The digital technology and media and entertainment industries are beginning to come together to solve a common problem—how to extract, unlock, harness and make better use of the massive amounts of video content and data they produce.
Anyone who has ever appeared in or produced a movie, commercial or business video is aware that many times a good portion of the footage winds up on the proverbial cutting room floor. The same is true of digital data. It is estimated that more than 80 percent of enterprise data is considered “dark”—created but never used.
What if there were a way to pick up this data equivalent of cutting room discards and turn them into new assets? What if technologies such as IBM Watson could work with video editors to unearth data treasures that benefit and excite both producers and audiences? Sounds like the plot to a blockbuster movie, but it is now more fact than fiction.
Digital technology companies are now busy developing cloud-based cognitive solutions to help uncover new data and insights about video content and its viewers. New AI technologies can help media companies identify meaningful content in video. Using deep learning, these same companies can identify viewers who will want to watch newly created derivative works based on this content. These solutions also can be used by companies in other industries that depend on video to communicate with employees, partners or customers.
Some companies have research projects or narrowly focused cognitive services for video. Some have even employed rudimentary cognitive technologies, able to provide simple transcriptions of what’s said in a video. But what’s really needed is an approach that uses cognitive technology to deliver new insights about both content and viewers.
A great example is a proof of concept IBM developed for the Masters Golf Tournament this April to automatically identify highlights.
