“By 2022 video will make up 82% of all consumer 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 your video strategy — the management of video projects has emerged as a major pain point for businesses whose track record is not in media or broadcasting. 

Companies are still storing video on hard drives underneath their desks, sending screeners/DVDs out for review and using multiple logins for multiple management platforms: all of which are elevating costs, causing stress and slowing down output.

Where is that pesky video clip?

Have you ever been in this situation: you know you filmed a fantastic shot of sunshine filtering through a water fountain and you want to include that shot in your video but have no idea where it is in your seven hours of rushes? It could take hours of trawling through your hard drives just to find that one shot. Is that the most effective use of your time? 

Well, the good news is that you will never have to do that again! Using artificial intelligence (AI), you can search your video clips for objects, colours, settings, events, words, sounds and facial recognition.

“If you can’t find anything efficiently, you can’t sell it and you can’t make money” — Chris Witmayer, NASCAR Media Group.

Show me the money

Your video content is a significant asset and not just the footage that ends up in the final cut. The content that ends up on the cutting room floor for one project could be used in multiple other in-house projects. 

Alternatively — since the rate of video production has skyrocketed globally — there’s a well of companies out there who would pay good money to license that content. Since you can search for anything from anywhere on any device using AI to find the requested clips, this is a no-brainer in terms of economic strategy.

Seamless teamwork

Shooting video is a collaborative process but that’s only the start of the collaboration. You may have multiple editors working on the cut of your video simultaneously: picture editing, sound design, grading, motion graphics, and captioning. 

Major headaches can arise if the tools you are using are slow, inefficient, clunky and require manual approval. Busy executives are often on the move and are not immediately able to access a computer to download and review content. Therefore, the material needs to be available on mobile and in a format that everyone can review.

Your time is precious

Avoiding duplication of employees’ time is also an economic benefit of using a streamlined cloud-based video management system. People often re-create content, artwork, layouts, slides, presentations, and video assets — starting from scratch even when something already exists. How many hard drives would you need to index to identify whether the content you need is already there? 

Alternatively, is the hard drive containing your rushes in your office while you are travelling for business and therefore inaccessible to you?

I take this video to be my lawfully-wedded passion

When you have a video project up and running, the facility to track revisions is an essential part of the process. You need to know that you are working with the latest approved version. 

When the project is completed and distributed, it’s extremely beneficial to be able to audit what you did right and what could be improved in order to avoid potentially costly mistakes on future projects.

Protecting your assets

Did you know that 1 billion people watched Season 7 of Game of Thrones illegally compared to an average of 31 million people viewing each episode legally? After the leaking of four episodes of Season 5, HBO — which produces GoT — refused to provide any advance copies or early screeners of Season 6 to any media outlet for review.

The very real risk of piracy and pre-release leaks of content you shared via DVDs, hard drives or a third-party file transfer sites can seriously impact your reputation and bottom line. 

Step away from the hard drives

A cloud-based digital asset management system is the solution to all of the problems identified above and more. In our next blog post, we will look at how such a platform reduces time, tasks, and costs; increases revenue; and gets your content to market faster.