axle Video, leaders in harnessing the power of artificial intelligence for video
workgroups, recently announced immediate availability of integration between their
revolutionary axle ai software and Microsoft Video Indexer.
axle ai now uses the Video Indexer service to automatically tag entire video files, and
segments of those videos, with descriptions of the visual contents of those files and
text transcriptions of the spoken content of the videos.
axle ai represents a breakthrough in capability for small and mid-size video teams.
Previously, organisations had to purchase expensive systems costing tens or even
hundreds of thousands of dollars, then spend further on labour to manually tag the
material that they planned to search. While axle ai preserves the option of manual
tagging and highlighting of clips, the majority of the up-front work is done by machine
intelligence, at far lower cost and much higher speed than was possible in the past.
This has the effect of making tens or hundreds of terabytes of previously un-
searchable footage, immediately searchable.
Video Indexer is able to automatically compute a variety of key information about
video footage, including using facial recognition to identify who is in a given video
segment, what objects are in the segment, and also what words and sentences are
being spoken. The axle ai integration pulls the resulting metadata from the Video
Indexer service, and displays It in axle’s radically simple media management UI,
which works with all major web browsers.
Sam Bogoch, CEO of axle Video, states: “Microsoft has provided a complete and
robust cloud AI back end, including object and scene recognition, face recognition,
and speech to text conversion. By feeding all of the metadata generated by these
tools into our simple, approachable front end, we can provide our customers with the
key insights into their media that will make them vastly more productive.’
Kunal Malhotra, product marketing manager, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp. says:
“We are pleased to see axle ai benefit from the visual management capabilities of
Microsoft Video Indexer. Axle’s focus on making application management capabilities
widely available supports our mutual customers in a variety of industries by adding
value to their video content.’
Benefits
Studies show that up to 40% of video post-production time is spent simply finding the
best footage for a given project. In addition, inability to find the right clip can often
result in expensive re-shoots (B-roll segments for example) causing costs to escalate
even further. By solving these problems, axle has large benefits for the over 250,000
small and mid-size post-production teams worldwide.
How it works
axle ai’s cataloging engine first makes low-resolution versions of each file, and the
resulting versions are uploaded to Microsoft Azure Storage and processing systems in
the cloud for further analysis. The metadata generated by this analysis is returned
seamlessly to axle’s solution, which both places it in an open database back end, and
puts it at users’ fingertips using advanced Elastic Search technology.
Pricing and availability
The axle ai module which connects to Video Indexer is available immediately for axle
customers with Microsoft Azure accounts; pricing of the interface is $1,995 (purchase
with first year’s updates) or $99/month SaaS pricing as part of axle’s new cloud
offerings. Microsoft Azure charges for the Video Indexer service are assessed
separately.
