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What is Serverless Architecture?

Serverless architecture, cloud services, cloud-native, big data, are all terms that have been thrown around over the last few years. With claims of faster speeds, better security and overall improvement in your business processes!

In simple terms, we will break down what being “serverless” means to us and, more importantly, what it means for you when you’re using serverless platforms.

Video editing is where the story really comes together.

The first step is to lay down your audio: this could be interviews or voiceover. If you plan to edit the video to the beat of a piece of music, it needs to be laid down first, but if your soundtrack will be in the background rather than driving the narrative then it’s best to leave it until last.

Once you’re happy with the audio edit, then drop in footage that matches the spoken narrative. 

It’s said that video content is made three times: once in the scripting, once in the filming, and once in the editing.

In the first part of this blog post series, we delved into the planning stage of video production: identifying your audience, scripting and shoot prep. 

In this second part of our blog post series on video production, we’ll give you tips and tricks for a successful shoot.

Video production is arguably one of the most effective and powerful video tools available to businesses these days.

Consumers watch a lot of videos. A lot! Which makes video an invaluable business tool! It used to be primarily employed by the marketing department, but it is now used to fulfil key functions throughout organisations.

In this series of blog posts, we’ll give you insights into how to create great videos!

We are in a golden age of video as a business tool — it’s no longer used just for marketing but for many other business functions too: sales, corporate communications, training, testimonials, and much more.

Combined with this proliferation of video benefits for enterprises, the democratisation of video has made video a “must have” rather than a “nice to have”. 

Video, until recently, was a very specialised craft that was handled by editors and engineers. They traditionally used a MAM — Media Asset Manager — to store, share and manage their content.  MAMs are different from DAMs — Digital Asset Managers — in that they deal only with video content.  

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a new AWS Media & Entertainment initiative to simplify cloud workflows. Overcast’s Future of Work Video Platform is built on AWS and we are delighted to be a partner in this initiative!

AWS for Media & Entertainment is an initiative featuring new and existing services and solutions from AWS and AWS Partners, built specifically for content creators, rights holders, producers, broadcasters, and distributors.

One of the first things anyone asks when they are moving workflows to the cloud is, “How much is this going to cost me?”

It’s a fair question. And we can all go to the AWS or Azure calculator, plug in 25TBs and understand what it will cost to store that content for a month.

But what about the ingest cost, the egress cost, the transcode cost… and what are all those other parameters that the cloud providers list that can affect the cost?

A ginormous amount of business is conducted online these days and most of it requires us to provide personal and corporate data. We know that our health and banking data needs to be encrypted but what about our corporate assets?

Video is one of the most commonly-used digital assets. It’s predominantly used for marketing but in recent years it’s been widely adopted for use in HR, training, tutorials, corporate communications, products and many other business functions.

Most of these functions involve teams collaborating on videos. Up until now this has been difficult with a number of shadow IT solutions creeping into the workplace.

Remote editing is now a reality for most film and video editors.

The good news is that pro film/video editing software operates on domestic computers.

The craft of editing is the same: view, assemble, cut, pace, review, re-cut, trim, grade, output.

But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s no longer advisable for the director, producer or funders to visit the cutting room to give feedback on edits. So, a remote editing solution is needed.

What is Orchestration and why do you need a cloud-based CMS (content management system)?

I could throw around terms like “RESTful API” and “transcode queue” and “headless” but I’d run the risk of stumbling into a rabbit hole of terminologies that often mean different things to different people. So, in the spirit of trying to keep things as straightforward as possible — which is one of our guiding principles here at Overcast — let me do my best to explain it in layman’s terms.

Video asset management is a reality for most enterprises today.

That’s because video is a phenomenal tool in so many areas of business: marketing, training, live streaming, HR — to name but a few.

Therefore, it makes sense to use a video asset management platform to put manners on this collection of big, complex files and to facilitate seamless collaboration.

However, not all UIs are equal…for instance, when talking about different industries.

AI image recognition is one of the new-fangled terms being bandied around. So, what does it mean and what can it do for you?

In today’s media landscape, there’s a vast volume of unstructured content that organisations are trying to manage. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there: spending hours searching through content for an outstanding soundbite or a stunning shot that we know we filmed but, alas, it eludes us.

Max Recognition uses the latest AI and Machine Learning to identify people, objects, places, and events in videos and images. It’s like magic!

Wondering how using AI to automatically transcribe audio to text could rock your world?

Remember when transcription jobs meant typing out every word in a video or audio clip by hand in order to add subtitles? Not our favourite memory of “the good old days”!!

It was a slow, laborious, mundane and uninteresting task. However, it had to be done.

Thank goodness AI transcription software has saved us from this nightmare!

The popularity of video consumption continues to explode and not just for marketing or brand building purposes. Video can also be used in-house for employee training and dissemination of information — this is even more valid in the current era of enforced remote working.

The possibilities that video offers your business are endless: connecting with your audience through live streaming, tutorials, product demos, promotional videos, vlogging and much more.

Video files are large — but how big is big?

You don’t need to be in the media and entertainment industries to grow your business through live streaming. It can be used for in-house trainings, public events, town hall meetings, etc. — in fact, anything you can think of. But you need a simple, high quality, secure way to do it: say hello to Max Live Streaming.

If you’ve tried live streaming before, you may have experienced low quality streaming due to limitations in the available bandwidth — it’s a common problem with free services. No such worries with Max Live Streaming!

New year, new products!

It’s been a long year of working from home for most of us and we’ve had to grapple with the unexpected challenges of remote working.

For teams collaborating on videos, most have found that sharing/downloading video content is problematic, reviews and approvals are slow, workflows are clunky (at best), and speed to market isn’t speed at all (quite the opposite!)

Enter Overcast MAX, a suite of next-generation cloud applications for production, collaboration, storage and distribution that makes remote video collaboration effortless.

It’s been a long year of working from home and that doesn’t look likely to change any time soon. Since the unexpected and abrupt transition to remote working was thrust upon us, we have all had to adapt our work practices. 

We previously looked at how video production and remote working can be easy bedfellows by using a cloud-based platform to facilitate efficient collaboration, simplify tasks through automation and speed up reviews and approvals.  Now, let’s take a whistle-stop tour through other key considerations.

In 2019 we were all working side-by-side in our workplaces: brainstorming ideas in the boardroom, solving problems at team meetings and enjoying chats with colleagues at the water cooler.

But in 2020 the world changed. The coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe and we suddenly had to embrace remote working.

We are delighted to say that we have just released the Overcast Panel for Adobe Premiere Pro – the perfect tool for editors working from REMOTE locations.    The panel is free to download – from Adobe Exchange – just click here.   Here are some of the benefits of using the panel: Save time and […]

Our CEO – Philippe Brodeur was interviewed by Joaquin Lippincott – CEO of Metal Toad. The interview is part of the Media & Entertainment Cloud Ecosystem Interview Series organised by Media Toad and Joaquin has been meeting (virtually) with leaders of some of the leading AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partners involved in the M&E ecosystem.  […]

Video Content-as-a-Service, SaaS and Micro-Service deployment, how to get up and running managing video content smarter and easier – if you missed the AWS Media Webcast you can check it out here.   Check out the AWS Blog Post too.  Check out some other Overcast Blog Posts similar to AWS Media Webcast. Serverless Architecture… what’s the […]

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how that business works. Video is core to digital transformation.  It changes the status quo when it comes to communicating internally with staff and externally with partners and customers. Video Content-as-a-Service (VCaaS) makes video accessible to all. It reduces […]

Dear Friends of Overcast HQ We are living in unusual times. The coronavirus pandemic is impacting everyone – from city to city and country to country. We know that you rely on Overcast HQ to provide digital content to your staff, clients and audiences and we wanted to share with you how we are ensuring […]

Businesses need to keep changing and innovating in order to be competitive. Such transformation in the digital age involves the integration of digital technologies into all areas of an enterprise, fundamentally changing how that business works.

Video is one such fundamental: it provides many opportunities to improve how you communicate internally with staff and externally with partners and clients. But, even with the democratization of video, it’s still expensive and time-consuming. So how can you future-proof your processes while enabling both speed and scale?

In 2018, the global Enterprise Video market size was US$3.68 billion and it is expected to reach US$10.4 billion by the end of 2025 (MarketWatch). Staggering, eh?

When teams in an organisation produce video content (and it really doesn’t matter how much), they need to be able to easily access it, re-use it, collaborate on it, and share it on various platforms in different formats. But video content is complex so existing content management systems don’t cope with it well and can be very problematic when you want to scale your operations.

The explosion in video creation and distribution brings significant challenges in terms of managing it, including storage, collaboration, encoding formats, file size, duplication, distribution, integration and scalability.

The answer to all of the above — and the secret that will save you from major headaches — is VCaaS: Video Content-as-a-Service. In this blog, we look at what VCaaS is and how it can solve your problems.

We’re revved and ready to go! Silicon Valley, here we come!  StartUp Grind Global 2020 We’re delighted to have been selected from start ups all over the world to exhibit at the StartUp Grind Global Conference 2020. 10,000 people from around the globe are expected to converge on the Fox Theater Redwood City in Silicon […]

As the use of video in business continues to increase, enterprises need to have a growth strategy in mind in addition to fulfilling their current needs. So, they need to look for a platform that provides extensive management capabilities to streamline their process, combined with the facility to scale up video production in the future. The Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Video 2019 identifies the key capabilities of a DAM identified in this blog post as essential.

The Netflix generation is consuming media almost incessantly during their leisure time and they expect the same user experience from media delivery at work. The content must be compelling, it must be ‘of the moment’, and it must be effortless to access. So UX is critical. Companies that are publishing content, whether that’s podcasts or videos, need to ensure the platform they choose to deliver it provides a streamlined experience.

Live event capture is one of big trends now, whether it’s a town hall meeting, a university lecture or a corporate event.

Enterprise video is proving to be a critical asset to the digital enterprise and is on a collision course with digital asset management — that’s one of the key findings of the Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Video 2019. 

Video is proving its value to the enterprise in nearly every department and every use case. However, many enterprises are still struggling to make the shift. But with video use continuing to expand and more devices capable of capturing video, there’s an increased demand to manage video.

In this world of streaming video, the demand and opportunity for content targeted at global markets is continuing to skyrocket. But the total money available in those markets is lagging behind. One of the key challenges is how the media industry versions and localises content.

What do these terms mean? Most of the content produced has to be versioned for the various platforms and services on which it will be distributed. Most of it will also be ‘localised’ — that is, prepared for consumption in another territory — this can include adding foreign language subtitles and soundtrack, and re-editing to comply with regulatory and cultural requirements.

Being the Head of Creative Services isn’t an easy remit. It involves managing a team of people, all of whom have their own ways of creating visual and graphic content. It also involves meeting tight deadlines, which can be tricky on a project that requires a lot of input from different people. And it demands leadership since the buck stops with you in terms of delivering projects to your clients — on time and within budget — that are aligned to corporate goals.

While juggling all of these challenges, you’re aiming to deliver top quality content, cultivate a strong brand voice through that content, and ensure consistency of brand messaging through digital marketing channels.

Your business is complicated. It has many different people in many different divisions doing many different things. Unsurprisingly, they all have unique ways of interacting with your products, services, clients, and assets.

A DAM provides an effective, streamlined way to manage your digital assets. But is yours future-proofed? Here are three of the key considerations when assessing if your DAM will stand the test of time.

It used to be when you went to a broadcasters’ conference like IBC or NAB you would meet vendors who sold cameras, graphics, encoders, transmission systems and even satellites. But that has all changed since video started migrating to the cloud.

As the use of video becomes ubiquitous, so too does the creation of video tech solutions to help you create videos efficiently and distribute them. But a quick walk around IBC this year and it’s clear that the messaging is anything but clear.

The use of video as a business tool is exploding in popularity, but what’s also constantly expanding is the range of ways in which video can serve a business to foster more engaging communication with workers and share business intelligence with co-workers, customers, partners, prospects, vendors and shareholders. The video revolution is here and the time to invest is now!

We can’t wait for the IBC Show (13–17 Sept) this year, particularly because we’ve been chosen by AWS to exhibit in their booth. You can meet with our CEO to discover how to make video collaboration effortless. You can also see a demo of our video collaboration software — and enjoy a free breakfast — during an exclusive Avid event at IBC on Saturday 14th September. We have 25 tickets to give away for this event.

Size matters. And when it comes to video file sizes — things are just getting bigger. Over the last decade, we’ve graduated from standard definition to high definition, 2K, 4K and now 8K. Combine that with image enhancement technologies and we are talking about file sizes ballooning. But it’s not just the media and entertainment industries that are chasing higher quality; businesses and brands are jumping on the bandwagon too. So just what are the implications for businesses?

We want to make content creation easier for you, your clients and your bosses. And by that we mean that we want you to spend more time being creative and less time fiddling around with technical tasks.

So, we are delighted to announce two improvements to the Overcast HQ platform: annotations and a dark UI.

At NAB 2019 and Avid Connect 2019, we rocked Vegas! Well, maybe not in the traditional sense but we rocked it our way since we’re not as famous as Celine Dion (not yet, anyway).

At these two global events in Nevada, we unveiled partnerships with two of the world’s top technology companies: Avid and Amazon Web Services.

8 days, 100+ client meetings — what a buzz!

It’s tech heaven in Nevada this week with two of the key global media, entertainment and technology conferences taking place back-to-back. Las Vegas doesn’t do things by half so it’s the ideal place to host these phenomenal events.

We could feel the excitement among the crowds as soon as our plane landed and we couldn’t wait to get to our stand at Avid Connect to start chatting with other tech enthusiasts.

Overcast will be demonstrating their video collaboration platform at NAB Show 2019 and Avid Connect 2019 both in Las Vegas in April.

Global adoption of streaming TV accelerated with viewing hours up 89% year-over-year, and up 165% in Q4 as compared to Q4 2017. But there was a 7% increase in abandonment across all content worldwide in a year that saw the convergence of heightened viewer expectations and waning patience. That’s according to the State of the Streaming TV Industry 2018 from Conviva.

Digital technology has revolutionised the film and video production industries, confining celluloid to a handful of highly-funded Hollywood movies. But more importantly for the business sector, it has democratized video production: now it’s as common for enterprises to make videos as it is for film studios to make movies. However, this is not just the video age, it’s also the era of personalization. But it takes brands, on average, 12 days to get a single piece of content to market.

The digital age has introduced lots of new lingo: tweep, instagramming, fintech, etc. SaaS is one of the fancy new words, but what does it really mean for you and your business? The acronym SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which means subscribing to a cloud-based solution. It facilitates teams to work and collaborate anywhere in the world where they have an internet connection.

Video streaming is booming. When it comes to SVoD, most people think of Netflix. But in recent years Amazon has laid down the gauntlet with its own Prime Instant Video service. Amazon’s ‘Best of Prime’ list for 2018 spotlights what consumers shopped for, watched, listened to, read and played in the last year. The top show they watched on Amazon was ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’.

For anyone involved in any aspect of sports production, content creation or distribution, the SVG Summit 2018 is the place to be for the latest in digital sports video technology such as augmented reality, machine learning, workflows, digital ad insertion, security, the impact of 5G, and the business opportunities behind social media platforms.

With the number of enterprise videos being filmed significantly increasing, there’s a need to manage assets in a smarter way. DAMs speed up time to value, reduce costs, lower risk and increase productivity. Here are our top 5 traits of a video asset management platform.

Pop that champagne! Overcast HQ is named in Streaming Media Europe’s top 101 companies lighting up the online video industry. Every year Streaming Media shines a spotlight on the 101 most interesting, important and influential companies in online video. This year it includes Google, Apple, Sky and Amazon as well as Overcast.

It’s tech awards season in Ireland and the shortlist for Ireland’s leading technology awards — the Spiders — has just been announced. Our CEO Philippe Brodeur is a judge this year and is very impressed by the quality of the contenders. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Dublin’s RDS on 29 November. […]

Can you really use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to create video content faster? To be honest, the more I hear and read about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning the more I think people are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I honestly don’t believe most people know what they are talking about […]

“Video consumption grows 100%+ every year” — YouTube. The global online video platform in media and entertainment market is projected to grow at an annual rate (CAGR) of 17.5% from 2018 to 2025 (— Allied Market Research). Businesses will ignore it at their peril. In our last two blog posts, we explored search and collaboration, […]

“83% of marketers said they’d create more video content if there were no obstacles like time,resources and budget.” — Buffer The good news — no, the great news! — is that the right platform will save you time and money, and will optimise your use of available resources, including the sweat of your hardworking team.  […]

“In 2021 video will make up 82% of all internet traffic” — Cisco When video started becoming a key communication channel for enterprises, many people thought that creating content would be the hardest part. But since the popularity of video has exploded in this YouTube era — bringing with it a need to scale up […]

Have you ever been sold an end-to-end video software solution? Just look online at how many sell themselves as that. So you buy into that promise, try it out and you end up disappointed. Any video streaming service that says they are end to end is lying. It’s a bold statement but it’s true!  The […]

Bye bye, hard drives underneath my desk. Hello, cloud-based digital asset management! Video management is very tricky if you are relying on a small group of people working in an office who are not trained as editors or technicians. They need to share, collaborate and distribute content in various formats to multiple devices.  But if […]

As we head into September, the International Broadcast Conference (IBC) is just around the corner. But it’s not just for broadcasters anymore. With content creation now a crucial element of every company’s growth strategy, there’s been a huge increase in the number of enterprise clients attending IBC in recent years. All Fortune 2000 companies are […]

What’s so special about the number 234 in today’s world? Is it the number of times you’ve viewed your favourite movie? Would it the number of times you’ve forgotten what you went to the grocery store for? Or is it the number of times you check your phone daily to see if someone has messaged […]

Overcast won “Best In Show” at NAB 2018. Sponsored by Sprockit, the award went to Overcast for its innovative video collaboration platform. Overcast’s Video Content-as-a-Service platform is the simplest, fastest and most cost-effective way to view, review, approve, share, transcode, distribute, archive and control your content. It’s cloud-native and easily integrates with your existing technologies. […]

Video is awesome! Everyone says so. But have you ever tried to make one? The cost. The time. The pain. Why does it have to be so difficult? Time wasted waiting for edits, a muddy workflow, and transparency around which assets are greenlit and which are not – these are the barriers to engaging video […]

Managing video can be a difficult: different formats, file sizes, embed codes. But it doesn’t have to be. If your business is working inefficiently with video or if you’re not working with video yet, here’s a simple guide to getting the best out of your video management platform.

Amazon just released some super-advanced voice recognition technology, and it’s creepy as hell. Here’s how your company can use it.

As the Digital Asset Management Los Angeles conference gets underway this week (#damla) there will be plenty of chatter about the best ways to organise digital content. And there will be an increasing focus on video and Cloud Solutions. Tweet: New Post: 5 Cloud Solutions That Will Help You Manage Your Video Better #DamLA #Overcast_HQ […]

Recorded live from IBC, Philippe Brodeur speaks on the future of video streaming. Listen here: Transcription: The program about innovation in media and startups. Broadcasting live from iBC 2017. My name is Bert Cork. And my co host today is as always as always Rick Van Dyke. Good morning. Good morning. Our first guest today […]

Europe’s largest broadcaster conference IBC 2017 ended last week with more questions than answers. We are only just scratching the surface of what is going to be a disruptive few years for TV and video production. Tweet: How Cloud Based Digital Asset Management Is Changing Broadcasting => http://bit.ly/2k8nTJ2 IBC 2017 On arrival at IBC, the […]

When executed well, 360 degree images are a great way of demonstrating your company’s practical wisdom, and making the customer feeling better equipped to make a purchasing decision. If you’re a Tour Guide, you could embed a 360 degree image of the Eiffel Tower. If you’re a realtor, you can get more enquiries by shooting great 360 degree images of your properties. If you’re trying to make your brand more friendly and attractive, post to Facebook an image of your staff behind the scenes at your business.

Broadcasters from all over converge on Amsterdam this weekend for the one of the broadcast conferences in the world – the International Broadcast Conference (IBC). And the main theme this year is going to be digital asset management. You could put 10 of them in a room and none of them would say that to you – but it is the underlying truth. It’s all about how to manage digital and media assets in the age of internet connected TV.

In 3 years, 82% of all internet traffic is going to be video. You might think that it is all down to Netflix and Amazon. But you would be wrong. Enterprise now creates more video in a day than Hollywood makes in a year. Here’s our guide to the DOs and DON’Ts of video asset management for Enterprise companies.

There are only 3 words you need to know when it comes to scalable infrastructure:  Digital Asset Management.  The first step in managing the new content is simply using old technology or “adequate” technology until the concept is proven.  The next step is to stand back and think how it will all come together in a scalable workflow.  And the final step is to put some industry standards around what you have so that everyone can move in the same direction.

So instead of a single solution, there are many software industries that all support video to some extent. There are digital asset management platforms, media asset management platforms, online video platforms, content management systems, ERP systems, workflow tools, CRM solutions… I could go on, but I think you get the point.

There are a number of really good workflow apps on the market like Teamwork and Slack. They perform their own functions and they integrate with loads of other apps. They try to help platform-agnostic business users to integrate the apps they like and use into a new, more efficient workflow. The promise of saving time or money or both is what motivates business people to try new apps.

So what are you supposed to do if you are relatively new to video yet you know that you want to put video at the heart of your content strategy?
There are 2 options.  1. You take charge of the situation or 2. You let the technology dictate the situation.

Tired of using email to work on creative video projects? We all are. Read on to see why email is terrible at this, and what companies are doing to fix it.

This is my mixed reality.  It’s a reality that has washed over me without so much as a pause to acknowledge it.  It’s a mixed reality that fuses physical life with digital.  If someone had showed it in a presentation on the Mad Men Series, the brands being pitched would have looked on in disbelief.

Cool infographic about 127 facts you probably didn’t know about video marketing

Ok – so we all know that millions and billions of people watch videos on Youtube. And we know that more and more people are watching video on Facebook and other social platforms like Twitter and Instagram. But there is so much noise around what we should all be doing to create video that the question remains: how can brands create video cost effectively to reach their audience.

“We’re like an enterprise YouTube. Videos are big, complex files. When YouTube solved video sharing and viewing for the consumer, we were all able to watch video on our PCs and phones,” said Brodeur.

I had a potential new client turn me down the other day. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last. But of course, as an evangelist and someone selling a product, it is always difficult.

For some reason, content creators and the brands they work for think that reviewing video needs to be hard work.

Learn the 5 biggest challenges of using 360 video in a news setting, and why it makes storytelling hard in 2017. Not for amateurs.

I think AR and VR will have greater longevity. But it won’t happen overnight and it will take a great deal of investment to create the ecosystem to support them. One of the key challenges is around managing the massive files that are created and how the images are stitched together.

For men on Madison Avenue and Fleet Street, TV was the easiest business going. The world changed. The world moved on. This is how and how to adapt.

Think about it – how often do you come across text on the web that looks like a squashed wet page of a book? And how often do you continue reading when it becomes clear that the site is committing you to an essay?

Online video companies, marketers and publishers need to stop using duct tape and bubble gum to solve their technical issues around collaboration and transcoding.