How to Automate Your Way to Streaming Success
By Max Newfield | Sep 24, 2024
Find out how to effectively integrate new processes that will save you time, money and–most importantly–let you focus on the fun stuff in streaming.
In recent years, AI has made big headlines for the way it’s transforming the entertainment industries. From turning Timothee Chalamet’s eyes blue in Dune 2, to major studies using AI-powered predictions for a film’s success–it’s safe to say that Hollywood has entered its machine learning moment.
For streamers, that innovation is–unfortunately–going to be less exciting than a movie star’s radiant blue eyes… but audiences are still going to love it.
Streaming companies looking to scale their operations quickly and effectively must harness the power of AI and automation to eliminate time consuming tasks and costly errors, in order to serve their audiences better and differentiated offerings.
In other words… let the machines do the hard stuff so you can do the fun stuff.
Before diving into what AI and automation means for the streaming industry, let’s take a glance at how other companies are intelligently scaling their businesses, and what it means for streamers.
What is AI and how is it related to Automation?
Technically speaking, no one can really agree what AI actually is. It’s definitely a field of science, and it has definitely existed for much longer than it has been in the zeitgeist. In fact, the first time scientists used the term “Artificial Intelligence” was all the way back in 1956.
But for the purposes of anyone who wants to scale their streaming business, Google Cloud’s definition of AI is probably sufficient:
“On an operational level for business use, AI is a set of technologies that are based primarily on machine learning and deep learning, used for data analytics, predictions and forecasting, object categorization, natural language processing, recommendations, intelligent data retrieval, and more.”
Basically, when you want to deploy AI in your business, you are asking a computer to make complex, contextual decisions in the same manner that a human would (and, generally, far quicker than any human could).
Automation, on the other hand, is a less complex form of computing focused on completing unchanging, repetitive tasks. Think of it like Charlie Chaplin in that factory in Modern Times but without all the soot and repetitive motion injuries.
Together, AI and automation can combine to handle huge portions of your streaming assembly line between ingestion and delivery. And, best of all, these processes can save you time, money, and headaches.
Related Article: Now is the Time to Scale Your Streaming Business
Who is Using AI and Automation? And How?
Short answer: most businesses.
A McKinsey survey conducted across all industries and regions found that 70% of businesses have launched pilot programs to integrate automation technologies into one or more of their business units or functions.
This is especially evident among entertainment industry leaders like Netflix and Spotify, who have both launched highly advanced technology labs for the study of machine learning.
While those companies are doing some of the most advanced technological studies on the planet, businesses of all sizes can get in on the automated fun.
A Deloitte study of enterprise companies that embraced automation offered three guidelines for making the most of a company-wide technological transformation:
- Reimagine workflows and how teams collaborate and deliver services to create new experiences for customers and employees.
- Retool transformation teams with a broader set of technology capabilities.
- Reprioritize solutions to focus on top opportunities with measurable impacts across the enterprise.
How Can Streaming Businesses Automate Their Way to Success?
Many stages between content intake and broadcast can be effectively automated. Rather than tasking designers or administrators with monotonous, error-prone work, leverage advanced technology to accelerate workflows and boost accuracy. This approach allows your team to focus on valuable activities like customer engagement, business expansion, or creating the next viral hit for your streaming platform.
Here are three ways in which Matchpoint can automate your streaming business and help you achieve scale faster.
AI-Powered Cue Points
Have you ever personally inserted cue points into content? It might sound fun to scrub through a bunch of shows and movies but it gets old quick. With Matchpoint’s AI-powered cue point system, a finely tuned machine learning system detects contextual cue points and places SCTE markers in the optimal point in the timeline.
This means that whenever you ingest a new piece of content, AI instantly detects natural breaks like scene changes or pauses in dialogue and suggests a point to transition to an advertisement. A list of time codes and associated confidence scores allows human oversight into a highly advanced system and helps you monetize your content faster than ever before.
Automated Quality Control
There’s no way for one human to accurately check thousands of titles for errors across video, audio, and captions. And there’s certainly no way to do it quickly.
Allow Matchpoint’s carrier grade automation to check multiple dozens of parameters that could trigger a platform rejection. Best of all, your multimodal QC happens automatically upon every ingest, every time. Get your content ready for audiences in minutes, not months.
Automated Title Art Services
Hey, did you know there are well over 100 AVOD services in the US? Did you know they all have different standards for title art? One poster for your show or movie won’t cut it. If you want your content to stream on more than one service the amount of aspect ratios, DPI standards, file sizes, and every other dimension will get out of control pretty quick.
Instead… deliver your artwork that you love to Matchpoint and let automation do the boring stuff. Quickly create dozens of iterations of your title art that will automatically deliver to the proper platform. Trust us, your creative team is sick of doing this work. Let them get back to the fun stuff.
Related Article: Guide to the Streaming Industry
Ready to scale your streaming business? Our Matchpoint experts can show you how to effectively integrate AI and automation into your production workflow. Find out how it works today.
MATCHPOINT SPARK BLOG
