- [Instructor] Azure Media Services makes it easy
to use high definition video encoding
and streaming services to reach your audience
on today's devices.
It also enables you to use state-of-the-art AI
to extract rich metadata from your video content.
These are some of the media service tools
we'll look at in this video;
video encoding, streaming, the Video Indexer,
content protection and DRM, Azure CDN,
and the Azure Media Player.
It's rare to publish video to the web
in the original format.
Here at LinkedIn Learning,
we record our content in AVI files,
but encode them and publish them as MP4 files.
Video encoding is the process of converting a video
to another video and format.
For web content, it is common to compress the content
during encoding, so that it consumes less space
on the web server, lowers the bandwidth cost,
and speeds up streaming the content to the consumer.
Azure Encoding is fast; it can handle live encoding,
or the video is captured live in an event,
and immediately encoded for consumption.
It has been used to power
some of the largest events on the planet.
Media Encoder gives you thumbnail generation,
image and audio overlays, slap, clip, creation,
and multiple clip stitching.
Streaming is a technology used to deliver content
to devices over the internet.
Streaming transmits data as a continuous flow,
which allows the consumer to begin
to watch or listen almost immediately.
Azure provides streaming services.
As I just mentioned, Media Services has webcasted
some of the world's largest events.
Whether you expect a large event,
or you need a cost effective solution
for a small local event, Media Services can scale
to any size audience.
Media Services excels at streaming static or live content.
Media Server has the intelligence to forward
the right data fragment with the correct bit rate
and timestamp to your client efficiently.
Plus, it can stream in multiple formats.
For example, you can host a single MP4 file in the cloud;
Azure Media Services chooses the best streaming format
for the individual device.
This saves on the cost of encoding the video
into multiple formats.
Now let's talk about the indexer.
Azure Video Indexers is a cloud application
which consolidates various audio and video
artificial intelligence technologies
offered by Microsoft into one integrated service.
I'll be talking about the video service,
but they're nearly identical for audio.
We upload our video files to the service,
and we get back detailed video insights
from the content within the files.
Indexer automatically identifies
the dominant spoken language.
Currently, it supports nine languages
and falls back to English when unable to determine language.
It generates written transcriptions
of the audio content, converting the speech to text
in up to 12 languages.
Closed captioning is the process
of including text with video,
with the intention of providing interpretive information.
Closed captions are encoded invisibly
and displayed by a decoder on the consumer's media player.
The name implies that they can be hidden
or closed from view.
This means they can be turned off or disabled.
The Azure Indexer can format the audio translation
in standard closed captioning formats.
The Indexer can clean up noisy recordings
and remove the tininess from telephony audio.
It can identify all speakers within the video,
and understands which person spoke each sentence
in the conversation.
It can scan for textual content, and when found,
extract and document the text
that is visually displayed in the video.
In this picture, it would extract the word "caution".
The indexer automatically creates thumbnails
from the video content.
It identifies the best captured face in each group
of faces, and extracts it as an image asset.
It can also generate thumbnails for scene changes
and other significant moments in the video.
It identifies and catalogs emotions
based on speech and audio cues.
For example, an emotion could be joy,
sadness, anger, or fear.
Plus, it integrates with the Azure Language Service.
It creates translations of the audio transcript
to 54 different languages.
In the content protection area,
Media Services delivers highly secure content
using multiple DRM formats,
like PlayReady, Widevine, and FairPlay streaming.
And it can also handle AES Clear Key encryption.
It gives you on-the-fly encryption
for video on demand and live streams.
Due to the way the content is encrypted,
if your content key is ever compromised,
simply call the Azure APIs to change the key
instead of re-encrypting your entire library.
Like all the other Azure services,
you get easy, natural integration
with the Azure Active Directory,
use Active Directory and Media Service licensing tools
to control access to your media assets.
Azure Content Delivery Network, or CDN,
lets you reduce load times,
save bandwidth and speed responsiveness.
Use this feature to help manage your streaming media assets.
It's also helpful when developing or managing websites,
or mobile apps, gaming software,
firmware updates or IOT endpoints.
With this distributed global presence,
Azure CDN easily handles sudden traffic spikes
and heavy loads, for example,
during major product launches or global sporting events.
It does this without new infrastructure costs
or capacity concerns.
Azure Media Player is a free player
built to playback media content from Azure Media Services.
Azure Media Player has the ability to reach a wide variety
of browsers and devices with a simple HTML
and JavaScript code.
It is easy to set up and use, and only takes a few minutes
to get playback of media content
working from your Azure account.
Reach audience around the world with the ability
to play back multilanguage audio streams,
to see subtitles, and localize the player.
It also provides equal access and opportunity
for all your customers through accessibility features,
for seeing captions, interaction with screen readers,
and it works with touch, mouse and keyboard.
Azure Media Services provides a flexible set of features
including (indistinct), indexing, storage, transcoding,
and streaming delivery.
This is valuable for live and on-demand video streaming.
You'll find it useful no matter
how big or small your video catalog.