In Broadcast - May 2014 - 76

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 31 - MAY 2014

N E W S

InMEDIA

Revolutionising MAM And Programme Research
Broadcasters need to harness semantic web to
revolutionise MAM and programme research...

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

I

N E W S

By Staff
Reporter

P was one of the buzz words at
this year's NAB, however this
does not have to be restricted to
the ways broadcasters contribute
and distribute content. According
to UK-based media asset and
metadata management specialist,
IPV, programme producers have
the potential to revolutionise their
broadcast workﬂow by harnessing
the potential of the semantic web.
David Cole, Chief Executive Ofﬁcer
of Cambridge-based IPV believes
that "the days of researchers and
programme makers sitting down
with little more than Google and no
real idea of what broadcast assets
they have available are long gone.
With assets spread across various

76

departments and with little or no
collective knowledge of what exists,
broadcasters need to make sense of
federated media asset management,
aggregating data from disparate
sources in a non-invasive way,
and without changing the way that
individual departments operate."
IPV Takes Its Lead From Sir Tim
Berners-Lee: Cole says that this is
not a new concept: back in 2001, Sir
Tim Berners-Lee identiﬁed a concept
called the semantic web - a web of
data that can be processed directly
and indirectly by machines with very
little human intervention. It requires
clever technology underpinning data
mining, but from a user's point of
view it presents a way to identify
and manage complex relational
links between broadcast assets and
information in a simple and readily
understandable fashion.
This is the aim of semantic web
tools such as Teragator and Metadata
Central from IPV. They make it easy
to explore and correlate multiple

IPV's iSpyder

sources of information, to evaluate
what they are ﬁnding, and to explore
links and lines of development which
may never otherwise appear. By
giving researchers and programme
makers more powerful and more
comprehensive tools they speed up
the process and shine a spotlight on
new angles to the story. Ultimately,
they help make better programmes
even when the budgets tighten,
and they help broadcasters ﬁnd
and serve audiences with the
content they need.
Unlike conventional search
engines that match keywords to a
predeﬁned schema, IPV's Teragator
enables users to uncover seemingly
unlinked data which is relevant to
the story they are trying to tell. It
allows data sources to be analysed
in a single, uniform application, but
modelled with different views to
explore the way that parts of the
story interlink. Through the analysis
of the data and identiﬁcation of
entities, people and places, new
links are discovered that were not
even on the agenda at the start of
the process, enriching editorial and
offering new ideas and even new
stories. Use of the semantic web
makes for a better programme.
Semantic Web Engine Offers New
Production Insights: The engine that
enables this linking and association
of data is critical to the success. As
well as forming the links it has to
be able to present it in a way which
is readily understood by the typical
non-specialist user. There is no
point in enabling comprehensive
research if learning how to interpret
the data is going to take longer
than sitting down with an outline
script and Google. Underlying
the associative intelligence there
is another layer, which does the
core work of accessing multiple
databases and, most important,
evaluating the results, which IPV
calls Metadata Central.
Combining Metadata Central with
some of the added intelligence in
Teragator empowers value judgments
on data which is automatically
collected. Users can, for example,
interpret tweets as a programme is

being transmitted to determine the
general audience reaction. If it is a
live show the production team can
report on them, or even respond
to what the audience is saying by
changing the production. Intelligence
in the system can determine genuine
sentiment, provide insight on irony
and sarcasm for comic effect and
using sophisticated techniques for
forwarding sentiment to the Natural
Language Processing, and provide
reasonably reliable results
IPV has demonstrated a topical
application in the use of reality TV
based programmes that are heavily
reliant on audience reaction and
sentiment. Using Teragator, they
are able to poll multiple sources
of live audience data (social
networking data) and provide a
valuable insight to the production
team, both during the show and in
commentary afterwards. Using this
data in real-time and monitoring
social interaction around characters
and presenters, for example, allows
the show producers to optimise the
show and its reach.

Dave Cole, IPV CEO

"Today, consumers are generating
a large demand for content which
they want to watch where, when
and how they wish, whilst at the
same time production budgets
continue to shrink," concludes
David Cole. "There are big rewards
for broadcasters who are connected
to their audiences and able to
respond quickly to changing tastes
and trends, but to achieve this
requires a radically different IPenabled approach to media asset
management."

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/?first=Phillip&last=Izzard&search=Go https://twitter.com/inbroadcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player https://www.facebook.com/InBroadcast http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.branded.inbroadcast&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5icmFuZGVkLmluYnJvYWRjYXN0Il0. http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.ipv.com/ http://www.truelens.co.uk/ http://www.cinegearexpo.com/ http://www.truelens.co.uk

In Broadcast - May 2014

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