At Body.io, we’re fortunate to have some ultra-large-scale prospects who problem us to maintain making our platform extra versatile and extra customizable. And what’s particularly worthwhile is when a few of our strongest customers associate with us to unravel a few of their largest challenges.
A type of customers is VICE Media. We are able to all the time rely on them to give you new concepts for a way Body.io may also help them streamline their huge operation—and to offer us (and our readers) a massively helpful case examine besides.
Learn on to find out about how they’ve automated their Requirements and Practices (S&P) evaluation course of by utilizing the Body.io API with AI transcription instruments—and the way they’ve reaped an enormous enhance in productiveness because of this.
VICE operates at scaaaaaaale
In accordance with Dee Wassell, Director of Media Operations, VICE has 36 places of work worldwide with 2,000 workforce members utilizing Body.io to handle 333,000 belongings saved on 35TB within the cloud. Yearly, they create over 200 hours of unique programming and, as we famous in last summer’s article about their general workflow, they calculate that by utilizing Body.io they save over 100 eight-hour enterprise days every year.
For these of you unfamiliar with the kinds of content material VICE produces, it’s a mixture of boundary-bending programming, from severely immersive journalism to significantly excessive skateboarding.
As Dee says, “We’re a part of a company that believes in pushing the world ahead, each by way of the tales we inform and the way we use know-how to inform them.”
And Dee would know. She’s been with VICE for seven years, throughout which she’s been instrumental in driving the group’s development into international post-production. Her major focus is centered on implementing a mix of cutting-edge applied sciences, like AI and Body.io, with VICE’s in-house media workflows.
The heavy lifting
For these of you who are conversant in VICE’s exhibits, you realize that their applications could be expletive heavy, a lot of which needs to be bleeped or muted to fulfill compliance lists for a wide range of scores throughout totally different mediums and air slots.
That’s the place their S&P division is available in to do what was as soon as some pretty heavy lifting—particularly on exhibits with same-day air occasions. A lean workforce of two to a few is charged with reviewing six to seven hours of video content material every day. At most, they’ll have a two-day turnaround to evaluation and finalize a present for broadcast.
Six or seven hours a day could not sound like quite a bit for the standard workday. However while you break down all of the steps, you understand that when finished manually, it truly took as a lot as 3 times the operating time of the exhibits to finish the method.
- First, the present was uploaded to Body.io and the hyperlink despatched to S&P.
- S&P reviewed the present in real-time, whereas having to bear in mind the three totally different compliance ranges (relying on the place and when the present was being aired). S&P then added time-stamped notes to Body.io instantly (if the present had a same-day airing), or to a Google Sheet (if there was a lengthier turnaround).
- Notes had been despatched again to editorial to bleep or drop the prohibited language.
- The ultimate variations had been then despatched again to S&P for remaining evaluation.
However they’re already utilizing Body.io for this, you’re most likely pondering. Isn’t that supposed to hurry the method up?
Sure, they had been importing cuts to Body.io and sure, they had been leaving frame-accurate feedback for the editor. Which is a part of why they began utilizing Body.io in 2016 within the first place. However what labored for them three years in the past wasn’t sufficient to maintain them forward of their development and targets as business leaders.
Get your self a Ted
The advantage of working with an operation on the dimensions of VICE is that they’re all the time on the lookout for methods to enhance and automate their processes, and have the perception and folks to help correct growth. “The trouble because it stood was a demanding in-brain workflow,” Dee says, “which made it susceptible to breaking down in follow.”
For context, as a result of the S&P workforce wanted to reference a number of phrase lists based on the extent of compliance, their quickest option to work by them was to have them dedicated to reminiscence. “It’s a credit score to the diligence of the S&P workforce that it didn’t,” she provides.
VICE is doing a number of growth utilizing AI workflows. “It’s at a degree the place we are able to actually leverage it,” Dee says. “I needed to discover a option to implement one thing now that might present worth and begin spreading the message internally. We determined to strategy the S&P workforce to see how we might assist them in a tangible means that we might share with the remainder of the group.”
Ted Price, VICE’s media methods developer, labored with Dee and with Max Baehr, our head of platform at Body.io. Ted joined VICE in 2017 and has targeted on “creating programmatic options for arduous workflows and bridging the hole between media methods by leveraging APIs and growing software program to swimsuit the corporate’s distinctive wants.”
Whereas the instruments are the inspiration for innovation, “Media methods builders are key to driving the following era {of professional} media workflows,” Max says. “Ted is essential to the method. Everybody ought to get a Ted!”
Good instruments + sensible folks = exponential financial savings
Every individual performed a significant function in shifting the mission ahead. From VICE’s facet, Ted labored tirelessly with 4 totally different APIs, whereas Dee was the mission level. At Body.io, Max labored with the backend and media providers groups, they usually collaborated in real-time utilizing Slack.
“For the reason that run-up to NAB this previous April once we launched the general public API, we’ve revealed a developer platform and began over a dozen technical partnerships,” Max says. “One in every of my favourite elements of this development has been the possibility to see our apps, integrations, and platform positively influence workflows that run at VICE’s scale.”
As Ted explains, “There are such a lot of alternatives for automation within the media business. Most duties are legacy workflows from a time the place methods like Body.io both didn’t exist or there was no potential for integration. The Body.io API permits somebody with my talent set to handle and set up information in a means that removes human interplay, which minimizes the margin for errors and saves time.
With the introduction of an API, like Body.io’s, the potential to avoid wasting money and time will increase exponentially. With their API and the instruments accessible through Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, I used to be capable of flip a laborious activity into a couple of clicks of a mouse.”
Utilizing Amazon’s API Gateway as an endpoint, Ted created a customized menu motion from the Body.io adjustable UI to a program contained in AWS Lambda.
The information he wanted to run the computation was included within the Customized Motion, in order quickly because it was ignited, it grew to become a self-contained course of that left little room for bugs or person error. “As soon as the method is finished, it locations worthwhile information into an easy-to-read spreadsheet that’s viewable by our workforce and the person who requested the knowledge,” Ted says.
“With out Body.io’s API this course of can be way more laborious and never practically as user-friendly. As soon as developed, it solely takes a couple of minutes to instruct somebody on how you can use my instrument.”
However there’s extra to it than simply saving time. “By pulling probably the most time-consuming components of the work into the cloud, we’re in a position to take action rather more than we did earlier than,” Dee says. “We’ve made our S&P workforce extra environment friendly by enhancing and standardizing the output of their work, which implies that the S&P folks can use their abilities to enter finer particulars and do extra artistic pondering.”
One in every of Dee’s superpowers is quantifying outcomes. Utilizing the brand new, automated workflow, she calculates that the VICE S&P group improved their evaluation course of on a 22-minute present by a formidable 70%.
“What these numbers don’t seize,” Dee says, “is the enterprise influence of the time we save and the constructive impact on the editors, producers, assistant editors, and supervisors who use the platform each day.”
Subsequent-gen workflows
Each media ecosystem, workflow, workforce, and group is totally different, however most use the identical assortment of some dozen instruments. The problem is to proceed to discover the practically infinite alternative ways these instruments could be mixed to serve every ecosystem’s wants. And the middle of the Body.io platform technique is to offer an easy-to-use toolkit and easy-to-follow documentation, together with devoted mission and technical help, that permits organizations to create next-gen workflows.
Clearly, VICE’s media tech group is forward of the curve available in the market at massive. However as AI-driven providers develop into inexpensive and extra usable in real-world situations, “we anticipate to see the development of automating processes proceed in skilled media workflows,” Max says. “Body.io as a product group builds a customer-centric suite of purposes rooted in end-user success, and as a platform can present the identical stage of dedication to the success of a rising class of media methods builders.”
Whereas we’re as regards to developer relations…
Whereas we now have strong developer relationships with VICE and numerous different large-scale purchasers, we additionally wish to hear from customers of all sizes and kinds. As a part of our developer relations program, we invite you to share the ways you use Frame.io and different instruments to allow your course of. Hit us up with tips, suggestions, or puzzles—since you assist us get higher at serving to you create the workflows of the longer term.
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