At the NAB Show New York 2018, Global Media Solutions and Services Provider Digital Nirvana will present its powerful content-based metadata creation app Metadator for AVID media platform users, cloud-based closed caption generation and caption retrieval and synchronization service, and the latest version of its flagship Media Monitoring Platform. With over two decades of industry experience, DN's expertise in the development and application of innovative solutions is unparalleled. Digital Nirvana's revolutionary workflow ensures the best in automation and customization, providing sustainable solutions to its customers.

Digital Nirvana will showcase its offerings at booth #N546 during NAB New York from October 17-18 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

NAB New York continues to be a significant part of our year-long efforts to pitch our branding and outreach to prospective clients,” said Hiren Hindocha, CEO, Digital Nirvana. “New York area broadcasters and content creators who were not able to attend NAB in Las Vegas or the IBC in Amsterdam have the opportunity to attend a quality trade show with many of the same players in their own backyard. We’re eager to demonstrate our new software and services at NAB New York and connect with our current and prospective customers during this high-profile, regional show.”

Metadator

Metadator will make its New York debut this year after its introduction at the NAB Show in Las Vegas during April last year. Metadator is an application that simplifies content-based metadata creation for AVID users. The application has the ability to export media from AVID, create metadata automatically over the cloud along with locators, automatically ingest and attach itself to the video asset present in AVID Interplay. It helps creating a searchable database within the AVID MAM infrastructure that has multiple benefits in an increasing metadata-centric media world. With the introduction of Metadator, Digital Nirvana has been able to serve the rapidly growing AVID user community across the globe.

Closed Caption Generation

At NAB New York, Digital Nirvana will also showcase its automated, cloud-based Closed Caption Generation service for all pre-recorded and online video content. The service is backed by a powerful workflow with proven speech-to-text at its core and levels of checks based on customer quality requirements. Considering the delivery requirements to multiple platforms, customers can now request for any or all standard formats for broadcast and IP delivery for video content.

Closed Caption Retrieval and Synchronization

Digital Nirvana’s Caption Lookup service is an effective way to quickly look up for captions from broadcast content, synchronize it, and reuse for online publishing. Captions associated with any broadcast content can easily be retrieved by submitting media clips over Rest API. Digital Nirvana's state-of-the-art Retrieval technology makes content retrieval easy by maintaining a fingerprint database for broadcast content along with associated closed captions for selected channels.

MonitorIQ Media Management Platform

Also making its appearance at NAB New York is Digital Nirvana’s MonitorIQ Media Management Platform, Version 5.2, a broadcast monitoring and logging system that offers a host of new user-friendly features, including support for H.264 recording, strengthened IPTV protocol support for and updated calendar controls. MonitorIQ delivers a full range of multi-channel signal monitoring, logging, loudness monitoring, compliance, competitive analysis, advertisement verification, content repurposing and archiving functions - enabling broadcasters to capture live content from multiple sources live, and check the video for quality and compliance.

About NAB New York:

An annual trade show produced by the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB Show will be held during October 17 - 18, 2018 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, New York. With more than 14,000 registrants and 300+ exhibitors, NAB Show New York showcases the best in next-generation technology for media, entertainment and technology professionals from diverse industries. NAB is the largest show for media, entertainment and technology with conferences and workshops focused on television, film, satellite, online video, live events, podcasting, advertising, corporate A/V, production and post production.

About Digital Nirvana:

Founded in 1996, Digital Nirvana, with its repertoire of innovative solutions, specializes in empowering customers worldwide with knowledge management technologies. Digital Nirvana's comprehensive service portfolio includes media monitoring and analysis, media solutions and services, investment research services, and learning management services. Customers rely on Digital Nirvana to improve operational efficiencies, ensure compliance, reduce costs, and protect revenue streams. DN’s compliance driven solutions offers its customers unmatched quality, proven versatility, and best-in-class performance that help organizations to streamline operations and gain competitive advantage. Digital Nirvana is headquartered in Fremont, California with global delivery locations in Hyderabad and Coimbatore, India. 

Captioning for television has come a long way since it was first introduced in 1972 when the most popular cooking show of the time, “The French Chef” with Julia Child, was captioned.

The idea of captioning was quickly embraced by deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and grew in popularity with general audiences as well since it helped viewers clearly interpret their favorite programs. Closed captioning steadily evolved from conventional methods to voice writing, to what is currently a far more automated process. The application of closed captioning has also evolved as it now improves the discoverability of video content and cognitive modeling (simulating human problem solving in a computerized model) for automated analysis of broadcast content.

Creators of news and sports content face new challenges with the latest FCC regulations, which designate video clips of live and near-live TV programming published online have up to 12-hour and 8-hour delays in posting closed captioning after the programming has appeared on TV, respectively. Existing FCC closed-captioning quality rules also require non-live programming captions to be accurate, complete and in-sync with the dialogues. While content producers may view it as a challenge to stream video content that’s in compliance with this law, there are multiple captioning services that can be used to ensure regulatory compliance while simultaneously improving user experience.

[Online Live And Near-Live Captioning Deadline Is July 1]

One way to quickly comply with the new FCC rules is by repurposing broadcast captions using a fully automated cloud-based caption synchronization service. These services scan for unsynchronized broadcast captions that are sent to an application for automatic synchronization and generate multiple formats suitable for publishing the content online. This technology coordinates all pre-recorded and online video content through an automated process in the cloud providing a suite of options for clipping, data transfer and caption formats as well as integration directly to the customer’s video platform. Since cloud-based technology does not lock a provider into a specific vendor, users can integrate this technology into their existing workflow via API’s.

Another challenge broadcasters face while publishing media online is the non-availability of captions. For instance, broadcasters may lose track of original broadcast captions and may need to regenerate captions for the content to be published online. A caption lookup service can help quickly identify captions associated with specific broadcast content. Typically, a caption lookup service uses state-of-the-art fingerprint technology to precisely identify air-time of a piece of media and then looks up for associated captions based on identified air-time.

Using a caption lookup service, the original captions from the broadcast program are retrieved, synchronized and used for online clips. Caption lookup along with synchronization process offers great advantages to production houses or streaming video providers to sync captions after editing content for air in multiple countries. Since the original captions are retrieved using the lookup process, there’s no need to re-do the entirety of their subtitles and captions. The synchronization and format conversion necessary to meet all requirements are provided automatically. Also, broadcasters looking to rebroadcast clips or montages can use the caption lookup service to retrieve captions from the original broadcast.

A smart captioning workflow can ensure 100-percent accuracy for content that is streamed online and distributed on social media channels. It also provides a better user experience for not only the deaf and hard of hearing, but also for the millions of people that watch videos from their smartphones and tablets every day without audio. In environments where users on laptops and mobile devices don’t want to—or can’t—turn on the volume, closed captioning allows them to watch a sound-free show and expands the providers’ audience, creating a much larger audience through online viewing.

With so much content on streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo and the like, closed captioning technology is an industry set to take off. Streaming services source content from around the world. To reach a global audience, providers must include caption services. Thanks to closed captioning, there are many good programs available regardless of the language spoken. Captioning opens avenues for content providers to reach a global audience.

Another factor driving the use of closed captioning is the creation of metadata. Closed captioning and its creation of metadata increases the searchability of an asset, facilitating SEO for video assets. For content owners, this increases the visibility of their video. Users can locate desired content they want with ease. Enterprise video platforms within large corporations is another growing area where the use of closed captioning and subsequent metadata increase the ease of locating desired video assets.

Recently, the use of online video in the enterprise has seen exponential growth driven mainly by improved bandwidth and processing power. A typical information workplace uses on-demand video/live streaming as part of its regular executive and HR communication, marketing and training activities, etc. Unified communication solutions that feature videos are also growing fast and intensifying this growth. Today, it’s safe to assume that an average large corporation sits on a library of more than 10,000 hours of internally created videos that could represent storage of about 20 to 30 terabytes. With the intensification of video creation, archiving needs will only increase. The integration of closed captions on such enterprise videos adds value because they’re easy to comprehend, and simultaneously, good metadata makes it easy to locate a clip from such an extensive library.

Online video providers (OVD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD) services with large amounts of footage can benefit from cloud-based subtitling by utilizing automated speech-to-text capabilities for increased efficiency and high-volume handling, along with the ability to deliver multiformat or customized versions for integration directly into existing workflows. With Digital Nirvana’s Video Logging service, media production houses and producers with large amounts of footage can improve their editing efficiency, as well organize content and the discoverability within their data centers. The company’s cloud-based Closed Captioning service uses audio fingerprinting to automate near-live synchronization of live broadcast captions with the ability to revise the text. Automated speech-to-text conversion coupled with state-of-the-art workflow and experienced captioners reduce the time and cost to publish, provide better search engine discoverability—while complying with broadcast guidelines.

By using an automated captioning service, content creators can not only comply with all FCC guidelines, but also they can reduce the time and cost to publish, while providing a greatly improved user experience and search engine discoverability.

Hiren Hindocha is CEO and President of Digital Nirvana.