Video: IBM Cloud Video Combines Ustream and Clearleap for an Uber OVP/OTT Platform
Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Streaming Media East 2017. I'm Tim Siglin, Contributing Editor with Streaming Media magazine and Media Strategy Principal at ReelSolver Inc. Today I have with me Scott Grizzle. Scott, you've been around the block quite a bit in the streaming space but you're now with IBM.
Scott Grizzle: Yes.
Tim Siglin: What's your title with IBM?
Scott Grizzle: Right now I'm a Senior Solutions Engineer for the overall IBM Cloud Video focusing on the OVP and OTT side, kind of a hybrid of the both.
Tim Siglin: Oh, nice. Okay. What's new with IBM with their Video Cloud these days?
Scott Grizzle: Well, actually the biggest thing right now is the cognitive, everything about watching. Everybody knows about Watson.
Tim Siglin: Sure.
Scott Grizzle: We showed at NAB a lot of intelligence behind it, basically content enrichment, more being able to pull out information and make highlight reels, being able to do speech to text with cinema analysis. You have a project going on, we can read all Twitter feeds and things like that. We also do a lot of work with Ted Talks. We're able to connect through and showing the Ted Talk route that if you put videos in there and you can have recommendations in it. You type a keyword in, then the next you thing hear, oh, similar videos that emphasize what you typed in.
Tim Siglin: Interesting. It's a recommendation engine on steroids to a certain extent?
Scott Grizzle: Yeah.
Tim Siglin: Okay. You ever read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?
Scott Grizzle: I have not.
Tim Siglin: Okay. Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's Guide.
Scott Grizzle: Yes.
Tim Siglin: He then wrote this book. There was a Watson-like character in there called the Electric Monk which would tell you what to think. They plugged it up to the multi-channel VCR in those days, obviously.
Scott Grizzle: Yeah.
Tim Siglin: It fried its brain because there were too many competing thought processes and like that.
Scott Grizzle: Yeah.
Tim Siglin: Watson and cognitive recommendation engines, is that the kind of thing from an OVP and OTT standpoint that you'll see customers wanting to implement instead of having to build their own search engines or recommendation engines?
Scott Grizzle: Yes. Actually at NAB, we were showing a Morgan trailer.
Tim Siglin: Okay.
Scott Grizzle: Watson actually edited the trailer. It took all the videos, all the horror films we uploaded in there and also all the trailers. It went through for all the cool scenes and made a trailer. With that same information that you can do that, it could also be longform editing. It can go through, add tails, cut off the ends. It can also pull clips, give you the meta data and make it searchable that when you do put in your recommendation or your search like that, it'll pop up, you get to omit that as information in there. You have the video ID along with all the key terms and all the aspects of all the videos.
Tim Siglin: IBM has been known for doing a number innovative things over the years, obviously Watson is one of them. What makes IBM's commitment to video more apparent to people in the industry who are used to using other site solutions for cloud?
Scott Grizzle: Well, obviously the IBM Cloud Video Group is the former Clearleap and former Ustream. We're combining those together to make this uber OTT/OVP platform. That's a key thing IBM's going after is going after the cloud, because they have super computers, they have the Watson integrations, they have all the stuff out there. The whole route is, they realized the future is going to be more cloud computing, cloud networking, and also cloud video because that's where a lot of traffic comes in. One to many is a key form going out there, but you'll see other things with IBM. IBM's been working with media and sports companies forever. We did the Masters and the US Open, videos like that. IBM has always had a strong commitment to video and communications for that route. Now, we're just going to the next level.
Tim Siglin: What about formats? Is IBM committed to supporting multiple formats beyond just AVC as we look at VP9. Is it driven by customer demand or is it driven by innovation within IBM?
Scott Grizzle: It's customer demand. It's IBM as a customer-facing company. What customers want and what they need in the roadmap of the industries is where we're going to leverage and go through. Obviously, there are different groups inside IBM. One is, we have a consulting group that actually would go through and build whatever a customer needs. Then you have the OTT side and the Ustream side that would go through. We are more of a proprietary format, the OTT side is actually having flavors for all devices and connectors to go out there.
Tim Siglin: Okay, got it. You bring up an interesting point. I've worked with IBM Global Services in the past to build media facilities in Italy and other places like that. That expertise has been there for quite some time. Essentially what it sounds like, with IBM acquiring Ustream and Clearleap, that it brings a lot of core expertise in house that the Global Services can then also leverage from their standpoint.
Scott Grizzle: Correct. That's why they acquired both companies. It's for that core expertise and the core technologies out there to go to the next level. Obviously, IBM is a massive company, but they're going to have the resources to go out there to take on new challenges. They want to have tools to play with to go off of that route. I mean, really they're finding out with the Watson in the cognitive that with the platforms how we have on there, it gives them the extra options to go after those routes.
Tim Siglin: Very good. Very good. All right, again this has been Scott Grizzle with IBM. My name's Tim Siglin, Contributing Editor with Streaming Media.
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