
AT: Customers are excited about
developments in video processing and
technology that can help them operate faster,
smarter, and more efficiently, at a global
scale, and that help them differentiate their
content and services.
Quality-defined variable bitrate control, or
QVBR, is an example of new technology that
can dramatically boost efficiency and reduce
costs. QVBR is rate control that automatically
adjusts to different content types and solves
the problems of inconsistent video quality
caused by video complexity. What that
means for the customer is it eliminates the
guesswork and frustration of managing your
"bits budget". When video scenes are more
complex, QVBR spends bits to maintain
desired video quality levels. When video
quality levels are reached, QVBR saves bits.
In the process, QVBR can realise bitrate
reduction, which saves on CDN egress and
storage. The viewing audience enjoys a
consistent experience, and video providers
enjoy the most cost-efficient method of
providing it.
Machine learning can help broadcasters
create new paths to viewer engagement,
increase the efficiency of time-intensive
workloads, and unlock additional revenue
opportunities.
Now,
repetitive
tasks
like metadata extraction and analysis,
transcription and translation, and video
clip generation can be automated, offering
increased operational efficiency and faster
time-to-market for valuable content. Machine

Cloud-based AWS Media Services

AWS Elemental will deliver live,
real-world demos of end-to-end workflows at the show

learning tools can also be used
as the foundation of innovative
new offerings that video providers
can use to stand apart in their
markets.

is a world first in the way it used machine
learning to enhance the user experience
of a live-streamed news event. The app
automatically highlighted celebrities as they
appeared on screen and presented details
about them with captions and graphics.
Users could navigate celebrity data without
leaving the app and keep the primary video
on-screen, enjoying a self-guided, hands-on
experience for every celebrity sighting.
Media services and machine learning are
key to making live streaming experiences
like this possible at a reasonable cost. By
automating real-time identification and
analysis of live video, this kind of application
can draw on a wealth of information and
metadata to furnish interactive viewing
experiences while leveraging broadcast
infrastructures already in place.

InB: Why should delegates
visit
your
stand
at
BroadcastAsia 2018?
AT: We will be in stand 4D2-01
with live, real-world demos of
InB: How is the company
end-to-end workflows powered
positioning itself for the future
by our appliances and cloud
of broadcasting?
solutions. We'll show how AWS
AT: With the introduction of
Elemental Live with QVBR can
AWS Elemental Media Services
adapt each frame of video, in
late last year, we offer customers
real-time, to meet user-specified
Royal
Wedding
Who's
Who:
Sky
News
built
a
second-screen
application
on
AWS
services
a broad range of appliance- and
parameters for video quality and
cloud-based video processing and delivery
delivered with the push of a button.
maximum bitrate. We will also demonstrate
technologies for their video infrastructure.
This applies not only to vendors, but to
an intelligent engine that uses machine
Wherever broadcasters are on their journey
video providers as well. For example, in the
learning-based transcription and translation
to the cloud, AWS Elemental can now help
past, bringing new OTT services to market
services, as well as image and optical
them drive innovation and curtail cost with
may have meant months or even years of
character recognition, integrated with AWS
agile, reliable, scalable media solutions for
planning, qualification, hardware acquisition,
Media Services.
live and file-based video streaming, media
and provisioning. With cloud services from
To showcase the low latencies that
storage, and content personalisation.
AWS, this is avoided. Instead, customers
can be achieved with cloud-based video
can configure and deploy new multiscreen
infrastructure, we will demonstrate a live,
InB: Are the latest technological
offerings quickly. In many cases, we see
low-latency video workflow, with timers
advancements revolutionising how vendors
customers bringing ideas from concept to
in the stand that confirm consistent lowdetermine new product offerings? How
market in only weeks.
latency video delivery in real-time. We
challenging is it to address these issues
will also feature a live demonstration of
and keep ahead?
InB: Is the increase in live production
AWS Elemental MediaTailor for intelligent,
AT: As the media industry moves to
requirements changing the sector in any
content-aware advertising insertion for costsoftware- and cloud-based broadcast
way?
effective curation and monetisation of live or
technologies, vendors with proven experience
AT: The trend toward personalised user
on-demand video. And, for the first time at
developing and delivering cloud services can
experiences is changing the way content
BroadcastAsia, we will feature a number of
innovate very quickly. Without the constraints
providers look at live production. For the U.K.
partners on our stand to present solutions
of data centre infrastructure, developing,
Royal Wedding, Sky News built a secondfor cloud-based editing, media asset
testing, and launching new services is
screen application called "Royal Wedding
management, playout, and more.
faster than ever, and product updates can be
Who's Who Live" on AWS services that
www.elemental.com
https://www.elemental.com/ https://www.elemental.com/applications/broadcasters http://www.elemental.com
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