Announcing Preview of Azure AI Video Indexer Cloud-to-Edge Version

Azure AI Video Indexer, an Azure AI, solution with artificial intelligence and cognitive capabilities that are specifically designed for video content. It enables users to easily extract video insights and gain a deep understanding of the content they are analyzing. With Azure AI Video Indexer, turn your video estate into a smart archive using more than 30 AIs, making it easier than ever to manage analyzed video content. 

Achieve more out of Video Content with Azure AI Video Indexer enabled by Arc

In the accelerated digital environment of today, the ability to leverage the strength of video data is imperative for organizations across industries. As we navigate an era defined by multimedia, the need for groundbreaking approaches that enable efficient management, accessibility, safety, and compliance of video libraries has never been greater. Azure AI Video Indexer transforms how you interact with your video assets – introducing the Azure AI Video Indexer enabled by Azure Arc.

(Video Indexer enabled by Arc, hybrid deployment diagram)

The Customer Value Story: Meeting the Demands of a Multi-Edge World

Imagine this: Your organization has a vast media archive that is spread across various locations, such as offices, factories, or other computing sites. The challenge is to manage this hybrid setup using a single management layer.

However, based on customer feedback, this may not always be feasible due to local regulations and compliance restrictions. Additionally, transferring terabytes of content files for indexing purposes can result in high overhead costs.
Our innovative hybrid approach tackles these issues by allowing customers to implement a multi-edge approach.

The Key Announcement: Azure AI Video Indexer Enabled by Arc in Public Preview

We are thrilled to announce the public preview of the Azure AI Video Indexer powered by Azure Arc. This innovative hybrid cloud to edge solution enables our customers to run detection and classification-based Video AIs at the content location.

Feature Deep Dive: Empowering Accessibility, Safety, and Compliance

• Video Accessibility Through AI: With the Azure AI Video Indexer powered by Arc, you can transform your videos into accessible resources using features like transcription, translation, OCR (optical character recognition), and captions. This opens new avenues for engagement and inclusiveness, allowing you to reach a broader audience effortlessly.
• Enhance content discoverability: By utilizing the Azure AI Video Indexer powered by Arc, you can improve the discoverability of your content. This tool uses AI-led video/audio processing capabilities including scenes, shots and key frames extractors, object detection, and transcription. Enables you to extract metadata insights at any location, eliminating the need to migrate content to the cloud for processing. This solution is designed to address data governance and regulation limitations, saving organizations time and effort.
• Enhanced Safety with Video AI: Prioritize safety and security with advanced video AI capabilities. Utilize object detection to identify vehicles and obstacles, enhancing people's safety in real-world scenarios. All of this is accessible through a single, seamless API endpoint.
• Cloud-to-Edge Hybrid Experience: We understand that every organization has unique needs. That is why we are expanding the Azure AI Video Indexer beyond its cloud-native offering. Introducing a web-based cloud-to-edge hybrid experience, harnessing the power of connected containers from cognitive services.

Technology Applications: Faster Processing, Enhanced Privacy, Global Compliance

With the Azure AI Video Indexer powered by Arc, you can expect:

• Faster Processing: Experience accelerated video processing that maximizes efficiency and productivity across the board.
• Global Compliance: Seamlessly navigate data residency regulations with confidence. With this public preview, we are setting new standards in compliance.
• Easier solution integration: You can now incorporate Video Indexer into your solution pipeline, enabling you to utilize Video Indexer's AI capabilities as part of your solution, regardless of where it is deployed.

What capabilities are now available on the edge?

• Transcription: Transcribe video and audio content in one of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic.
• Translation, and Captioning: Translate the transcription of a video into any of the listed languages and create captions in various industry standard formats such as SRT, VTT, TXT, and others.
• Web UI (user interfaces) for editing transcription and translation: A user-friendly web interface for editing transcriptions, translations and OCR generated text. This allows end-users to easily validate and edit the text, ensuring that the resulting captions are accurate.
• Key frame, scenes, shots detection: Extracts Key frames from a video content at a rate of one frame per second, from which it identifies shots and scenes in the video clip. A license is a group of shots that show one event, A shot is a part of a video from one camera. A keyframe is a picture that represents a shot.
• OCR (Optical character recognition): Identifies characters shown in the video clip and will transcribe them. The OCR is supported in one of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic.
• Object detection: precision-oriented object detection model allowing customers to utilize the output to detect, tag, track, and search different objects. (to be available in the upcoming 60 days).  
• BYO (Bring Your Own) - Video Indexer is introducing a "Bring Your Own" (BYO) AI model feature that allows customers to incorporate additional insights into the built-in insights and provide a seamless experience for the end user. With this feature, end users can search and view both types of insights in a single system.
• Additional AI models available in Video Indexer cloud offering will be available in Edge solution in the future.

Closing Summary and Call to Action

The extension empowers your organization to manage, analyze, and extract value from your multimedia assets with unprecedented ease, all while adhering to stringent data residency regulations.

Do not miss the opportunity to fundamentally transform your approach to managing video content on hybrid cloud and edge landscapes. Join us in the public preview phase and witness the future of video content management today. Together, we will unlock the true potential of your video libraries. Use to submit an application to access the VI (Azure Video Indexer) enabled by Arc preview program and visit the documentation or this blog post to learn more about our video AI managed solution.

Also, we suggest visiting Azure Arc Jumpstart community site to learn more about Arc offerings and run the Video Indexer enabled by Arc jumpstart scenario.