Thousands of hours of new content, almost all of which needs localising into multiple languages, plus hard of hearing captions and some of it will need audio describing too.

The impact of this on the media localisation and access services industries is profound. Not only is everyone incredibly busy but the expectation of fast turn-around times and pricing pressures are driving the need to increase productivity.  We all know what it’s like;  you’re too busy to do anything to make yourself more efficient in the future to cope with the high workload, because you’re so busy coping with the high workload today. And so it goes on, round and round in circles.

You could throw money at the problem to add staff and tools to cope with all the new work, but what happens when things do slack off? And be assured they will at some point, have you committed too much in the way of capital spending and general expansion?

Better to think smart and be flexible.  You can now use web apps, cloud management systems and freelance staff to expand and contract quickly to support fluctuating demand. It’s easy to find cloud storage and processing resource, and there are workflow management tools available, either general or media industry specific. But it’s not so easy when it comes to subtitling and other tools specific to our industry. Subtitling, audio description and specialist media handling tools have not always kept up with the move to the cloud, but that’s changing.

Yella Umbrella now offer a range of authoring and media handling tools that provide power and flexibility. Stellar provides authoring and editing tools for subtitles, captions, transcriptions and AD while Nebula provides automated media handling to improve productivity in your media services department. All of the tools are available on a pay per use basis with no upfront cost and no lock in, pay only for what you use and scale up or down on a daily basis. Use more when you’re busy, drop down when things are normal and pay nothing over the holidays!

 

See our business case document here or have a look at the website here Business Case: Variable load handling in an expanding market.

If you would like to discuss your requirements in detail contact us here .

Or have a look at our website here: www.yellaumbrella.tv

Have you seen the range of cloud services available now? I don’t mean the cloud computing and storage solutions we’re all used to – there’s now so much more than that out there in the cloud. Whether it’s speech to text, machine translation, synthetic voices, facial recognition, subtitle splitting or object and brand detection, the pace of change is breath-taking.

We are entering a new paradigm where access to professional tools is democratised. Now a wide range of tools are easily available to anyone with an internet connection, and you can shop around for the best solution at the best price. This level of competition will drive cost and quality improvements in a rapidly evolving market.

However, there’s a catch: these are web services, so each has its own API and different data requirements. How do you take advantage of this abundance if you’re not a code guru or don’t have a whole department of programmers available?

This is where Nebula and Stellar from Yella Umbrella come in. By making all of the web services available through a common interface, you can use any combination of web services – even mix and match services of the same type. Maybe you find one Speech to Text service is best for English content, and another one for Dutch; or maybe you want to use a range of different synthetic voices, from several suppliers, in the same AD mix?

But just having a common interface for the web services isn’t enough. You also need to integrate them into your workflows – both automatic ones, and those with a manual element. Nebula can automate all the steps in your workflows by adding a wide range of media decoding, extraction, transcoding, encoding, insertion and multiplexing tools to work in conjunction with the web services.

Nebula can also optionally bundle all the service charges from multiple suppliers into a single, itemised, monthly bill.

Where a manual step is required, Stellar provides a browser based interface to manipulate timed text and audio elements in conjunction with the web services. Maybe you need to review and correct an automatic transcription but still retain all the metadata about word timing, confidence level and maybe even alternative words. Or maybe you want to adjust the style and timing of synthetic voices to get your voiceover mix just right.

Let Yella Umbrella help you get the most from the web services revolution with the minimum hassle. Use a wide range of services with no sign up, integrate the services into your workflows, pay for everything on a pay-as-you-go basis with no contract and no upfront cost – scale up or down at any time, and get just one invoice.

Come and see us at IBC on Stand P05 (Between Halls 7&8), or have a look at our website www.yellaumbrella.tv

               

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