Exploring the future of media technology
RECORDING UP A STORM AN AGENCY FOR INFLUENCERS DATA-DRIVEN SPORTS SCI-FI LIVE
New tools for taking on a new climate
3 CLOUD FOCUS Wildmoka WELCOME
Did you know ‘cloud’ refers to more than just a type of off- premises storage and computer resource? ‘Cloud’ can also mean a condensation of water vapour floating in the sky. No, I’m not making this up. Weather affects everything we do, from what we wear to whether or not we should toss everything into the station wagon and, literally, head for the hills. Climate is similar to weather, but not identical. Climate is the trend of weather of a long period of time. In military terms, you could think of climate as strategy and weather as tactics. Or, as an piece on the NOAA site put it: “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” Reporting on weather and the climate change has become big business. There’s a rapidly growing awareness that human activity is transforming the climate – and weather – globally, with substantial impacts to people, industry and the environment. In this issue, we cover how digital media is being used to keep people safer, better informed and connected in the midst of a rapidly developing crisis We also look at content security – how to keep that material you put your blood, sweat and tears into from being given away for free on some pirate server. It takes more than just DRM, watermarking and fingerprinting. It takes forward thinking and good business strategy. And finally, check out our new crossword puzzle page! Get all the answers correct and you could be the first to wear our new collectable FEED T-shirt!
EDITORIAL EDITOR Neal Romanek +44 (0) 1223 492246 nealromanek@bright-publishing.com
CONTRIBUTORS Ann-Marie Corvin, David Davies, Adrian Pennington STAFF WRITER Chelsea Fearnley
CHIEF SUB EDITOR Beth Fletcher
SENIOR SUB EDITOR Siobhan Godwood
SUB EDITOR Felicity Evans JUNIOR SUB EDITOR Elisha Young
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Matt Snow +44 (0) 1223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com KEY ACCOUNTS Chris Jacobs +44 (0) 1223 499463 chrisjacobs@bright-publishing.com
DESIGN DESIGN DIRECTOR Andy Jennings DESIGN MANAGER Alan Gray DESIGNERS Man-Wai Wong
NEAL ROMANEK, EDITOR nealromanek@bright-publishing.com
PUBLISHING MANAGING DIRECTORS Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck
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06 NEWSFEED
54 THE LIVE LIFE
Dispatches from the world of online video
The future is here as science fiction series, Orbital Redux , is livestreamed
10 YOUR TAKE
66 XTREME
Is it time to switch to a virtualised workflow?
How new technology is shifting the behaviour of sport fans
12 STREAMPUNK
73 CROSSWORD
Meet the man behind the world’s top YouTube influencers
Complete our all-new word puzzle and you could win an exclusive FEED T-shirt!
16 STREAMPUNK TOOLS
26
Everyone needs a little marketing help now and again – even YouTube stars. TubeBuddy is what they turn to
22 START-UP ALLEY
This month’s start-ups include citizen reporting, AI machine learning and glitchy streaming solutions
26 TECHFEED
Content creators and technology providers take on video piracy
54
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SEE PAGE 70
46
WEATHER FOCUS
32 GENIUS INTERVIEW The Weather Company’s Greg Gilderman and
Weather.com’s Kevin Hayes discuss how weather data is disseminated through videos and podcasts
42 REALITY CHECK Real or not real? The
Weather Channel turns to AR for its weather reporting 46 REAL-TIMEREPORTING How bonded cellular technology is helping journalists report live on big weather events
50 LISTEN TO THE WIND BLOW
Can the latest audio equipment finally capture extreme weather events?
64 FUTURE SHOCK
A new public information service warns as many people as possible of the next tornado or storm
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
FACEBOOK LIBRA
DEEP FAKEBOOK TROUBLE
Facebook has announced a digital currency, called Libra, which will allow its billions of users to make financial transactions across the globe. It’s being touted as a means to connect people who do not have access to traditional banking platforms. However, it is already the subject of intense scrutiny, as Facebook continues to reel from a series of privacy scandals. At launch, users will be able to send Libra inside Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as an intermediary for transferring traditional currencies. Eventually, Facebook hopes Libra will be accepted as a form of payment and other financial services will be built on top of its blockchain network. The company intends to share control of Libra with a consortium of organisations,
A doctored video of Mark Zuckerberg has been posted to Instagram, in a stunt that put Facebook’s content moderation policies to the test. The video, created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe in partnership with advertising company Canny, shows Zuckerberg boasting about his power. “Imagine this for a second: one man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” says the faux-Zuckerberg. “I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.” The video follows the recent viral spread of a manipulated Facebook video of US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, altered to make her look and sound drunk. Instead of deleting the video from its platform, Facebook chose to de-prioritise it from users’ feeds. At the time, Neil Potts, Facebook’s director of public policy, said that if someone posted a deep fake of Zuckerberg, the same rules would apply. Now that it’s happened, Facebook says it will not remove the video. The artists behind the video say they “welcome” Facebook’s decision, but they still question the company’s ethics.
companies and other tech giants. Together, they will form the Libra Association. Facebook claims the Libra Association will be not-for-profit and will serve two main functions: to validate transactions on the Libra blockchain and to manage the reserve Libra is tied to and allocate funds to social causes.
Facebook is also launching a subsidiary company called Calibra, which will develop products and services based around the Libra network. It’s where Facebook intends to make a profit from its cryptocurrency. The first product will be a digital wallet for Libra, expected to launch in 2020.
which will include venture capital firms, credit card
SOUTH KOREA HITS 1 MILLION 5G
Predictions that the adoption of 5G would outpace the early uptake of 4G networks appear to be coming true, at least in South Korea. The government announced that in 69 days, the country has reached one million 5G mobile network subscribers. This is markedly
faster than the 80 days it took 4G to hit that figure in 2011. South Korea claims to be the first country to have commercially launched 5G, but US mobile network provider Verizon says that it switched on the high-speed technology just hours earlier on 3 April.
Switzerland, Bahrain and the UK all followed in the weeks since. By the end of the year, South Korea predicts that 85 of its cities will have 5G connectivity. Its Ministry of Science and ICT states local networks will begin installing kit at airports, train stations and large shopping centres.
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7 NEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades
CHANGES TO BBC IPLAYER
NOT OK, COMPUTER
Radiohead have released a vast collection of unreleased tracks made during the recording sessions for their 1997 album OK Computer , after a minidisc archive owned by frontman Thom Yorke was hacked. The hacker reportedly asked for a $150,000 ransom to return the recordings. The band counteracted by making the 18 minidisc recordings available to purchase on Bandcamp for £18, or about $23, with all proceeds benefitting the climate change advocacy group, Extinction Rebellion. The band’s guitarist, Johnny Greenwood, confirmed the hack on social media and said “instead of complaining – much – or ignoring it, we’re releasing all 18 hours on Bandcamp in aid of Extinction Rebellion. Just for the next 18 days. So, for £18 you can find out if we should have paid that ransom.” Greenwood said the minidiscs were “never intended for public consumption (though some clips did reach the cassette in the OK Computer reissue) it’s only tangentially interesting. And very, very long... Rainy out, isn’t it though?”
The BBC will be allowed to keep programmes on its iPlayer service for up to a year after first broadcast, rather than the current 30 days. The media regulator, Ofcom, approved the change provisionally, saying it would “increase choice
and availability of public service broadcast content, and help ensure the BBC remains relevant in the face of changing viewing habits.” The BBC has previously voiced fears about its future with the growth of streaming services. It states younger
audiences, used to watching programmes on Netflix, struggled to understand why shows would disappear from the iPlayer after a few weeks. The availability of individual programmes on iPlayer may rely on negotiations with the independent production companies that make shows for the BBC. But many BBC programmes are likely to transfer to Britbox after 12 months, which will require an additional subscription fee. Ofcom says the change will hit other UK catch-up TV services supported by advertising, but that it was pertinent to start with the BBC and promote British public service broadcasting in the face of challenges from US companies.
UK ADULT CONTENT IN LIMBO
The deployment of the UK’s age verification system for online pornography will be delayed a further six months, because the government failed to inform the EU about the plan. The policy, which will require users wanting to access pornographic websites to prove they are aged 18 or over by providing identification, was due to launch on 15 July. DCMS’s culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, confirmed the postponement, owing to failure to comply with how statutory instruments are
passed in European law. “In autumn last year, we laid three instruments before the house. One of them set out standards that companies need to comply with. This should have been notified to the European Commission, and it was not. This will result in a delay in the region of six months,” said Wright. Wright apologised for the delay and emphasised it did not mean the government was backing down from its policy: “age verification needs to happen, and in the interest of the needs of children, it must.”
There has been confusion about how it will be enforced, with suggestions that websites could ask users to upload scans of their passports or driving licences or use age-verification cards sold by newsagents dubbed “porn passes”. Critics also say that some users may find it easy to bypass the restriction or could turn to pornographic websites not covered by the law, which accepts platforms that host pornographic content, but do not do so on a commercial basis.
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8 MEWSFEED Updates & Upgrades WHO RUNS THE WEB? CATS!
The Morris Animal Refuge, based in Philadelphia, US, announced to Twitter on 3 June that it is using AI to name its feline occupants in need of a forever home. Janelle Shane, the brains behind the neural network, was initially approached by the AFK Cat Rescue in Florida in 2018, because it had kittens in need of names and homes. Shane wrote on her blog a year ago: “June is kitten season here in the USA, so shelters are inundated with new kittens right now, and AFK takes the very high- risk cases, kittens who are too small to survive in regular shelters, or who are sick or injured, or have neurological disorders.” Shane tasked an RNN with 8000 real world cat names, but it had no knowledge of the English language or context for the words and letter combinations it would create. It generated names ranging from the nonsensical to the highly unfortunate. Retchion, Hurler and Trickles were just some of its suggestions. Shane decided to revisit the cat-naming problem again this June kitten season for the Morris Animal Refuge, this time using a more complex software. GPT- 2, trained by OpenAI, has a contextual understanding and knows which words and letter combinations tend to be used together in the English language.
It has also figured out which words and letter combinations to avoid, for the most part – although it did suggest naming a cat Kill All Humans. The new AI returned a few thousand names for the Morris Animal
Refuge, and the results? Mostly adorable. Honourable mentions go to Romeo of Darkness, Thelonious Monsieur and of course to the photographed kitty above, Tom Glitter.
Veteran journalist and representative of Pakistan’s ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Shaukat Yousafzai, found himself in an unlikely new role at a press conference in Peshawar. Yousafzai was giving a brief to reporters when a member of his social media team inadvertently switched on the cat filter. The event was livestreamed on Facebook. IMPURRFECT SPEAKER
FEED HAS MOVED HANDLES
Party followers watching online immediately took to the video’s comments section to make jokes at the expense of the Pakistani government, offering up a series of feline puns. All necessary actions to prevent further cat incidents have been taken. The party put out an official statement blaming “human error” and the culprit, it said, was a “hard-working volunteer”. The video has since been deleted, but the party says it felt proud to have brought Pakistani politics to the internet.
FEED has made its handles more uniform across social media so that content is easier to access. Find us on Twitter and Instagram @feedzinesocial. You can also find stories from the mag at our website feedmagazine.tv
It was several minutes before organisers realised that he had acquired big pink ears, rosy cheeks and whiskers. When one of his colleagues began to speak, he too was transformed into a cat.
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10 YOUR TAKE Virtualisation
With the rise of the cloud, could it be time to switch to a virtualised workflow? THAT IS THE QUESTION
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11 YOUR TAKE Virtualisation
HANNES STROBEL, VP OF HEADEND AND MONITORING, ROHDE & SCHWARZ What are the benefits of virtualisation?
ohde & Schwarz has built a reputation over 70 years on its ability to build hardware- based technology solutions
SOFTWARE SYSTEMS RUNNING ON BARE- METAL ON-PREMISES INSTALLATIONS HAVE ADVANTAGES IN MOST SCENARIOS for customers worldwide. So, what did it mean when we introduced our first fully virtualised product earlier this year? Did it mean we believe the days of on-premises equipment installations are numbered? Not at all. Rohde & Schwarz continues to invest massively in the development of hardware- based tech solutions. However, we see a need for new virtualised workflow solutions. With our new product for monitoring, we can offer customers a choice of on-premises or virtualised workflows. But which is best? The answer is complex. Before embarking on a voyage towards virtualisation, the user must ask some fundamental questions. First, do they prefer flexibility in their production and distribution workflows? (This is one of the key advantages of a virtualised environment.) Or do they prefer operational efficiency – especially in 24/7 media processing operations? Quite simply, if the workflow is stable and not subject to modification very often, a software-based system solution running on a bare-metal on-premises installation would be preferable. Target setting of this type is a fundamental conversation we have with our customers at the start of any virtualisation project. BROADCAST MEETS IT If broadcasters are migrating from a broadcast-specific standards and interface landscape to a generic IT/IP environment, the migration has to be total to realise the
potential benefits of this new environment. But life is never black and white, and this is why a good relationship between the user and technology partner becomes so important during the transition phase. You can operate ST 2110 within a virtualised environment. The key question is whether this environment would provide the user with latency low enough for a studio production environment. And does it provide the necessary media processing precision you would achieve within a hardware-based installation? To meet this challenge requires the skill sets of two different types of people – hardware engineers and software developers. Rohde & Schwarz has built its reputation over many decades on its hardware engineering capabilities. But the new monitor tool is a software-based product that has been over ten years in development. During this time, we have developed excellent software development skill sets – and these are valuable when addressing the needs of virtualised workflows. With these skill sets, we can advise customers and provide support throughout the signal processing chain, including how the virtualised infrastructure is being set up. We can optimise the data processing workflow in a virtualised framework in order to maximise both latency and data throughput and stability. The question is, how does a broadcaster adapt to an asynchronous IT/IP world while enabling viewers to consume content in ways they are familiar and happy with? The closer you get to the performance a hardware-based system has traditionally provided, the happier the customer is. It requires specialist knowledge and skill sets, but the big challenge now is to customise a virtualised environment to the specific needs of that user. This is where the strength of the
relationship between the customer and the technology partner is so important. WE NEED TO COLLABORATE Virtualised environments will never be limited to just one vendor’s products, but will comprise several products from a range of companies. This requires interactivity and interoperability within a broadcaster’s workflows. In this environment, things will inevitably go wrong occasionally. It is essential the broadcaster has a strategy in place for this, so the impact is minimised. In an ideal world, the user will test any new software’s ability to operate within their virtualised environment, but this is not always possible. In this situation, standards such as SMPTE 2110 are important, since they promote operational stability and interoperability. However, three different vendors can interpret a standard differently and this has the potential to affect the way they operate (or don’t operate) together. A broadcaster needs to build this factor into their virtualisation strategy, and a good technology partner should provide advice. I note the amount of commentary around the cloud, IP and virtualisation. This is one interesting way to proceed in engineering workflows for a broadcaster – but it is not a broadcaster’s cure-all. Software systems running on bare-metal on-premises installations have advantages in most scenarios. It is not an either/or, black/white question, but is instead one of balancing flexibility and versatility against operational precision and efficiency. And it will evolve over the coming years as virtualisation’s enabling technologies evolve. At Rohde & Schwarz, we are investing in virtualised architectures, but this does not signpost the end for a hardware-centric environment. Far from it. It merely offers greater choice to the customer.
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12 STREAMPUNK OP Talent
OP Talent represents some of the world’s top YouTubers. It’s founder tells us it takes more than a webcam and a smile to become an internet success MANAGING THE INFLUENCERS
P Talent was a launched by Liam Chivers in 2012. Since then, the London- based talent agency has become a subsidiary of Endemol Shine and represents some of the world’s top YouTubers, including KSI, Ali-A and AzzyLand. But before Chivers became an agent for YouTubers, he was a fan. He explains: “I was sales director at Bertelsmann in the gaming division within the Arvato group and I started watching YouTube for two reasons. First, to keep an eye on game release schedules – going into a company and not knowing anything about your game is embarrassing. But then because I had children and would have to stay in on Fridays, and started playing Call of Duty with other dads online. I started watching gamers on YouTube, so I could be a better player and beat those other dads.” One of those gamers was Sam Betesh (aka xJawz), a YouTuber who built a huge following around Call of Duty. Cut to Chivers at the E3 games convention in 2012, in his position at Bertelsmann. “I was at the Activision stand and saw a YouTuber who I recognised. [It was Betesh/ xJawz.] This was a trade event – everyone in suits – and this guy was in ripped jeans and a T-shirt, and he had a fake badge on. YouTubers weren’t considered to be anyone then. They were just kids in their bedrooms,” he recalls.
So Chivers introduced himself. “He noticed I had a particular iPhone case – a Call of Duty case I’d been given at the Activision stand. I gave it to him.” To Chivers, it was just trade-show swag. To Betesh, it was an exclusive piece of merchandise, which he was then able to tweet out to his followers. Chivers had one YouTube follower – his wife. Tagged in Betesh’s tweet, he earned 800 more in just a few hours. Betesh had come to E3 to meet someone who would give him a sneak peek at a new Xbox controller. He unboxed the controller at the show in a stairwell and it quickly earned half a million views. Chivers and Betesh stayed in touch – and that connection was the spark that launched OP Talent. “All the Call of Duty community was talking about this video. I asked him if he’d gotten paid for it – he basically established this guy’s business. He said, ‘No, but they let me keep the controller‘, before admitting he needed an agent.” Chivers helped Betesh arrange an affiliate cut of the sales of the controller, earning Betesh a few thousand dollars. Chivers also introduced him to other gaming companies, through which he picked up a few more sponsors. YouTuber Ali-A, at that time a big Call of Duty player, contacted him. Ali-A flew out to meet Chivers at Gamescom in Cologne,
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13 STREAMPUNK OP Talent
Germany, and Chivers helped introduce him to companies at the show. “By the end of the week, Ali half-jokingly said, ‘I need an agent’. And it just hit me. I saw the opportunity. No one had ever considered working with YouTubers, and they were a bit of a threat to the traditional media,” he says. Chivers knew he was on to something. He spent a few months in his spare time, sending out emails and setting up Ali-A with sponsorships with Monster Energy drinks and Alienware laptops. “With Ali-A, we built so many good case studies that other YouTubers took notice of what was going on,” explains Chivers. OP Talent’s next big catch was KSI, with a subscriber tally of 20.1 million. He’s one of the world’s biggest YouTube stars – one of the world’s biggest stars, period. Chivers got the agency up to speed with these two talents and after six months, launched into OP Talent full-time, and never looked back.
ORIGINAL POSTER Liam Chivers (above) founded the talent agency OP Talent, which now represents some of the world’s top YouTubers
NOT INFLUENCERS The YouTube talent Chivers represents are young, enthusiastic and have developed a following based on the pastimes they love – video gaming, fashion, sports and being compulsively entertaining. These YouTubers have developed followings largely based on their engagement as entertainers, but when someone is able to capture eyeballs, there are sponsors ready to piggyback. The term ‘influencer’ was coined by the advertising industry. It refers to someone who is known to have a group of narrowly defined followers over whom they have some cultural sway – and therefore they are a good bet for an advertising spend. Getting a famous person to endorse your product is as old as advertising itself, but
the scale and power of algorithmically amplified influence is unprecedented and has led to giant sponsorship deals for some of OP Talent’s clients. But Chivers is uneasy with the emergence of the term ‘influencers’ for people who originally started out as entertainers. “We didn’t call them influencers in the beginning,” Chivers points out. “We just called them YouTubers. The term ‘influencer’ has more come from Instagram. And ‘influencer’ is a little bit derogatory. They just want to be as big on that platform as possible and have as many people watch them as possible. YouTubers won’t work with a brand just for the money.” He adds: “It has to heighten the content opportunities.”
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14 STREAMPUNK OP Talent
The name ‘YouTuber’ itself may even be a misnomer. These internet-first talents move from platform to platform, leveraging the benefits of each. If a platform helps improve their content and grow their followers, they stick with it. If not, they abandon it. YouTube has proved to be a stable platform, which is ideal for presenting content to an audience and interacting with followers. “If these stars went onto TikTok they would be huge on TikTok, or on Facebook. They would be great on any channel. But they don’t want to spread themselves too thin and they don’t have too much interest on the nuances of each platform. These guys are so well known, their fans will follow them where they go. Different messages work on different platforms. Your ten-minute content goes on YouTube, ten- second content goes on Instagram. “Our guys rarely post on Snapchat anymore. They all grew huge audiences on Snapchat, but then they realised their audience is on Instagram, where there’s the same functionality,” Chivers explains. Being a major YouTube presence doesn’t happen in a vacuum either. Many talents may have started out alone in their bedroom with a single webcam, but once they reach a certain level, many have additional help, including production
YOU CAN’T JUST STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND SAY, ‘I’M GOING TO BE A YOUTUBER’. IT HAS TO CHOOSE YOU
and editing teams. KSI has formed a solid production team around him, producing first-rate videos that rival those concocted by big ad agencies and production houses. “The top guys are bringing people in now – particularly editors – and a lot of them have creative concept people, too,” clarifies Chivers. “Some of them have two to three editors each. They are churning out so much content. When they find an editor who can replicate their style, it gives them time to have a bit of a life. Ali-A lives with his girlfriend, Clare Siobhan [herself a major YouTube star and also an OP Talent client]. With an editor, they can now spend time with each other on a Saturday and have a life outside YouTube.” YOUTUBE CHOOSES YOU A generation ago, when kids dreamed of celebrity, they dreamed of being sports heroes or recording artists. Today, they dream of being YouTubers. But to
succeed, it takes more than just an internet connection and a dose of narcissism. “It is 100% about hard work,” insists Chivers. “You have to be uploading regularly. It has to be of a good standard and it has to be completely original. You can’t be rehashing what everybody else on the internet is doing. And it does take a bit of investment. And it is about being patient – there is an element of luck to it. It’s no different from times gone by. But once people get noticed, it will snowball and snowball. In Ali-A’s first year, he got a few hundred subscribers. It took him three years to get to ten thousand subscribers, but people don’t want to wait these days.” In short, being a YouTuber is no different from any other job in the creative industry. It’s down to hard graft and luck – and most importantly, a love for the work, concludes Chivers. “You can’t just stop what you’re doing and say, ‘I’m going to be a YouTuber’. It has to choose you.”
SONIC YOUTH YouTubers KSI (Olajide William Olatunji) and Randolph (Andrew Shane) diversified by recording the album New Age
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16 STREAMPUNK TOOLS TubeBuddy
Words by Chelsea Fearnley
TubeBuddy is a marketing and analysis tool for people who are serious about YouTube
ubeBuddy is a browser extension that adds a layer of handy tools
following through with those requests, so that’s where we came in,” Starkovich says. TubeBuddy has two key focuses. The first is time-saving, which involves creating features that increase productivity, such as bulk processing, canned responses and quick editing. The second is video optimisation and SEO. “We’ll help craft your video’s title, description and tags in a way that will allow it to rank higher in search results. We invest a lot of time in key word research, because content creators are always looking for more video hits and subscribers.” The company is independent from YouTube, but has a YouTube certification. Starkovich explains: “YouTube has an API compliance procedure that all third- party providers need to go through, and every once in a while YouTube reviews your entire product. But we know their guidelines, so when we build something new, we build it to follow those guidelines.” TubeBuddy is also self-funded. The company was able to use the profits it made from its previous marketing products
to bootstrap the browser extension. “We’ve since been able to drop the old products, and we’ve been profitable from TubeBuddy for several years now. We started with four founders, and now we have ten to 12 employees,” says Starkovich. Although a lot of what the company offers is free, it also has three subscription tiers from which it sees a return. “Users can upgrade their account for advanced features, but most are happy and get what they need with the free stuff.” SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE TubeBuddy has offerings not only for individual creators who are looking to grow their profile, but for larger enterprises. “We offer competitor research, so you can see what the competition is doing and what is working for them. We have brand monitoring, enabling you to track videos that others have uploaded about your brand. We also offer a/b testing, where, for example, you can test variations of a title or a thumbnail to see which one is driving the most clicks,” he explains.
directly on top of YouTube’s website. It is billed as a go-to companion for serious YouTubers and aspirants alike, providing features that aim to simplify daily tasks and help improve how YouTube is used. CEO Phil Starkovich tells FEED that TubeBuddy was created as a solution to the frustrations YouTubers feel when seeking better leverage for their channels, though the company’s origins actually date back to the Myspace era. “Before YouTube was even around, our company had identified the power of social media and looked for ways to leverage that in marketing,” he says. This early experience in the digital social world prepared Starkovich for the explosion of YouTube and subsequent rise of content creators. He started to notice them chatting online, sharing their grievances about the video streaming giant. “YouTubers were asking YouTube to build certain features, but YouTube wasn’t
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17 STREAMPUNK TOOLS TubeBuddy
In some instances, TubeBuddy can replace more expensive software. “One of our most popular features is the thumbnail generator,” says Starkovich. “It gives the ability to design a professional-looking thumbnail directly in YouTube’s website. There’s no need for things like Photoshop. “But my favourite feature is the bulk processing tool, because it lets you update hundreds or thousands of videos at once. Without it, you would have to do that manually, one by one, even for something simple like updating a tag.”
There is a need for a TubeBuddy across other social platforms, even more so with the influencer boom, but it’s not in the company’s roadmap to branch out. “People have asked us, but I think that we will always have YouTube at the core of what we do. I don’t see us venturing into other platforms. We do, however, integrate with social media and help creators share their YouTube content outside of the platform,” Starkovich explains. TubeBuddy’s future plans lie in the hands of the YouTuber, and what quirky
and ever-evolving things they want to see next. “Almost everything we build is based on feedback from our customers, whether it’s given on the community forum we have on our website or found from looking at YouTube-specific forums. “We’re also always adapting to any changes that YouTube makes on its platform, because every time YouTube decides to make an update, it has the potential to break our features,” Starkovich adds. “When YouTube comes up with something new, we also work to integrate with those new features.” Additionally, the company has a mobile app it is expanding to multiple platforms for use outside of the browser extension. But is TubeBuddy future-proof? Starkovich doesn’t believe it is under threat from YouTube creating its own marketing tools. “YouTube could build what we’re building, but it’s not in their interest to. Sometimes, it will add features that we’ve created and will replace what we did with their own, but we keep looking ahead and move on to the next thing,” he concludes.
YOUTUBERS WERE ASKING YOUTUBE TO BUILD CERTAIN FEATURES, BUT YOUTUBEWASN’T FOLLOWING THROUGHWITH THOSE REQUESTS, SO THAT’SWHEREWE CAME IN
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18 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
processing over time, the company initially considered outsourcing its video encoding needs. Ultimately, Glo decided to overhaul its entire video production pipeline. The studio reached out to AWS premier consulting partner and managed service provider, Onica, which introduced the Glo team to the suite of AWS Elemental media services. Glo leaned heavily on cloud services from AWS to streamline its content production processes and support its growing video library. “We looked at all of the options on the table, but ultimately decided that the project provided the perfect opportunity to retool our entire infrastructure, and AWS played a huge role in that,” says Nery Orellana, Glo’s cloud architect. “There’s no way we could have programmatically re-encoded our library in such a quick time frame without AWS Elemental Media Services.” To retrofit existing video assets with new bumpers and branding, Glo crafted a workflow in which the team spliced service can function independently or as part of AWS Elemental Media Services’ family of cloud services. In order for Glo to more intelligently service geographically dispersed THAN RE content into an L cut (where the audio from one scene continues playing over the next), edited out the old bumper and spliced in the new branding using a custom-built framework. The process makes it easy to dynamically re-encode content as further changes are required. The video encoding and distribution workflow then began with content residing in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Once content was located to Amazon S3, it ran through an AWS Step Functions serverless orchestration service for approval and was transcoded using AWS Elemental MediaConvert, a file-based video transcoding service with broadcast- grade features, which allows Glo to easily and reliably transcode on-demand content for multiscreen delivery at scale. The
lo is a subscription-based yoga studio in Santa Monica, California and offers an online video library of more than 5000
classes. Topics include yoga, meditation and pilates, and the courses are taught by renowned instructors from around the world. The online library is accessible for streaming, downloading and viewing from the Glo website and via iOS or Android apps from £14 ($18) per month. The studio’s on-demand video assets range from individual classes to full four-week programmes and require scaling video processing from tens to hundreds of hours of content a month. Ahead of a recent corporate rebrand, Glo recognised the need to re-encode and re-edit each of its video courses to bring all on-demand content currently with the brand up to date. Every video in the Glo library now includes newly branded, four-to-six second opening bumpers. Given the scope and size of the Glo video archive and the need to scale video
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19 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
Online yoga destination Glo uses AWS to distribute its classes worldwide POSE WHENWE WANT TO ADD ON TO OUR SERVICE, WE CAN EASILY MAKE CHANGES. WE DON’T HAVE TO REBUILD THEWORKFLOWFROMSCRATCH
customers, Amazon Route 53, a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service, performs geospatial lookup to identify the regions from which members are trying to access content. This allows Glo to provide a better localised server by storing content in regionally relevant S3 buckets. “Having AWS power our video workflow has helped us dramatically streamline and operationalise costs,” adds Jeff Neil, Glo director of engineering. “By using reserved transcoding slots, we can scale to accommodate large volumes of content. Looking at a per-minute cost analysis, it’s much more cost efficient for us to use AWS Elemental MediaConvert versus other tier-based solutions, which tend to result in unnecessary overage charges.” AWS Elemental MediaConvert incorporates quality-defined variable bit rate (QVBR) encoding – another draw for Glo. Since most of the studio’s classes are also made available for offline viewing, the company saw an advantage in using QVBR for video processing.
streaming devices. It fully expects AWS tools to play a big role in accommodating these demands, contributing towards making the Glo video workflow even more intelligent. “AWS Elemental MediaConvert and the AWS platform have given us greater flexibility and building blocks for future opportunities. When we want to add on to our service, we can easily
“When you’re accessing a piece of content and don’t have a great internet connection, great deliverability is a must. QVBR helps us dramatically reduce the payload size of offline content to mobile apps. We can easily shrink the file sizes so that when users are streaming the classes, they’re getting a consistent, high-quality viewing experience without using any unnecessary bandwidth,” explains Neil. As Glo’s business grows, the company aims to augment its offering with new capabilities, from livestreaming and captioning to support for popular
make changes, so we don’t have to rebuild the entire workflow from scratch,” concludes Orellana.
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20 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
AWS has teamed up with the LA Clippers to revolutionise how we watch sports
in-arena sound, and watch live games and recaps on mobile or desktop. Launched at the start of the 2018-19 NBA season, Clippers CourtVision is driven by technology pioneered by a range of machine learning and data analytics services from AWS and Second Spectrum. AWS is now the primary cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence provider for
This past season’s release includes Coach Mode, which diagrams plays as they happen, Player Mode in which shooting percentages, updated in real time, hover over each player, and Mascot Mode, which incorporates fan-friendly animations, graphics and digital effects. Other features enable fans to choose from multiple camera angles across the arena, select audio, including unfiltered
ports teams are going to extreme lengths to enrich the fan experience, bringing more thrills, deeper insights and fuller stats.
The LA Clippers’ CourtVision augmented game-watching platform reimagines the way basketball fans experience the sport. Clippers CourtVision lets fans toggle across multiple modes with real-time data and augmented reality features.
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21 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
ULTIMATELY, WE BELIEVE THIS TECHNOLOGY WILL DRIVE A REVOLUTION IN THE BROADCAST EXPERIENCE
CourtVision. CourtVision aims to test Amazon SageMaker to build, train, and deploy machine learning-driven stats which will appear on live broadcasts and on-demand NBA game videos. “Innovation only happens when big vision is integrated with technological capabilities to bring that vision to life,” says Clippers chief global partnerships officer Scott Sonnenberg. “Our goal in launching CourtVision with Second Spectrum was to evolve the sports broadcasting experience. That goal has been realised in large part due to a collaborative approach to computing solutions built utilising AWS.” “The combination of cloud computing and machine learning has the potential to fundamentally redefine how fans experience the sports they love,” says Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales at AWS. “Second Spectrum and the LA Clippers are able to leverage Amazon’s 20 years of experience in machine learning and AWS’s suite of cloud services to provide fans with a deeper understanding of the action on the court.” The CourtVision digital viewing experience is currently available to Fox Sports Prime Ticket subscribers via the Fox Sports mobile application. A first- year limited Beta release has additional customisation features that include the choice of seven different camera angles and three different audio experiences, including in-arena sound. Sonnenberg sees CourtVision as a step forward in how we watch sports, with fans having easy, customisable access to a whole set of interactive data. “Ultimately, we believe this technology will drive a revolution in the broadcast experience that translates Second Spectrum’s cutting- edge machine learning and
SCOTT SONNENBERG “Our goal was to evolve the sports broadcasting experience. That goal has been realised”
CourtVision. Second Spectrum is the official tracking and analytics provider of the NBA and a partner of professional and college teams around the world. The company creates tools that make data and video accessible and actionable. Second Spectrum collects 3D spatial data, including ball and player locations and movements, from multiple cameras located in all 29 NBA arenas, including play-tracking data such as player speed, distance travelled, drives and more. Data is stored and analysed on AWS in real time, and artificial intelligence is applied to develop stats that give fans a deeper understanding of what’s happening in-game. Second Spectrum uses that data to generate augmented graphical overlays on Clippers broadcasts in real time. These include live layouts of plays, instantly updated probabilities of a shot going in, and a suite of graphics that animate based on game conditions. AWS
Elemental’s MediaStore cloud storage service is used to help deliver the live game-watching experience. The LA Clippers plan to further leverage AWS cloud-based services to improve the CourtVision experience and bring fans even more real-time stats and analysis. Amazon Sumerian, an AWS service for building AR and VR applications, is also on the Clippers’ radar as the team looks to streamline the build of highly immersive and interactive scenes in
augmented reality to all sports, so that fans can watch their game, their way.”
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22 START-UP ALLEY Snappers
Words by Ann-Marie Corvin
In this month’s Start-up Alley, we look at companies enhancing citizen reporting, developing robot camera operators and making streaming more efficient
SNAPPERS
COUNTRY: ISRAEL STARTED: 2016
By creating a community of reporters from the audience of a given media outlet, Snappers enables anyone with a smartphone to become a video stringer. “We want to become the Uber of video reporting,” says the Israeli company’s CMO, Hezy Laing. And with CNN as one of its tent pole clients, the start-up is well on its way towards achieving its goal. Snappers came out of an immigrant Absorption Center in Jerusalem where Laing, a marketing executive and former journalist from Canada, met telecom engineer and product developer Dov Zales, originally from Uruguay. “We’re both news junkies,” says Zales, “and we noticed how many networks didn’t always have relevant content to illustrate their stories. The same small video clips tend to get used over and over. “But today,” he argues, “everyone has a device and the ability to live broadcast built into their smartphone – user generated content should assist the networks in their quest for relevant content.”
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23 START-UP ALLEY Snappers
WE WANT TO BECOME THE UBER OF VIDEO REPORTING
ON THE SPOT Snappers aims to open up the way news organisations procure video of unfolding events, utilising ‘citizen reporters’ and their smart devices to record and supply any particular footage
After recruiting Israeli-born software engineer Eitan Goldfrad as a third co- founder and CTO (via a Facebook ad) the company officially launched in 2016. The technology comes in the form of an SDK, which can be integrated into a news outlet’s consumer app so that when a news event breaks, the network can see a user’s location and push out requests for live footage. These citizen journalists can then use the Snappers’ app and start streaming while the news network can either use the live version or a pre-recorded version uploaded afterwards. The news network client receives an editing suite, which allows them to manage a live broadcast with several camera feeds they can switch between, like a live broadcast. Other features include a live chat function, a time delay function and, like Uber, a ratings system that’s used to grade the reporters. “The more you use the system the better it becomes at identifying reporters that work for you,“ adds Zales. For live media streaming, Snappers currently uses Wowzer but, according to
Zales, Snappers is developing a new video calling system for live streaming that’s more bespoke to the concept. He says that in low bandwidth areas it’s also possible to stream a low bandwidth version, while recording a higher quality version on the mobile. Laing adds that what makes this particular start-up different from other UGC apps such as Newsflare or CrowdSpark is that Snappers works on a ‘top down’ model, where the clients decide what footage they want rather than receiving overwhelming amounts of UGC, not all of which is relevant. The start-up’s proposition was strong enough to be accepted into The Bridge, a Tel Aviv accelerator co-sponsored by Turner Broadcasting, which accepts just ten companies per year. It was here that CNN became a key advocate for the product. CNN’s VP of innovation, Peter Scott, declared it a “really powerful” news tool at this year’s NAB, where Snappers had a stand at the convention’s Start-Up Loft. Cost savings can’t be overlooked, either, when around half of a news organsation’s outgoings involve newsgathering.
As Laing says, “Organsations likes CNN spend upwards of $1bn dollars worldwide on newsgathering – we’re not looking to replace it but we can help them get it down and cover a wider geographic area.” The company is adopting an SaaS model and will offer a flat rate, “depending on bandwidth use and the number of editors using the platform.” Another revenue model involves taking an as-yet- undecided percentage of the fee paid to the reporter. In the long term, the founders anticipate that their main revenue stream will come from these payments rather than the news outlets. There are also plans afoot to create a content marketplace, brokering sales of video content between reporters and companies. Thus far, the company has been running using money from a grant, but the team are currently focusing on their next funding round, during which they are aiming to raise $3m to further expand into US and UK markets. It’s here, Laing explains, potential customers are defined as, “any company interested in the general possibilities of democratising news coverage.”
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24 START-UP ALLEY Seervision
SEERVISION
COUNTRY: SWITZERLAND STARTED: 2016
Seervision’s autonomous robotic camera system won a Product of the Year award in the Best New AI/Machine Learning Technology category at this year’s NAB show in Las Vegas, but the start-up’s chief executive is at pains to stress that its success does not spell the end for camera operators. Nikos Kariotoglou, who co-founded the fledgling robotics outfit that meshes ML, computer vision and cinematography, says the tools his company offers merely enhance the camera operator’s role, enabling the production of higher quality footage. “We’re making a tool for the camera operator so they go from sitting behind one camera to sitting behind a fleet of cameras. The cameras are now intelligent and can do simple tasks themselves,” he explains. “On top of that, events with a strict budget will be able to producer higher quality footage – we’re calling it the democratisation of video production.” The company estimates that a three- camera set-up on a video production can save 30 to 40% of its budget using the Seervision system, which started life in the Automatic Control Laboratory of ETH Zurich. Kariotoglou, a former student there, enthusiastically describes it as, “the MIT of Europe”. The team started experimenting with filming lectures at the university, but soon moved onto more challenging scenarios, involving faster moving objects and multiple cameras. The company officially formed three years ago, funded by an ETH Zurich R&D grant and help from a handful of private financiers and accelerators. It has amassed an 18-strong team of computer vision, robotics and ML specialists.
RISE OF THE MACHINES Seervision promises to change things for productions by enabling AI-driven camera control
A partnership with a Zurich- based production company
also supported the firm’s growth by enabling the technologists to explore practical solutions the system could offer for live productions and events. The technology itself
“Perception involves understanding the scene around you, what the elevation
connects to the camera via its live SDI feed, allowing the operator to tap on the screen to define the type of shot – zoom, mid shot, close up, and so forth. The robot then takes these shots, saves them and tracks the objects as they move. From instruction to execution this action currently takes around three seconds, according to Kariotoglou. He adds that by training the robots to follow simple rules by learning from past footage, or by giving different cameras different tasks to perform, this part of the process will soon become completely automated. “Perfecting this part will lead to scalability, which will allow one person to handle 50 cameras – at the moment the limit is five or six,” he says. Using data to train models to recognise production rules through the combination of cinematography and machine learning forms one of the three key pillars of Seervision’s technology. The other two, according to Kariotoglou, are a focus on perception and on control, and are based on similar principals to those used by autonomous car systems.
of the object is in respect to the camera. It also identifies where you are in respect to the environment and the object you are filming,” he explains. “Then you have control – how the camera moves in a way that feels human. If you move a camera too fast, you feel it in the images. Like if a car suddenly accelerates abruptly, you feel it as a passenger. So you are trying to make the operation of the camera indistinguishable from human operation control.” The company is adopting an automation-as-service model, charging a licence fee for the usage of the system, with the client able to purchase additional or bespoke features for their production as and when they require. There is also a one-off payment for installing the processing hardware and the robot, if the client doesn’t already own one. The camera systems are currently being deployed to add value to corporate events. Sport is also a key area, and especially relevant given that Seervision is based in a nation that’s home to around 30 international sports organisations. “We’re in talks to capture sports events, in football and tennis, for the lower leagues, in higher quality. To be honest we are not there yet with the technology, but we’re partnering up with everyone who approaches us and are working on a prototype,” says Kariotoglou. He adds that Seervision hopes to have a working model for sport ready by the end of 2020.
YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE THE OPERATION OF THE CAMERA INDISTINGUISHABLE FROMHUMAN OPERATION CONTROL
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