FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana will show its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions for post-production and content creation workflows at the 2023 NAB Show, April 15-19, in Las Vegas.

They include:

• MediaServicesIQ Version 2 is the latest version of the company’s gateway to its technology stack. MediaServicesIQ Version 2 is a multipurpose cognitive platform that integrates with all of the company’s other products. It makes it possible to generate metadata and add generative AI capabilities based on that metadata, which enables users to make faster content production decisions.
• TranceIQ, a self-service SaaS application that automatically generates transcripts, closed captions/subtitles and translations for content localization. Automatic transcription, NLP-based caption splits and machine translation-based subtitling — coupled with new back-end architecture changes — make TranceIQ faster and easier to use. With more than 30 UX improvements, TranceIQ now gives users more control than with past versions of Trance.
• MetadataIQ, the company’s solution for automating generation of transcripts and video intelligence metadata, increasing the visibility into content within Avid PAM/MAM. Users now are able to use generative AI capabilities on the generated metadata for refined intelligence, increasing efficiency of content production, archive management and content decision making for live news and sports. MetadataIQ also integrates directly with Digital Nirvana's TranceIQ platform to generate transcripts, captions and translations in all industry-supported formats.

See Digital Nirvana at NAB Show booth W1657.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has added support for Avid CTMS APIs to its MetadataIQ software-as-a solution (SaaS) tool for automatically generating speech-to-text and video intelligence metadata, the company said today.

With the new Avid support, editors and producers using MetadataIQ can extract media directly from Avid Media Composer or Avid MediaCentral Cloud UX (MCCUS) rather than being required to connect first with Avid Interplay. As a result, broadcasters, post houses, sports organization and other Avid users are not required to have Interplay in their environments to use MetadataIQ, the company said.

The support gives all Avid Media Composer and MCCUS users the ability to insert speech-to-text and video intelligence metadata as markers within an Avid timeline, it said.

It also enables the ability to:

• Ingest different types of metadata, such as speech to text, facial recognition, OCR, logos and objects, each with customizable marker durations and color codes for easy identification of metadata type.
• Submit files without having to create low-res proxies or manually import metadata files into Avid Media Composer and MCCUX.
• Automatically submit media files to Digital Nirvana's transcription and caption service to receive the highest quality, human-curated output.
• Submit data from MCCUX into Digital Nirvana's Trance product to generate transcripts, captions and translations in-house and publish files in all industry-supported formats.

These capabilities will improve the workflow for media companies that use Avid Media Composer or MCCUX to produce content, it said.

"MetadataIQ used to only connect with Avid Interplay for media extraction, which meant customers had to use Interplay in their Avid environments to use MetadataIQ. With the success of MetadataIQ and its ability to enhance content production, Digital Nirvana… received a lot of requests from prospective customers to extend our services to non-Interplay users. And that's exactly what we've done," said Digital Nirvana CEO Hiren Hindocha.

"This integration makes it so editors can use MetadataIQ throughout the entire pipeline without having to create additional proxies, import metadata files or anything else — and no Interplay required," he said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has introduced MetadataIQ for News, a new variation of its MetadataIQ SaaS-based automatic metadata generation tool. MetadataIQ for News uses news-specific speech-to-text technology and machine learning capabilities to describe quickly the assets that appear in a news broadcaster's feed. As a result, editors and producers can find what they need and create news shows more efficiently, the company said.

With news providers getting multiple news feeds from bureaus and other providers, such as The Associated Press, there can be as many as 100 continuous feeds at a time, depending on the size of the news organization and making it difficult for humans to tag all that media. According to Digital Nirvana, many speech-to-text engines on the market that can produce decent output on general-purpose language, but they tend to falter when it comes to identifying names and places that are in the news.

Unlike those general-purpose STT engines, MetadataIQ for News handles just news content, ingesting all feeds in real time and applying a speech-to-text engine fine-tuned for news production. Digital Nirvana uses its MonitorIQ automated broadcast monitoring application to ensure MetadataIQ for News continuously improves. Every day, MonitorIQ records multiple news channels, including the audio, which contains the proper pronunciation. Then, using AI, MonitorIQ automatically identifies all names and places, and feeds all the data back into the STT engine's dynamically updated vocabulary. This process is what makes MetadataIQ for News unique and able to generate highly accurate output.

Two major news organizations — one in the United States and another in the Middle East — have been testing these capabilities in their live news operations, according to the company. They have found that applying ML technologies to their workflows yields automatically generated, highly accurate metadata more quickly and affordably than traditional methods, which translates to money, effort, and time savings. It also means better-structured, more detailed, and more accurate metadata and shorter content delivery cycles.

"We designed MetadataIQ to describe content from multiple cameras of a reality show. But news broadcasters needed an application that was built specifically to handle news content, which is constantly changing and therefore doesn't conform to general-purpose speech-to-text engines," said Hiren Hindocha, CEO of Digital Nirvana. "Because the application is continually training the engine to recognize new names and places, MetadataIQ for News ensures news broadcasters always have an accurate description of their content, even though there's something different every day."

Digital Nirvana will demo MetadataIQ at Stand 7.A28 at the 2022 IBC Show at the RAI Amsterdam, Sept. 9-13.

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has unveiled an upgrade for its Trance self-service SaaS application, a tool that supports transcription, closed captioning and subtitle generation and automatic translations to localize content within media companies’ workflows.

Enhancements offered in Trance 4.0 include elaborate account management, modular rights for users and advance pro-captioning window for enterprises and individual users, Digital Nirvana said.

With its new modular application approach, Trance 4.0 can be used as a combined or individual tool for transcription, captioning, text localization or conformance of existing captions, it said. 

The latest version’s new and improved transcription window can be used as a standalone app rather than being part of a three-step transcription, captioning and subtitling workflow that only outputs after each step is completed.

The company has made major changes to the pro-captioning window to make it more user-friendly and efficient. Machine-generated timecodes can be adjusted using spectrogram and manual inputs and the window now enables user to upload media, generate automatic captions and display using desired presets defined by the user or organization, it said.

An extension of the pro-captioning window, text localization can now be used as a Trance module to focus on localizing captions. Users can now import existing captions and quickly use the machine translation feature to generate highly accurate localized text specifically designed for subtitling purposes, the company said.

The caption-conformance app allows users to import text with new presets to conform with various publishing platforms. It automatically reviews text and highlights any nonconformities with selected guidelines, it said.

Digital Nirvana also has upgraded Trance’s management functions. The dashboard now allows better real-time visibility into which users are online and the progress of jobs.

The new version offers enhanced user control over processing jobs with the addition of the ability to choose from available jobs, import a transcript and create captions with existing or new presets, it said.

Trance 4.0 now allows enterprises to assign work items to internal staff and to share work items with Digital Nirvana’s service team to receive fully qualified, human-curated output using the same application, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana, a provider of media monitoring and metadata generation services, has announced that Jim Daves has joined the company as its new senior director of sales. In this role, he oversees sales to the MVPD and broadcast TV markets. 

"Jim has extensive experience in selling innovative solutions to MVPDs and broadcasters and over the years has built strong relationships with high-level executives at many of the most prominent organizations in that market," said Russell Wise, senior vice president at Digital Nirvana. "Having Jim on board is a win for Digital Nirvana and for the media companies that rely on us to make their jobs faster and easier." 

Daves has been in the business for more than 35 years. His sales expertise spans numerous hardware and software product lines associated with video and high-speed data services, interactive television, voice, OTT, IPTV, and wireless solutions. 

Daves is based in Atlanta and reports to Wise. 

FREMONT, Calif.—During the 2022 NAB Show, Digital Nirvana will be showcasing MetadataIQ, a SaaS-based offering that automates the generation of speech-to-text and video intelligence metadata, increasing the efficiency of production, pre-production, and live content creation services for Avid PAM/MAM users. 

Digital Nirvana’s MetadataIQ applies advanced machine learning and AI-based content analysis to accelerate the metadata generation process, including transferring video assets from Avid and ingesting the metadata as markers along with the assets — which saves time on metadata generation and results in better-structured, more detailed, and more accurate metadata and shorter content delivery cycles, the company reported. 

MetadataIQ also integrates directly with Digital Nirvana’s Trance platform to generate transcripts, captions, and translations in all industry-supported formats.

Digital Nirvana will be exhibiting at NAB Booth W2500 during the 2022 NAB Show. More information is available here. 

FREEMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana today announced MetadataIQ, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) metadata automation tool for users of the Avid media platform.

Integrated with Avid Interplay, MetadataIQ automates the end-to-end process of generating speech to text and video intelligence metadata for Avid assets while automatically submitting media for transcription, captioning and translations from the existing workflow, the company said.

MetadataIQ can create and ingest different types of metadata, including speech-to-text, facial recognition, OCR, logos and objects, with customizable marker durations and color codes for easy identification. These can be accessed via the Avid MediaCentral environment, it said. 

Editors type a search term within Interplay or MediaCentral, identify the relevant clip, and start creating content. For VOD and content repurposing, video intelligence metadata aids in product placement/replacement and accurately identifying ad spots, it said.

The solution offers on-premise transcoding and intelligent extraction of audio files to generate speech-to-text transcripts. Users aren't required to create a low-res proxy or manually import files into Avid MediaCentral, the company said.

MetadataIQ automatically generates speech-to-text transcripts for file-based assets in addition to streaming speech-to-text transcripts from growing audio assets in real time. Transcripts can be sent to Digital Nirvana's processing centers for high-quality, human-curated output, which is returned within Interplay, it said.

MetadataIQ integrates directly with Digital Nirvana's Trance platform for the generation of transcripts, captions and translations in all industry-supported formats. In-house teams can submit files directly from their existing workflow and receive the output as sidecar files or ingest them directly back into Interplay as markers, it said.

"By delivering complete automation over the generation and ingestion of relevant metadata as locators into Avid, MetadataIQ helps editors accurately identify relevant content to save time and effort. For example, we've had users report that the process of creating new content has been reduced from 15 hours to two hours," said Digital Nirvana CEO Hiren Hindocha.

The MetadataIQ software can be installed on-site on a dedicated server or virtual machine with Digital Nirvana providing complete support for deployment.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

LONDON—Media and entertainment enterprises are seeking automation to drive efficiencies with artificial intelligence and machine learning the technology keys. In a post-pandemic world where a remote and distributed work model is the new norm, AI engines could come into their own. 

“We’re at the beginning of a golden age of AI and ML,” says Hiren Hindocha, cofounder, president & CEO at Digital Nirvana, a Fremont, Calif.-based developer of media compliance technology. “The use in media is tremendous. It makes content searchable and translatable into multiple languages, allowing content to be consumed by users anywhere.” 

Others strike a note of caution. “AI/ML is working and has not led to the mass layoffs that some feared,” says Tom Sahara, former vice president of operations and technology for Turner Sports. “But nor has it reduced budgets by a huge percentage.” 

Julian Fernandez-Campon, CTO of Tedial, agrees, “AI/ML has become a ‘must-have’ feature across all technologies but we have to be quite cautious about the practical application of them. They’ve proved good results in some scenarios but in reality, broadcasters are not getting big benefits right now. Being able to test and select the proper AI/ML tool quickly and cost-effectively will definitely help adoption.” 

Roy Burns, vice president of media solutions at Integrated Media Technologies, a Los Angeles-based systems integrator, says customers are confused about what AI/ML is or what they want to do with it; “We have to explain, it’s not a magic bullet.” 

SPEECH TO TEXT

The key benefit and one ready for general operation today is captioning. Live speech-to-text quality is rapidly improving, leading to the possibility of fully automatic, low-latency creation of subtitles. Dalet reports time savings of up to 80% in delivering subtitled content for news and digital publishing. Additional ML capabilities allow systems to properly segment and layout captions to increase readability and compliance with subtitling guidelines. 

“Speech-to-text translation is probably most mature where there’s about a 90% confidence rate,” says Burns. “For some people that’s good enough but for others making an embarrassing mistake is still too risky. 

“It’s important to understand that the output of object or facial recognition tools are not human readable,” he adds. “They are designed to give a ton of metadata about the asset but to correlate it against your media you need a MAM [media asset management]. That’s what I try to explain—if you can ingest AI outputs to a MAM and correlate against a central database of record that is what is going to make it searchable.” 

Hearst Television has adapted its MAM with Prime Focus for automation of file management of commercial spots. Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for the station group, explains, “We have hundreds of commercials coming into our systems every day. If we have to mark in and out each time and do a quality check we are not being efficient. Instead, the MAM automates this, harvests necessary metadata and supplies it downstream to playout. There’s no reason for an operator to go into the item.” 

Addalia emphasizes the importance of metadata. “You can have the most glorious 4K image you want but if you can’t find it you may as well not have it. AI/ML is about being able to find what you need as you need it.” 

Hearst’s internal description for this is “enabled media:” Metadata-enriched video, audio or stills content that Addalia says will advance the possibilities for new workflow and products. 

“On top of speech-to-text, automatic machine translation is nearing maturity to enable multilingual captioning scenarios,” says Michael Elhadad, director of R&D for Dalet. “The main obstacle is that standard machine translation models are not fully ready to translate captions out-of-the-box. Automatic machine translation is trained on fluent text, and when translating each segment into individual subtitles, the text is not fluent enough; standard models fail to produce adequate text.” 

The alternative method, which consists of merging together caption segments into longer chunks, leads to another challenge: How to segment back the translated chunk into aligned and well-timed segments?

“A specialized ML method must be developed to address this challenge and produce high-quality translated captions,” says Elhadad. “This remains an open challenge for the industry and something that we’re working on at our research lab.”

CURRENT USES OF AI/ML IN MEDIA  

Additionally, object and face recognition logged as metadata can assist scripting and video editing, specifically with a rough cut being automatically created based on given metadata fields, for example, creating highlights from keywords, objects, text-on-screen. Tedial has been using AI/ML tools for some customers in the automatic logging of legacy archives, to identify celebrities and OCR using AI tools.

A big pain point is “text collusion,” when onscreen text (perhaps indicating a place or date) overlaps with caption files. Files presented with this error will immediately fail the QC of all the big streamers, but detecting issues manually in every version permutation is not cost-effective. 

OwnZones offers a deep analysis platform to scan content and compare it against other media items like time text. “The AI analysis tool can find the location of onscreen graphics using OCR [optical character recognition] and with information from time text is able to detect a collision,” explains Peter Artmount, product director for the Los Angeles-based developer of media management distribution technology. “A failure report is automatically sent back to whoever did the localization work to fix captioning before sending on to OTT services.” 

Typically, it would take an hour or two to manually QC and flag issues per hour of content; OwnZones claims its AI does it in 15 minutes. 

Another common use case is scene detection for censorship. Artmont describes a scenario in which an episodic drama containing occasional profanity requires closed captions to be blurred out for transmission during daytime hours. 

“Typically, you have to store all the versions you create, eating up storage on-prem,” he says. “In our example, you are storing 300–400 GB per show, yet the only difference between each version is to 3–4 MB of frames. We apply our AI analysis to generate a (IMF-compliant) composition playlist from the content. By storing only the differences [scenes with bad words] from the original we can trim content by 46%, making storage far more efficient.” 

CURRENT USE OF AI/ML IN SPORTS

Sports is a greenfield where the use of AI can leverage production to generate more tailored content for a specific audience. “With the reduction in live events, the ability to monetize valuable content from years of archives is key,” says Elhadad. 

There are two principal applications: Indexing (tagging, transcription, classification and object/face recognition) of vast archives; and automatic highlight creation, event-driven automatic overlays and titling. 

Aviv Arnon, cofounder of WSC Sports, an Israeli-based developer of sports media production technology, says its platform is taking “dirty” production streams of a sport into its cloud-based platform where an AI/ML system breaks the game into hundreds of individual plays. The system applies a variety of algorithms to ID each clip, make it searchable, and to clip each with optimal start and end times and then gathers the results into video packages for publishing. 

“Our ML modules understand the particular patterns for how basketball is produced including replays, camera movement, scene changes,” Arnon said. “We have all those indicators mapped to automatically produce an entire game.” 

He says sports leagues need to scale their content operations by packaging different clips to social media and other websites and that AI is the only way to do so rapidly. 

“I can’t say it’s 100% accurate but 99% is too low,” he said. “A better question might be, ‘if I had a manual editor would they have clipped it a second shorter or longer?’ It’s not about the veracity of the content. There’s no doubt it has helped speed up the process by allowing an operator to handle a lot of content in a short amount of time.” 

Elhadad explains that indexing is collected frame by frame (e.g., a frame contains the face or the jersey of a known player), but search results should be presented as clips (coherent segments where clues collected from subsequent frames are aggregated into meaningful classification). 

“While descriptive standards exist to capture the nature of such aggregation (MPEG-7), the industry has not yet produced methods to predict such aggregation in an effective manner.”

SMPTE DEVELOPING AI/ML BEST PRACTICES

Work is under way in this area. SMPTE is working with the ETC@USC’s AI & Neuroscience in Media Project to help the media community better understand the scope of the AI technology. 

“AI is promising but it’s an amorphous set of technologies,” says project director Yves Bergquist, noting that a quarter of organizations report over a 50% failure rate in their AI initiatives. Consultancy Deloitte also found that half of media organizations report major shortages of AI talent. 

“There are a lot of challenges around data quality, formats, privacy, ontologies and how to deploy AI/ML models in enterprise,” Bergquist says. “AI/ML is experimental and expensive and there are duplications across the industry. 

“We think there are strong opportunities for interoperability throughout the media industry,” he adds. “Not everything has to be in the form of standards. We also want to share best practices.” 

The task force is made up of about 40 members including Sony Pictures, WarnerMedia and Adobe. Research is focused on data and ontologies, AI ethics, platform performance and interoperability, and organizational and cultural integration. “That last topic is the most important and least understood challenge,” Addalia says. “It speaks to the ability of an organization to create an awareness and understanding of what AI is and is not, how to interpret its output, how to understand the data.” 

The task force is “expecting to make a substantial contribution in the area of suggesting best practices in terms of creating a culture of analytics,” he said. 

Addalia agrees that no single tech provider can do it all. “TV is a cottage industry,” he said. “We have to use our collective resources properly so we can leapfrog into next-gen where we have automated workflows. This requires cross-industry collaboration. Vendors must work together.” 

There’s also an onus on end users to provide feedback, Addalia added. “They need to define the use case and the desired results,” he said. 

Muralidhar Sridhar, vice president of AI/ ML products at Prime Focus says M&E needs specific treatment and that ready-made AI engines have not transformed the industry. 

Human-like comparison of video masters, transcription for subtitling and captions, AI-based QC, reconformance of a source from a master, automatic retiming of pre- and post-edit masters are all important use cases, he says, provided the AI can be made to understand the nuances. 

“The problem is that while most AI engines try to augment content analysis, the ability to accurately address nuances is not easy to match,” he said. “Marking segments like cards, slates and montages takes time and cost. It needs 100% accuracy and 100% frame accuracy." 

Prime Focus’ prescription for clients like Star India, Hotstar and Hearst Television is to combine computer vision techniques with neural networks where necessary then customize the solution for the customer. 

DEVELOPMENTS AHEAD

Higher accuracy and speed across all AI/ ML capabilities continues to advance. Fernandez-Campon advocates “Intelligent BPM,” where AI tools improve workflows by taking automatic decisions and focusing the work of operators on creative tasks. “That’s why it’s key to offer flexible and cost-effective AI/ML tools that can easily integrate into workflows and be swapped one for another,” he said. 

Dalet is working on a new approach to indexing faces and creating “private knowledge graphs” it thinks will speed up the process of cataloging large content archives and building libraries of local personalities for regional needs. Current technologies are not able to easily recognize faces throughout a historical archive, the company says. 

“Better context-aware speech transcription, more accurate tagging and smoother automatic editing will further reduce the need for manual, repetitive tasks,” says Elhadad. “AI/ML empower content producers and distributors to focus on higher value creative work. AI/ML is becoming pervasive: another tool in the box that users will find increasingly beneficial without the doom-laden ‘man vs. machine’ context.” 

FREMONT, Calif.—With Volicon Observer officially shut down, Digital Nirvana is making former users aware that it is offering a migration option to its MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform.

Reports of Volicon Observer going away popped up earlier this year, at which time Digital Nirvana first let it be known that the MonitorIQ would be an option for Volicon users looking for continued support.

The MonitorIQ enables broadcasters to record, store, monitor, analyze and repurpose content. It is built on the Linux platform and gives broadcasters access to AI-based cloud microservices for closed caption generation, caption quality assessment, caption realignment and video intelligence for objects, ads, logos and facial recognition; has all the key features of Volicon’s Observer, says Digital Nirvana.

In addition, the latest MonitorIQ 7.0 has an updated and intuitive web interface, core feature improvements and other new capabilities.

Digital Nirvana also says that core developers from Volicon are now at Digital Nirvana, which will help Observer users transition to the new platform and find a close match to the Observer feature set, said Russell Wise, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Digital Nirvana.

For more information, visit www.digital-nirvana.com.  

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has rolled out MediaServicesIQ, a suite of cloud-based microservices that use advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to help streamline media production, post-production and distribution workflows.

MediaServicesIQ is designed as a one-stop portal for accessing Digital Nirvana’s AI-powered tech solutions, which include speech-to-text, content classification, closed caption generation and conformance, and a video intelligent engine that can detect ads, logos, objects and faces.

“We’ve created a set of core AI capabilities and made them available in a layer that can be easily accessed by newsrooms, live sports and entertainment productions, post house and other media operations to expedite critical processes, reduce mundane tasks and free creative personnel to do their jobs,” said Russell Wise, senior vice president at Digital Nirvana.

Integrating MediaServicesIQ with Digital Nirvana’s MonitorIQ 7.0 compliance logging system allows for powerful insights and video intelligence applications, including:

• The ability to record, store and retrieve content for compliance, quality of service and insights into broadcast content;
• Automatic transcription of content from live broadcasts and commercials; 
• Automatic extraction of logos, objects, faces and shots;
• The ability to identify ad breaks in logged content;
• The ability to identify restricted words or topics in recorded/logged content, as well as the classification of incoming ad material for restricted content;
• Generation of automated reports for loudness compliance, QoE, SCTE inserts and ad detection and identification;
• Automatic content classification; and
• The ability to access the quality and conformance of captions

MediaServicesIQ can also integrate with MetadatorIQ to provide automated metadata creation in pre-production, production and live content workflows. In addition, MediaServicesIQ provides access to the Trance 3.0 toolset for automatic closed caption/subtitle generation and closed-caption quality conformance.

For more information, visit www.digital-nirvana.com. 

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana is introducing MetadatorIQ, the latest generation of its platform for automating metadata creation in preproduction, production and live content workflows.

MetadatorIQ is designed as a hybrid on-premises/SaaS application that applies advanced machine learning and AI-based content analysis to accelerate metadata creation and shorten content delivery cycles. Digital Nirvana says MetadatorIQ is optimized for Avid MediaCentral | Production Management assets.

The platform automates the end-to-end process of creating transcriptions and video-based metadata for Avid-based media assets. It automatically transfers assets from Avid MediaCentral and then applies video intelligence tools to generate descriptive metadata. MetadatorIQ also ingests assets and their time-coded metadata back into Avid, as well as with markers that make assets instantly searchable. 

MedatorIQ can run on a dedicated server or a virtual machine. The original asset is extracted from the Avid watch folder and a low-res proxy or audio-only version is created for transferring to the cloud. Metadata is then returned to the on-premise application and ingested back into Avid MediaCentral with locators.

Digital Nirvana plans to launch MedatorIQ in the second quarter of 2020.

For more information, visit www.digital-nirvana.com.  

FREEMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has released version 3.0 of its Trance enterprise-grade, cloud-based closed captioning and transcription application.

"Trance 3.0 includes a convenient new transcript correction window, a text translation engine that simplifies and speeds captioning in additional languages and automated caption conformance to accelerate delivery of content to new platforms and geographic regions," said Russell Wise, senior vice president at Digital Nirvana.

The release, which brings together speech-to-text technology and other AI-driven processes, enhances both the efficiency of the internal captioning processes at media companies, while opening up new business opportunities, and allows those working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic to maintain their productivity while preparing content for distribution on a variety of platforms, he added.

Enhancements include:

•  Captioning and translation: Trance 3.0 offers a new transcript correction window to simplify the process of reviewing and correcting transcripts used for closed caption. Time-synced video and captions are presented side by side in a window with tools for editing text, adding visual cues, music tags and speaker tags. Source text can be translated automatically into one or more languages. 
•  Caption conformance and quality assurance: Trance 3.0’s caption conformance and quality assurance capabilities allow users to configure captions according to the style guidelines of each distribution platform. Users configure and apply presents for target platforms, and trance automates formatting. Captions are displayed in a captioner window for final comparison to video. Once approved, the file is used to generate captions needed for the multiple output formats required for distribution. 
•  Orchestration and project management: The latest version also orchestrates the closed-captioning process from end to end. It provides a project management layer that centralizes and streamlines tasks to minimize manual oversight and intervention. Trance automatically handles the movement and processing of content, transcription, translation and captioning. It tracks the productivity, workload and availability of different staff members and identifies the most appropriate person to task with a particular job. Trance 3.0 also delivers notifications and alerts as needed. 

More information is available on the Digital Nirvana's website. 

FREEMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has  announced the release of the seventh generation of its MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging platform.

MonitorIQ 7.0 includes an updated, intuitive web interface, improvements to core features and new capabilities, such as single-click access to content and metadata, to make regularly performed tasks simple.

“Migration to MonitorIQ 7.0 gives broadcasters all the key features of Volicon's beloved Observer product, and it improves upon each one to provide unparalleled broadcast monitoring and compliance capabilities,” said Keith DesRosiers, director of sales solutions at Digital Nirvana. 

"We've updated the platform with uniquely advanced capabilities and—equally or more important—we have leveraged our extensive experience in design engineering for monitoring systems to redesign the user interface so that users of all technical abilities can complete key tasks with just a few clicks.”

The broadcast monitoring and compliance platform enables broadcasters to record, store, monitor, analyze and repurpose content with a just few clicks. The platform records content natively from anywhere in the video delivery chain, making it possible for users to gain knowledge about their broadcasts for regulatory and compliance purposes. 

New MonitorIQ 7.0 features include:

• Single-click access to content and metadata, making metadata that’s timestamped and indexed to video for each asset available on a single page. A wide variety of metadata information, such as data on loudness, closed captions and ratings, is supported. 
• Rapid clip and share capabilities via a thumbnail storyboard user interface that makes identifying  content fast for rapid creation of frame-accurate clips. Grabbed thumbnails can be exported and transcoding done as needed to enable collaboration. 
• Quick-compare and competitive analysis of channels. Besides video, the new release enables comparison of ratings data, SCTE 35/104 messages, closed captions and subtitles and loudness. 
• AI and machine learning services integration, which enables functions such as identifying ads on competitive channels, logo detection and recognition, transcript generation for ads and content, face recognition and closed caption conformance to internal and external guidelines. 
• Hybrid cloud architecture that enables broadcasters to archive content locally or in the cloud. 

More information is available on the Digital Nirvana website and visitors can schedule a virtual live demo. 

Digital Nirvana’s spring demonstration of products will focus on its latest tech designed to help streamline broadcast monitoring and content generation.

The first such product is Trance, a cloud-based transcription, closed captioning and translation workflow. The cloud-based architecture supports an integrated automatic speech-to-text engine and easy-to-use interface. The system allows for captions to be generated per presets that can conform with specific style guides. Trance can automatically generate transcripts, including in multiple languages. It can also centralize workflows like job allocation, caption edits, role assignment, report generation and status monitoring. The ability to ingest Avid assets directly for caption generation and/or metadata enhancement is available as well. Users can access media assets from cloud storage, Avid Media Central, SFTP, local servers or via an API.

The next generation MonitorIQ 7.0 compliance and broadcast monitoring system will also be on hand. This latest version features one-touch access to content and associated metadata for content review, analysis, troubleshooting and proof of performance. It has advanced analysis for comparing SCTE messages. There are also new Clip and Share tools for content sharing and collaboration. In addition, MonitorIQ 7.0 can be integrated with Digital Nirvana’s Media Service IQ, which adds AI-based cloud microservices that include transcript generation for ads and content, caption quality assessment, caption realignment and video intelligence for objects, ads, logos and facial recognition.

Metadator rounds out Digital Nirvana’s offerings. This software-as-a-service platform automates metadata generation for production, preproduction and live content, and now can integrate with Avid Interplay for the creation of automatic transcripts, labels for objects, faces, logos and other metadata with locators for Avid users. Additional features include on-screen text recognition, shot-change detection and explicit content detection.

For more information, visit www.digital-nirvana.com.  

FREMONT, Calif.—Volicon Observer’s days are numbered, as support for the broadcast monitoring and compliance platform will end this June, though no official date has been provided.

In preparation for this shut down, Digital Nirvana has announced it will use its MonitorIQ broadcast monitoring and compliance logging system to help create a migration path for Volicon Observer users.

MonitorIQ enables broadcasters to record, store, monitor, analyze and repurpose content, says Digital Nirvana. It is built on a Linux platform and is extensible into broadcast operations with open APIs. Broadcasters can also gain access to AI-based cloud microservices for closed caption generation, caption quality assessment, caption realignment and video intelligence for objects, ads, logos and facial recognition.

“Broadcasters have a window of opportunity between now and June to make a thoughtful decision about how they will move forward with broadcast monitoring and compliance logging,” said Russell Wise, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Digital Nirvana. “We’ve been very pleased with the number of Volicon users that have already migrated to MonitorIQ. The market seems to understand that we have valuable past experience as well as the forward-looking vision to take them wherever they want to go.”

Digital Nirvana will offer broadcasters a virtual live demo of MonitorIQ’s features, or stop by its booth (SU9505) at the 2020 NAB Show.

For more information, visit www.digital-nirvana.com.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct the fact that Digital Nirvana does not own Volicon Observer.

SAN DIEGO—Regulatory compliance was the original driver for content logging, and it continues to be an important use case today. However, over the years, content logging technology has become a valuable tool for a much wider array of applications to gather insights about broadcast content, provide valuable analytics, and collaborate across the media enterprise.

Allowing broadcasters to build an archive of aired content, logging solutions deliver a rich store of media and data for insights and intelligence about the aired product. Updates to current products allow broadcasters to address not only the latest compliance requirements, but also the demands of internal groups including sales, social media, and the executive team.

As broadcasters move to upgrade or replace end-of-life compliance products, they have the opportunity to take advantage of fundamental compliance logging functions, as well as next-generation capabilities that improve their efficiency in working with captured media.

THE ESSENTIALS

To meet regulatory and compliance requirements (i.e., closed captioning, loudness, and indecency/profanity/obscenity), broadcasters need an intuitive and complete solution for collecting information about aired content.

Recorded video is and always has been the ultimate affidavit of what was actually broadcast over the air, and it serves as proof that all applicable regulations and requirements are being met. What kind of basic functionality ensures that a broadcaster can leverage recorded content successfully?

Generally speaking, the essentials have remained the same, though formats and delivery mechanisms have changed. Native capture of content from any video source in the content chain has always been a must for quality assurance. It enables critical visibility into every link in the delivery chain and into every handoff. These days, however, the deployed solution must support many more formats: SDI, IP, ASI, 8VSB, HDMI, QAM, HLS, DASH, RTMP, and DVB-T/T2/S/S2.

The system also must capture compliance-related data such as subtitling and key calculated values, particularly those used for loudness, and accurately correlate it with video and audio content. Recorded content is much more useful if captured metadata also includes asrun logs, ratings data, Dolby metadata, and SCTE 35/104 ad insertion data.

A user-friendly interface and easy access to archived content and metadata both help users to work with the solution to do their jobs effectively, whether in engineering or another area of the business.

Finally, as with any system supporting broadcast operations, the compliance logging solution must be reliable, ensuring maximum uptime, and be readily scalable to support straightforward system expansion.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Together, all of the aforementioned essentials should serve as a baseline for a new or upgraded logging and monitoring solution. Next-generation products introduce features and capabilities that open the door to even greater efficiency and utility.

Find content faster—Today’s logging and monitoring solutions give users consolidated access to content and metadata in a convenient and visually appealing interface with familiar media player controls. In addition to tools for finding, clipping, exporting, and analyzing audio and video with a minimum of clicks, newer interfaces provide immediate access to related metadata. Also leveraging metadata, powerful search capabilities across captured and user-generated data simplify and accelerate the process of finding specific content.

Better analytics for higher-quality content and ad delivery—Sophisticated analysis and reporting tools in next-generation compliance systems take quality and problem analysis to a new level. Giving broadcasters the ability to compare and dig more deeply into SCTE messages the system can facilitate more extensive analysis of ad insertion data and proof of ad delivery. In-depth transport stream analysis coupled with the ability to show an impact on QOE reduces the time spent on troubleshooting, and gives engineers a real-time understanding of errors and their impact on quality of experience.

Efficient storage options—One of the more significant additions to modern compliance logging and monitoring solutions is support for on-premise, cloud, or hybrid implementation. By extending storage into the datacenter/cloud while maintaining ready access to stored content, broadcasters can build more collaborative workflows and take better advantage of remote resources. Automated policy-based storage helps broadcasters optimize their use of local and remote storage, typically with a limited amount of near-term storage on a local SAN or NAS and a larger long-term archive in the cloud.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based microservices within the broadcast industry has matured to the point that they too can be a valuable addition to a logging and monitoring system. Running in the cloud as a layer atop the compliance system, microservices can be spun up as needed to complete specific tasks at scale. Processing tasks can include speech-to-text for closed-caption or transcript generation; assess closed-caption or Teletext conformance to streaming services’ standards; and harvest new insights from the stored video through face, logo, and image recognition; and ad detection and identification.

While legacy compliance logging and monitoring systems simply don’t offer the rich capabilities of modern systems, they still do many things right. The best next-generation solutions build on those successes and introduce new capabilities that soon will become essentials in their own right. Backed by a responsive and knowledgeable vendor, a new solution can empower the broadcaster to address compliance and regulatory requirements while leveraging captured content to support new projects and services.

Russell Wise is senior vice president of Digital Nirvana and was previously a top executive for Volicon and Verizon Digital Media Services.

FREMONT, Calif.—Digital Nirvana has pulled the curtain back on its new cloud-based closed-captioning and metadata enhancement system, Trance. Meant to provide new efficiencies for captioning and subtitling workflows, Trance offers features that include a cloud-based infrastructure, an integrated and automated speech-to-text engine and an easy-to-use interface.

Integrated with a proven STT engine, Trance has advanced speech-to-text capabilities for generating automatic, multilingual transcripts for every work item within the application.

The platform also centralizes workflows such as job allocation, caption edits, role assignment, report generation and status monitoring for streamlined project management. The cloud-based architecture allows for the access of content from anywhere as well as eliminating the need for individual software installs and updates. In addition, Trance can ingest Avid assets directly for caption generation and/or metadata enhancement.

Users have the ability to access media assets from cloud storage, Avid Media Central, SFTP, local servers or through an API, with the final output able to be automatically converted into multiple sidecar formats and sent to predefined destinations.

Digital Nirvana is expected to feature the Trance system at its NAB Show New York booth, N369.

LAS VEGAS—Digital Nirvana has announced the products that it will be featuring at its booth for the 2019 NAB Show, it includes the MonitorIQ 6.0, Metadator 2.0, Caption Quality Check, a postproduction captioning service and the Closed Caption Synchronization system.

The MonitorIQ is a Linux-based system that provides signal and loudness monitoring, air-check logging, competitive analysis and content repurposing. It can automatically record and monitor linear and/or OTT streams and alerts for loss of video, audio or closed captions. Other features include live streaming and recording, SmartSearch, SmartAlerts and frame-accurate cut clip editing with an option for variable-speed playback. New to the platform is an updated user interface that features a built-in HTML5 player that eliminates the need to install Flash of ActiveX.

With the Metadator 2.0, Digital Nirvana offers a scalable SaaS platform that automates the process of metadata generation for production, pre-production and live content. The 2.0 version includes off-the-shelf integration with AVID Interplay for automated speech-to-text generation that simplifies the process of automated transcription and metadata generation and is capable of object identification, on-screen text recognition, shot-change recognition and explicit content detection.

Caption Quality Check is a newly launched product that is designed to help with producing closed captions for different distribution channels. Key features include reporting operational and technical non-conformance, automatic corrections, format conversion and frame-rate conversion. The system accepts different file formats and users can choose a combination of automatic and manual services for outputting and receiving publish-ready captions in the formats requested for distribution via various platforms, including OTT and VOD.

Then there is the Closed Caption Generation platform that offers postproduction captioning services and can take in video in a variety of formats and provide output caption files in multiple formats. Features include secure protocol implementation and speech-to-text integration. Users can also opt for caption files in multiple formats for the same video asset.

Rounding out Digital Nirvana’s captioning services is the Closed Caption Synchronization SaaS platform that automates the process of repurposing closed captions. The system can receive and deliver content in multiple input and output formats and is integrated with speech-to-text technology.

Digital Nirvana will be located at booth SU9807.

To register for the NAB Show, visit www.nabshow.com.

NEW YORK—Compliance monitoring has evolved over the past decade from simple broadcast logging to what is now a much broader range of applications that encompass monitoring, analysis and even revenue-generating functions for broadcasters, OTT providers and MVPD operators. Today’s digital tools have largely replaced the VHS long-play tape recorders to log transmissions, and other new technologies promise to only increase how broadcasters and others can utilize and even monetize what was once just compliance monitoring.

“The need for compliance loggers comes from the legal requirement to log all broadcasted content,” said Ken Frommert, president of ENCO, a Southfield, Mich.-based provider of broadcast technology systems. “This need, arising from the national telecom regulators, such as the FCC, did not change. However, the ever-increasing economic pressure on the same broadcasters, coupled with the fact the compliance loggers are an economic liability with no real business benefit, will necessarily force a technological evolution that will change the loggers into becoming economically beneficial.”

FROM BROADCAST TO OTT

Compliance monitoring is now at a massive transformational stage.

“To start, while compliance services have their roots in traditional broadcasting, we’re seeing the need for compliance services to not only cover broadcast, but also OTT content,” said Ariff Sidi, chief product officer for content delivery network provider Verizon Digital Media Services. “An increasing number of services now offer the ability to monitor OTT streams, and that trend will continue this year and beyond. We’ll see monitoring capabilities enhanced to cover the full path—from ingestion to delivery and through to the end user experience as well. Second, there will continue to be a major shift from compliance monitoring services being hardware-based to cloud-based.”

Even traditional compliance monitoring is now changing in terms of the content being monitored, the level of detail and even how long to store the results. Much of this wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago.

“A simple studio-based ‘Air Recorder’ at the output of master control, keeping recordings for 30-90 days is insufficient,” said Ted Korte, COO of Qligent, a Melbourne, Fla.-based developer of broadcast monitoring and QoE technology. “More and more functions are either being outsourced or moved closer to the end user, and so should compliance monitoring. Having a number of monitoring points covering each of the delivery platforms, is a much more accurate representation of an audience and thus creates a more comprehensive compliance verification. Since new regulations are likely to evolve it is also a good practice to record all the associated metadata with the media and to record everything for extended periods of time to allow post verification analysis and audits.”

ORIGINS IN CALM

One of the key components of compliance monitoring is that audio levels are consistent as required by the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which barred TV commercials—as well as other content—from increasing in volume at commercial breaks. Since the introduction of CALM it has been mostly “all quiet” on the audio front as broadcasters have mostly complied, but new technologies would bring up similar issues.

“Commercial loudness has been an issue since the 1980s, but finally modern audio systems really made it noticeable,” said William T. Hayes, director of engineering for Iowa Public Television and president of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. “Today the issue is how people consume content in other ways, and these services don’t follow the rules set in place by CALM. The major streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Video are pretty good, but then you can instantly tell that YouTube videos and others aren’t CALM-compliant.”

For audio compliance, self-regulation could be one solution, but new technology at the consumer level might also solve the issue.

“The reality is that everyone who has a service that provides video and audio knows they need to do something,” Hayes added. “But self-regulating may not solve all the issues. However, smart TVs could be made to automatically adjust volume to a consistent level.”

FULL STREAM AHEAD

In a recently released white paper, Mediaproxy, a provider of compliance, monitoring and analysis technology noted that as the industry has to deal with an increasing number of transmission platforms that span from traditional broadcasts to OTT logging and monitoring paradigms have also shifted.

“It’s become apparent that with an increase in scale, the tools have to extend in versatility. Making sure that the right content is transmitted at the right place and time across the different outputs is paramount. Loggers are hence expected to have advanced video analysis features like content and source matching” said Erik Otto, Mediaproxy president. "However, this also means that OTT providers will have to address challenges, as streaming doesn’t fit in very well with traditional compliance monitoring."

“Linear and nonlinear streaming is very different as to how it is delivered and consumed, making end-to-end visibility and control much more complex,” said Korte at Qligent. “Streaming is changing all the usual points of reference such as primetime, demographics, DMAs, and even the definition of ‘live’.’’ All this new technology and opportunity will also invite new regulations regarding privacy and data protection [end users], fraud [i.e. advertising], piracy [i.e. rights], ratings [social media], etc. from multiple government agencies as well as vendor/service provider SLAs.”

Yet, unlike in a traditional broadcast, which typically has one version of content delivered to all viewers and with differences often the result of local market requirements, OTT could enable content providers to deliver innumerable discrete streams delivered to users—differentiated by region, device, preference or other factors.

“This same ‘one-to-one’ approach can be applied to compliance monitoring systems, too,” added Sidi. “In addition to monitoring the entire cloud workflow, it can check streams by region or other critical factors.”

The downside for content providers is that these opportunities could require more work.

“Budgets haven’t gone up,” and companies are not hiring replacements when employees leave, according to Hiren Hindocha, CEO of Digital Nirvana. “However today’s new compliance monitoring tools can address those requirements.”

AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

Technology could certainly play a major role in this evolution of monitoring and logging, and could take advantage of artificial intelligence or machine learning, which could more easily manage the influx of “Big Data” that is created at a near constant rate.

“The big trend is mixing technical compliance with content compliance,” said ENCO’s Frommert. “The way we see things, the loggers are producing enormous amounts of video data. This ‘Big Data’ is just sitting there for months until it is deleted and replaced by newer data, with no effective use. The use of Big Data technologies is gradually enriching the value of these video records and adding a number of useful functions.”

This, in turn could change compliance monitoring from something required and which can be costly, into a potential revenue stream instead.

Compliance tools are required by law, and thus become an expense for broadcasters, Hayes said, who added that today, AI can turn compliance into a value add instead.

“AI can analyze your audio for CALM compliance, but could also make it easier to ensure that closed captioning makes sense, including that the right version of a word is used. But it can also turn it into a profit center as it becomes a service, whether that is a tool for viewers to find content, or for those in commercial broadcasting so that advertisers and vendors can track their results.”

This could include automated detection of commercial ad spots, which could replace what has been a manually intensive work.

“This technology [AI] can scan many channels and provide very accurate affidavit reports on the number of ad spots,” added Frommert. “Similarly, the ads watching technology can also analyze competing channels and provide comparisons channel to channel on the number of ads sold and aired.”

AI could further automatically create captions and subtitles via speech recognition technology, while also utilizing rich metadata for searching and organizing the vast archives of video, which are stored on-premise or in the cloud.

“This can make it easier for people to find the content they want, as it is needs to be available to whomsoever, whenever they want it,” said Hindocha. “Metadata is really ripe for AI and machine learning, as it can help the viewer decide whether they want to consume that content. Metadata, as a side of the logging, helps you slice and dice the variety of content that is out there.”

FREMONT, Calif.— Digital Nirvana, a provider of digital video equipment and services, will will showcase v5.2 of its flagship MonitorIQ media and management platform at NAB Show New York. The company’s exhibit will also showcase its latest metadata generation, subtitling and closed captioning solutions.

With functions spanning multichannel signal monitoring, logging, loudness monitoring, SmartSearch, ad verification, content repurposing and archive, MonitorIQ enables broadcasters to monitor their video, primarily to meet compliance requirements.

v5.2 adds features that enhance the platform’s efficiency, stability and end-user experience, including: search filter options with calendar controls, improved geographic time zone display and NAS configuration options to change retention period of original and proxy encoded files to use storage space more effectively.

Other features improve configuring the player for closed captions, subtitles, teletext, NAC, LKFS and ratings, and enabling player controls in full-screen mode, as well as support for network tuner devices using network device discovery (via SSDP). The new version also improves support for IPTV protocols (MPEG-TS over HTTP), recording H.265 in MPEG-TS, and recording multiple channels from a single input.

Also on display is Metadator, a software application that the company claims will make the Avid editing process faster and easier by generating locators for media assets, along with metadata, outside of Avid’s Interplay MAM system. It automates extracting video and audio, and generating transcripts using speech-to-text technology, and then ingests this content back into Avid Interplay so that metadata can be found more easily during editing.

Digital Nirvana will hold demos in booth N546. To register, visit the show website.

FREMONT, Calif. — At the 2018 IBC Show from September 14–18 at the RAI in Amsterdam, Digital Nirvana, a provider of digital video equipment and services, will debut v5.2 of its flagship MonitorIQ media and management platform in Hall 14, Stand D05. The company’s exhibit will also showcase its latest metadata generation, subtitling, and closed captioning solutions.

With functions spanning multichannel signal monitoring, logging, loudness monitoring, SmartSearch, ad verification, content repurposing and archive, MonitorIQ enables broadcasters to monitor their video, primarily to meet compliance requirements.

v5.2 adds features that enhance the platform’s efficiency, stability, and end-user experience, including: search filter options with calendar controls, improved geographic time zone display, and NAS configuration options to change retention period of original and proxy encoded files to use storage space more effectively.

Other features improve configuring the player for closed captions, subtitles, teletext, NAC, LKFS and ratings, and enabling player controls in full-screen mode, as well as support for network tuner devices using network device discovery (via SSDP). The new version also improves support for IPTV protocols (MPEG-TS over HTTP), recording H.265 in MPEG-TS, and recording multiple channels from a single input.

Also debuting at IBC is Metadator, a new software application that the company claims will make the Avid editing process faster and easier by generating locators for media assets, along with metadata, outside of Avid’s Interplay MAM system. It automates extracting video and audio, and generating transcripts using speech-to-text technology, and then ingests this content back into Avid Interplay so that metadata can be found more easily during editing.

Digital Nirvana also offers a cloud-based caption generation workflow for prerecorded and online video content that combines automated speech-to-text conversion with experienced captioners, reducing the time and cost to publish and providing better search engine performance. The company’s cloud-based caption synchronization service automatically realigns live broadcast captions for online usage, utilizing audio fingerprinting to automate near-live synchronization of live broadcast captions.

Digital Nirvana will be in Hall 14, Stand D05 at the RAI. 

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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.

LAS VEGAS—At the 2018 NAB Show, Digital Nirvana will feature its full suite of media management products and services, including an automated, cloud-based caption generation service that provides automated speech-to-text conversion and experienced captioners for pre-recorded and online video content.

The caption synchronization service automatically re-aligns live broadcast captions for online usage. The subtitling creation service utilizes automated speech-to-text capabilities for multi-format or customized subtitling generation in all standard broadcast and IP formats. And the video logging service automatically generates transcripts, keywords, etc., for the footage prior to editing.

On the product side, CAR/TS (Capture, Analyze, Replay – Transport Stream) is a standalone media management product that records and monitors the transport stream, provides alerts of non-compliance and offers time-shifted playout. Monitor IQ Media Management Platform Lite can monitor and repurpose content using a web-based GUI without hardware. It can accommodate one ATSC channel along with sub channels FM/AM, ASI or SDI input.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. Digital Nirvana will be in booth SU10121. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.

NEW YORK—Digital Nirvana is preparing its full suite of media management products for the 2017 NAB Show New York. Among the products set to be displayed include closed captioning systems, automated sports clipping service and a new version of the MonitorIQ media management platform.

Digital Nirvana’s sports clipping service provides a workflow and customization options to automatically analyze sports broadcasts in real time and generates ready-to-publish clips. The service is coupled with automated caption synchronization, enabling sports broadcasters to publish sports media content online and via social media without any considerable time delay.

Also on display are the company’s cloud-based closed captioning, subtitling and video logging services. The services offer post-production, pop-on and roll-up captioning services, as well as caption generation for all pre-recorded and online video content through an automated process over the cloud. Digital Nirvana’s cloud-based caption synchronization technologies use audio fingerprinting to automate near-live synchronization of live broadcast captions. There is also automated speech-to-text conversion.

The MonitorIQ media management platform offers a range of multi-channel signal monitoring, repurposing, logging, compliance and archiving functions. It’s latest version, v5.0, features cloud-based recording, OTT stream monitoring functions and HTML-5 and HTTP live streaming support; it can also record from Matrox’s Monarch HDX streaming appliance.

Digital Nirvana also has plans to showcase its standalone media management products, including the CAR/TS transport stream recorder, AnyStreamIQ for cloud-based OTT monitoring and MediaPro for content repurposing.

Digital Nirvana will exhibit from booth N662.

FREMONT, CALIF.—Digital Nirvana is set to use the IBC 2017 stage to showcase new services and updated media management products.

Among the new features that will be introduced at IBC is the ability to automatically generate sports highlight reels through Digital Nirvana’s Automated Sports Clipping service. A set of clips automatically selected will represent a collection of highlights from a designated period or for the entire game. The service analyzes sports broadcasts in real-time and generates ready-to-publish clips. It can also generate images and GIFs. In addition, the service provides metadata and caption synchronization, as well as an option for manually clearing up caption text.

Digital Nirvana will also have its Avid Interplay Connector making its debut at the show. The system enables video content owners working on Avid Media Central to transfer media data securely to the cloud for generation of logs/metadata/transcripts with timecodes and receive them directly within the user’s workflow.

There will also be demonstrations of the cloud-based Closed Captioning, Subtitling and Video Logging services. The company’s Caption Synchronization service uses audio fingerprinting to automate near-live synchronization of live broadcast captions with the ability to revise the text. It offers caption generation for all pre-recorded and online video content through an automated process over the cloud, with options to create multiple formats and integrate with the user’s video platform. Another feature is the automated speech-to-text conversion.

Additional products set to be at the show include Digital Nirvana’s Monitor IQ media management platform, CAR/TS transport stream recorder, AnyStream IQ for OTT monitoring and MediaPro for content repurposing.

IBC 2017 runs from Sept. 15-19 in Amsterdam. Digital Nirvana will be located at booth 14.P25 throughout the show.

LAS VEGAS—Digital Nirvana plans to bring media and management products and services to the 2017 NAB Show, including v5.0 of its flagship MonitorIQ platform for multi-channel signal monitoring, repurposing, logging, compliance and archiving. Digital Nirvana’s v5.0 adds cloud-based recording, OTT stream monitoring, HTML5 and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) support, and recording from Matrox’s Monarch HDX streaming appliance.

Digital Nirvana also offers AnyStreamIQ, a cloud-based OTT monitoring solution that records and monitors streamed media to prove web captioning compliance and proof of airing for advertisers, and Media Pro, which enables users to easily record content to quickly cut, clip and share with social media and the cloud.

Digital Nirvana will also display the CAR/TS (Capture, Analyze, Replay/Transport Stream) transport stream recorder and monitor that provides alerts of non-compliance. It also allows users to cut segments and export sections of the transport stream for more detailed analysis, and time-shifts playout for multiple time zone broadcasts and disaster recovery.

Booth exhibits will include a demo of automated cloud-based closed captioning generation and synchronization. The caption synchronization service leverages audio fingerprinting to automatically detect and re-time captions in a near-live timeframe to enable repurposing of live broadcast captions for online delivery.

The 2017 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 24-27. Digital Nirvana will be in boothSU14312. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

NEW YORK–Digital Nirvana will showcase its flagship MonitorIQ media management platform, its new closed-captioning offerings and the CAR/TS transport stream recorder. The MonitorIQ media management platform delivers multichannel signal monitoring, logging, compliance and archiving functions. Its new user interface can also record from Matrox's Monarch HDX streaming appliance.

The company’s closed-captioning offerings include an automated closed-captioning tool and automated caption synchronization service. The tool’s Advanced Voice Recognition Software can either generate a caption of already-produced clips that don’t have closed captioning or produce captions of live broadcasts.

The CAR/TS, also known as the Capture, Analyze, Replay Transport Stream recorder monitors and records the transport stream while also being able to cut segments and export sections of the transport stream for more detailed analysis. The CAR/TS system also provides time-shifted playout for multiple time zone broadcasts and a disaster recovery solution for keeping a broadcaster’s signal on-air with recorded content.

Digital Nirvana is located in booth 732.

FREMONT, CALIF.—Media Management technology developers Digital Nirvana is getting a push in the Southwestern U.S. from L.S. Enroth, per a recent announcement from the company. L.S. Enroth & Associates will act as a manufacturer representative for Digital Nirvana in southern California, southern Nevada and all of Arizona.

Part of the range of equipment that L.S. Enroth will be helping to distribute includes Digital Nirvana’s Monitor IQ media management platform. Version 5.0 of the cloud-based software-as-a-service system delivers multi-channel signal monitoring, logging, compliance and archiving functions.

L.S. Enroth will also rep the CAR/TS transport stream recorder, which records and monitors the transport stream and provides alerts on non-compliance.

Digital Nirvana’s recently released closed captioning service is also set to be included.

NEWARK, CALIF. – Digital Nirvana has appointed Daniel Wasilko to the director of sales position for the company’s broadcast products. One of Wasilko’s primary responsibilities will be to manage the company’s MontiorIQ media management platform to national and international customers.

Daniel Wasilko

Wasilko joins Digital Nirvana from Volicon, where he served as sales director for six years. He also worked as a strategic accounts manager at WEGENER, national accounts manager at Thales Broadcast & Multimedia, regional account manager at Harmonic, and senior sales engineer at C-COR Electronics.

Wasilko can be reached at danielp@digital-nirvana.com or by calling 510-226-9000 x741.

Digital Nirvana is a developer of media management platforms for content creation, capture and delivery. The company is based in Fremont, Calif.