Evolphin announced a new set of tools for working with AI, including integration of widely used AI tools with its Zoom media asset management system (MAM) and the ability to automatically edit videos using AI-generated metadata.
“We built an AI integration engine that can plug into any AI service that you want to use,” Evolphin VP of Video Product Management Evan Michals tells StudioDaily. “We’ve built into Google Cloud, Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, and we’ve also partnered with aggregators, such as Veritone, so it doesn’t matter to Evolphin Zoom where the AI information is coming from.”
AI engines hosted on those cloud services return information with timecode accuracy; Evolphin tags and logs the footage and makes it fully searchable through the Zoom MAM. Relevant data might include the names of people visible in the shot, the appearance of logos, or the type of play taking place in a sporting event.
Evolphin Zoom’s AI timeline view
Evolphin
The various results are displayed in the web client via a special timeline view created by Evolphin with different layers to help editors visualize the information they’re getting from different AI services. Entries can be manually updated by users and any mistakes can be corrected and sent back to the AI engines to help improve their learning models.
View of the AI-driven interface for creating a sequence from clips
Evolphin
The killer app, of course, is AI video editing — the ability to automatically assemble exactly the clips that are needed for a given recap or highlight reel. Instead of having an editorial staffer pore over footage and manually select relevant clips, Evolphin says, the system can be used to search for the face of a given player at specific moments in a game, such as goals or penalties, or for types of action, like cars drifting on a race track.
With the correct filters applied, Zoom will retrieve the corresponding moments and generate a sequence that can be saved as a video file or exported as XML for use with any video editing software that recognizes XML files.
The automated sequence generator isn’t just for AI-generated info, Michals says, noting that it works just as well with metadata curated by humans. If footage has been manually logged, that information can still be used to help Zoom retrieve appropriate clips instead of requiring editors or producers to find the footage in order to assemble a rough cut.
Is AI about to make traditional editing obsolete? Editors and producers are probably safe for now, but their staffs may be about to get smaller as AI takes on more and more tasks that used to be the province of their assistants.
“We are seeing a lot of interest in the sports market,” says Michals. “One customer in Europe that we will be announcing soon is very excited for this. For [sports] highlight reels, where there’s so much footage out there and you have such specific needs for the project you’re working on, you can combine facial recognition with game-moment detection and get those clips to the editor in seconds instead of hours or even days.”
Evolphin Zoom is integrated with Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and InCopy; Maxon Cinema 4D; Sketch; and workflow automation service Zapier.
