Grabyo

Cloud-based video production, editing and distribution.

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The rise of vertical video in mobile, social feeds

Mobile video consumption continues to rise at a staggering rate. Now responsible for over 85% of all web traffic, mobile video is the most effective way to reach and engage audiences at scale.

Time spent on mobile devices has now surpassed TV viewing in the US, with 50% of time spent in social, messaging, media and entertainment applications. Driving this change is vertical video viewing, a format which reflects our user behavior – we hold our phones in an upright position.

As consumers spend an increasing proportion of their waking hours on mobile devices and social platforms, vertical videos are aligned with this trend. Social news feeds are vertical too, we scroll down and not across, accentuating the trend towards square and vertical video formats.

Facebook reported this month that vertical videos are generating higher watch times and more engagements than traditional 16:9 (horizontal) formats. With more than 1bn users logging into Facebook every day on mobile devices people want to watch videos without having to turn their phones around.

This trend has forced publishers to rethink content production, creating engaging and effective video that is optimized for vertical viewing and makes the most of the available screen real estate on mobile phones.

Facebook made a number of changes to the user experience in its News Feed to ensure the success of vertical video – sound now fades in and out as users scroll through video, and autoplay starts and finishes depending on where the video is within the screen. Ultimately, by removing the need to rotate devices, Facebook has increased watch time and user engagement – a key metric for every social media platform. Key stats from 2017 include:

  • Facebook garnered 8 billion video views per day and started supporting native vertical video
  • Periscope live broadcasts are measured in years watched – with 110 years worth of video watched per day, mainly in the vertical format
  • Instagram has 300 million daily active users and was an early adopter of vertical video

Filming in vertical format straight from a mobile phone is natural for content creators. This has contributed to Snapchat’s rapid growth and the even faster adoption of Stories and live streaming on Instagram. For broadcasters and federations looking to distribute live or near-live premium content, vertical video presents some challenges. Typical broadcast workflows are designed to create content in 16:9 and repurposing this in real time for digital platforms is not an efficient process.

Despite the production challenges for vertical video, the accelerating growth of mobile devices and benefits of vertical viewing means this format cannot be ignored. Grabyo provides tools that enable rights holders and publishers to quickly change the aspect ratio of live content to share in real-time across digital platforms. This means that content shot for horizontal viewing can be quickly converted to vertical format – whilst focusing on the key action within the shot. Content is not wasted and digital production teams can dramatically reduce the time spent repurposing content for mobile feeds.

Facebook found the optimum length of a vertical video to be around 15 seconds; these clips can quickly be created, optimized and distributed through Grabyo to capitalize on peak engagement around a live event or TV broadcast.

With multi-aspect ratios, GIFs and image capture, Grabyo continues to innovate digital video production for a live, mobile and social audience. Get in touch now to find out more.

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Grabyo launches automated clip creation with Opta Sports

Grabyo is delighted to announce our latest product update, the creation, management and distribution of automated clips for broadcasters, rights holders and publishers. This first iteration of data-driven automation is a partnership between Grabyo and Opta Sports, allowing partners to create and distribute automated soccer highlights.

Grabyo partners can now create automated video clips that are triggered by “events” such as a goal, save, penalty decision or red card. Grabyo uses Opta Sports data to find these moments and then automatically clips the content, in real-time, ready for distribution moments after the event to digital and social platforms.

The rise of social video and mobile viewing has increased the focus on the speed of production for clips, highlights and video content. To meet this challenge for digital publishers, Opta Sports and Grabyo have partnered to deliver automated clip creation for live soccer matches.

Across the media industry, data manipulation, computer vision, machine learning and automated processes are becoming more prevalent in content production workflows. For digital and social content teams, automated technology gives them the ability to publish content from multiple events, locations and streams and share with fans across digital platforms in real-time.

For broadcasters, this provides the digital teams with autonomy from their TV counterparts, ensuring clips from all properties can be created and distributed instantly – allowing fans to experience content in the moment; regardless of on-site production support or geographical location. Automation enhances the experience for fans, giving producers more time to optimise videos for social and mobile viewing, or craft messages to tell the stories behind the game.

Automated workflows have begun to emerge for professional sports production. IBM’s Watson cognitive computer technology has dramatically altered content production and discovery for tennis tournaments including The Championships at Wimbledon and the US Open. The technology was used to automatically identify the best moments in key matches and auto-generate highlights from both events this year.

Using Grabyo’s existing cloud-based video tools, these clips and highlights can be reformatted for social and digital distribution – such as square or vertical orientation, or with additional graphics and captions – and shared to multiple platforms. For more information on Grabyo, data-driven workflows and automated clip creation please contact hello@grabyo.com or try Grabyo for a product demo.

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Grabyo launches 360 video with The Football Association

Grabyo partnered with The Football Association to launch our latest product update – support for live 360 video streaming and clipping.

Breaking new ground, The FA is the first Grabyo partner to use the new 360 video feature – engaging England fans across social media before the crucial World Cup Qualifier against Slovakia from Wembley Stadium connected by EE. The use of 360 video provides England fans with unprecedented access to the national team.

The FA has worked closely with the England team in recent years to offer a broad range of live, real-time and archived video for fans on digital and social platforms. 360 video is another tool to drive engagement for key events and the first step towards exploring virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) formats in the future.

“We are delivering new and engaging content experiences for fans across digital platforms and 360 video allows us to provide fans with unprecedented access to the national teams“ Says Mark Bullingham, FA Group Commercial Director. “Grabyo continues to be an important partner when it comes to engaging social audiences and with the addition of 360 video support, England fans receive a more immersive experience in the build up to important games”

Grabyo has added support for live 360 video to its browser-based platform at a time when increasing numbers of creators, brands and media companies are looking to utilise this new, immersive medium. 360 video is now supported across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and is rapidly growing in popularity with users.

The addition of both live and VOD 360 video further enhances Grabyo as the leader in cloud-based video production, editing and distribution, 360 video will be supported in both Grabyo’s Studio and Producer products.

For more information on Grabyo, our 360 video capabilities and cloud-video production tools please contact us or arrange a product demo.

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Grabyo launches custom fonts for social video editing and sharing

The latest version of Grabyo Studio now supports the use of custom fonts for our partners. This is a key update and ensures users can create on-brand ‘thumb-stopping’ moments shared directly through the Grabyo platform. Branded fonts are regularly used for video captions, allowing clips to stand out in social feeds, driving higher levels of engagement.

Custom fonts represent the next enhancement to the video editing capability of the Grabyo platform, building on the recent release adding text and graphics overlays for cropped and padded videos. The addition of custom fonts allows Grabyo partners to create on-brand social video content in seconds.

With Facebook nearing two billion monthly users and the growth in video on social platforms accelerating, the need to create engaging and stand out content is now more important than ever. GWI data has shown that the average Facebook user needs to be engaged within the first 2.3 secs of a video of a news feed – videos that contain branded graphics and text break the ‘scroll-first’ mentality of mobile users on social platforms.

Combining custom fonts with square and vertical video editing means that Grabyo partners stay ahead of the curve with social video publishing. Accessed via the ‘Grab Live’ feature, select the 1:1 aspect ratio and hit the ‘Pad’ feature and then select the ‘Artwork overlay mode’ to begin adding branded text and graphics. Uploading custom templated graphics to each clip creates a strong visual brand association with the content.

This release in another improvement in video workflow efficiency for partners who use Grabyo as an end to end video production, editing and distribution platform for their digital and social video needs. At a time when being able to deliver real-time content is vital to distribution, engagement and consumption, removing the need to export video into third-party software means users can publish real-time branded clips with text overlays in seconds.

To add a custom font to your account for immediate use, please email ops@grabyo.com.

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Record breaking week: 126 million views

Grabyo has just celebrated its biggest ever week, serving over 126 million video views for our partners. In total, 15.2 million of these views came from live broadcasts, with 10 Facebook Live broadcasts breaking one million views each.

With over five thousand clips created in the Grabyo platform last week, Grabyo partners generated 688 million video impressions, the most ever in a single week

Video is the dominant media format across social and digital platforms driving growth, engagement and media consumption. After delivering over 2.1 billion video views in 2016, Grabyo partners are on course to shatter that figure – through May we have seen 1.4 billion video views for content shared through our platform.

Real Madrid, which uses Grabyo to take its TV service to Facebook Live, went live directly from pitchside in the aftermath of winning the LaLiga title ahead of rivals FC Barcelona. The live broadcast took place immediately after the full-time whistle, taking advantage of the media rights available to the Spanish football club.

BT Sport went live to Facebook as Floyd Mayweather joined a press conference ahead of the IBF world title boxing clash between Gervonta Davis and Liam Walsh from London. The broadcaster also delivered numerous clips from the fight to promote the recent partnership between BT Sport and Box Nation.

ATP Media and Tennis TV shared the moment Sascha Zverev won the Italian Open final and became the youngest current member of the world’s top 10. In the last week alone, Tennis TV shared 169 videos through Grabyo.

Grabyo provides the world’s leading rightsholders, broadcasters and publishers with the tools to activate their social and digital audiences through both live streaming and real-time clip distribution.

The latest developments from Grabyo include a suite of tools for live production in the cloud focused on the needs of a mobile, social audience. For more information on Grabyo and the benefits of building live and real-time video distribution to your workflow please contact hello@grabyo.com or try Grabyo to arrange a demo today.

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