In the increasingly complex media industry, metadata is emerging as the new challenger for the title of “king”, declared Steve Davis, general manager, Asia-Pacific Japan, Ooyala.
Calling metadata the “brains behind video”, Davis explained to APB that metadata comprises information about all the elements that make up a piece of video, enabling media companies to increase revenue and reduce customer churn.
He said: “Combining data-driven video powered by smart metadata under the cover of every video asset, media companies are able to deliver their content to the viewers and understand the type of content they are watching. More importantly, they are able to use that data to gain insights and learn about viewers’ consumption of videos, and go forward in making smart recommendations for each specific viewer.”
To enhance video production and distribution, Ooyala developed the Ooyala Flex media logistics platform, which provides media companies with “visibility” into their video supply chain, and which automates the production and distribution of workflows.
Several types of metadata — such as asset metadata, business object metadata, temporal metadata, spatial metadata and event metadata — are used to apply actions against assets and business objects such as locating, importing, analysing and making decisions about them. With Ooyala Flex, operators are able to import, input, manage, transform, analyse and export all of these types of metadata, accessing them throughout the workflow.
Bea Alonso, business development director, media logistics, Ooyala, added: “A media logistics platform like Ooyala Flex allows operators to automate and collect metadata from different sources, combining and populating it into a single source of truth.
“With its capabilities to automate and increase efficiencies by managing the metadata centrally, the metadata can then be linked into consumption patterns. And with the introduction of machine learning that allows operators to recognise speech, transcribe and translate them before delivering to different platforms, operators are able to save up to 70% of the manual work that was done before with metadata.”
While both Davis and Alonso pointed out that media companies have yet to fully harness the benefits metadata is able to bring forth, Alonso stressed that metadata is the fundamental link that connects video, systems and viewers together.
“Due to the shift in consumers’ consumption habits, the explosion of content and consumption platforms has made it almost unmanageable to track the metadata and have the content delivered at the right time,” Alonso concluded. “To address the future of video from concept to consumer, media companies need to get smarter by looking into ways to make their metadata management more efficient with media logistics platform, automation, machine learning and auto-detection.”
