This topic features prominently in the AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution exam. Azure Video Indexer is an innate part of Azure’s service offerings that empower users to extract metadata from videos and to gain insights into content. With its rich feature set, Azure Video Indexer can be used to extract visual and speech elements such as captions, multi-language identification and translation, face detection, and more.
The services offered by Azure Video Indexer include:
- Video Indexing: This service extracts data and detailed insights from the content of the video. These include audio transcriptions, recognition of faces, OCR, translation, and more.
- Indexing with an API: You can upload and index videos through APIs provided by Azure Video Indexer.
- Data extraction: Azure Video Indexer extracts data such as spoken words, texts on screen, and more from the video.
- Content moderation: The video indexer can identify contents that require moderation. This aids in mitigating issues of displaying sensitive content inadvertently.
General steps for video processing through Azure Video Indexer:
- Log into Azure Portal and navigate to the Video Indexer.
- Upload the video that needs to be processed.
- Run the video indexer on the video.
- The video will then be processed as per the pre-defined parameters. After the process, outputs like transcriptions, face recognitions, scene detections, etc., would be available.
- Download or visualize the data which has been extracted from the video.
Let’s explore an example:
You have a video of an hour-long seminar, and you need to find out how many times an individual speaker appeared in the video and the spoken content. For the sake of this example, the video can be uploaded in the “My Assets” area of the Video Indexer portal.
After uploading your video, it’s time to run the Video Indexer. After the video indexer has completed the process, you can view a summary of your video. It includes the count of recognized people, total keywords, sentiments, topics, labels, brands, and emotions.
When you choose ‘People’ in the summary, you will see the thumbnails of people recognized in the video. If the speaker is prominently featured in the video, their face would be available in the thumbnails. Clicking on any of these thumbnails will indicate the individual’s screen time and the timeline of their appearances.
In the same way, you can access the transcript of the video corresponding to the timeline. The spoken words are arranged with their timestamp in the transcript. If any word is related to recognized people, a hyperlink is created, and by clicking this link, you can see the time when the person is speaking the word in the video.
By following these steps, you can efficiently process a video using Azure Video Indexer.
As developers, we often tend to use APIs for automation
The same process can be executed using Video Indexer API. The code snippets below demonstrate how to upload a video and get the processed data:
import requests
import os
# Define the endpoint and API key
endpoint = ‘https://api.videoindexer.ai’
api_key = ‘YOUR_API_KEY’
location = ‘Trial’
account_id = ‘YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID’
# Upload and index the video
headers = {‘Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key’: api_key}
params = {‘name’: ‘my_video’, ‘privacy’: ‘Private’, ‘videoUrl’: ‘URL_OF_YOUR_VIDEO’}
response_upload = requests.post(endpoint+’/Accounts/’+account_id+’/Videos’, params=params, headers=headers)
#Get the indexed data
video_id = response_upload.json()[‘id’]
params = {‘accessToken’: ‘YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN’}
response_index = requests.get(endpoint+’/’+location+’/Accounts/’+account_id+’/Videos/’+video_id+’/Index’, params=params)
#Print the indexed data
print(response_index.json())
To summarize, Azure Video Indexer opens up new possibilities for processing videos to extract valuable insights. Understanding this tool can make a strong case for your technical arsenal, especially if you’re aspiring for AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution certification.
Practice Test
True/False: Azure Video Indexer is capable of extracting insights from video files.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer is an AI service from Microsoft Azure that enables users to extract insights from video files.
In an Azure Video Indexer, what does the ‘Face’ feature allow you to do?
- A. Upload Videos
- B. Identify and Label Faces
- C. Add Captions
- D. Schedule Video Processing
Answer: B. Identify and Label Faces
Explanation: The ‘Face’ feature on Azure Video Indexer allows you to identify and label faces in a video.
True/False: Azure Video Indexer does not support language identification.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer supports language identification. It can detect various languages spoken in the video.
Which of the following is not a capability of Azure Video Indexer?
- A. Extracting Speech to Text
- B. Capturing Visual Elements
- C. Detecting Faces in a Video
- D. Generating Music
Answer: D. Generating Music
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer does not generate music. Its capabilities are related to video analysis, including speech-to-text extraction, visual element capturing and face detection.
Multiple Select: Which of the following features does Azure Video Indexer support?
- A. Sentiment Analysis
- B. Language Detection
- C. Text Translation
- D. Generating 3D Models
Answer: A. Sentiment Analysis, B. Language Detection, C. Text Translation
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer supports sentiment analysis, language detection, and text translation. It does not have the capability to generate 3D models.
True/False: Azure Video Indexer can automatically generate keywords that describe a specific video.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer uses advanced algorithms to automatically generate keywords that represent your video content.
What does the Azure Video Indexer’s scene segmentation feature allow you to do?
- A. Add Music to the Video
- B. Split Video into Parts
- C. Generate Captions
- D. None of the above.
Answer: B. Split Video into Parts
Explanation: The Azure Video Indexer’s scene segmentation feature allows you to divide a video into separate parts or scenes.
True/false: The Azure Video Indexer does not require any coding for usage.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer has a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require any coding skills to process a video.
What does the term ‘Index’ refer to in Azure Video Indexer?
- A. Processing videos
- B. Splitting videos into different segments
- C. All corresponding insights for a specific video
- D. Uploading videos
Answer: C. All corresponding insights for a specific video
Explanation: In the context of Azure Video Indexer, ‘Index’ refers to all the insights extracted from a specific video.
True/False: Azure Video Indexer can detect specific brands in a video.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer has the capability to detect and recognize brands that appear in a video.
What is the result of the Azure Video Indexer’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition)?
- A. Detecting faces
- B. Extracting text from video
- C. Keywords generation
- D. Language detection
Answer: B. Extracting text from video
Explanation: The OCR feature in Azure Video Indexer extracts text that is seen in the video.
True/False: Azure Video Indexer supports multi-language speech transcription.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer does indeed support multi-language speech transcription, capable of transcribing spoken words into text for multiple languages.
Which of the following is not an output of Azure Video Indexer?
- A. Sentiment Scores
- B. Video Thumbnails
- C. Translation to Different Languages
- D. Web Traffic Analysis
Answer: D. Web Traffic Analysis
Explanation: While Azure Video Indexer provides insights like sentiment scores, video thumbnails, and translations, it does not analyze web traffic.
True/False: Azure Video Indexer can integrate with other Azure services.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Video Indexer can indeed be integrated with other Azure services, enhancing its capabilities and providing more comprehensive solutions.
What does the term ‘Entities’ refer to in the context of Azure Video Indexer?
- A. File Size
- B. Detected faces, labeled with a name
- C. Video Length
- D. None of the Above
Answer: B. Detected faces, labeled with a name
Explanation: In the context of Azure Video Indexer, ‘Entities’ refer to the detected faces that have been identified and labeled with a name.
Interview Questions
What is Azure Video Indexer?
Azure Video Indexer is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that uses AI technologies to extract insights from videos. This includes capabilities such as extracting spoken words, faces, characters, emotions, topics, and activities.
What are some specific features of Azure Video Indexer?
Azure Video Indexer provides features like face detection and recognition, label detection, OCR for text recognition, sentiment analysis, language identification, keyword extraction, and audio effects detection.
How does Azure Video Indexer extract spoken words from a video?
Azure Video Indexer uses Speech-to-Text technology to convert spoken language into written text. It can also distinguish between different speakers.
What kind of format does Azure Video Indexer accept for the video uploads?
Azure Video Indexer accepts videos in various formats including MP4, MOV, WMV, and others.
How can Azure Video Indexer be used for sentiment analysis?
Azure Video Indexer performs sentiment analysis on the transcription of the spoken words in the videos. It determines the sentiment of each spoken sentence, whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral.
What is the purpose of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature in Azure Video Indexer?
The OCR feature in Azure Video Indexer is used to identify and extract printed or handwritten text from images or objects present in the video.
How does Azure Video Indexer handle multiple languages in a video?
Azure Video Indexer supports multiple languages and can automatically detect the language spoken in the video.
Can Azure Video Indexer detect celebrities in a video?
Yes, Azure Video Indexer includes a celebrity recognition model and can detect over 1 million celebrities from various fields such as politics, sports, and entertainment.
Can Azure Video Indexer distinguish between different speakers in a video?
Yes, Azure Video Indexer has the ability to separate the transcript based on different speakers.
What is the purpose of the keyframe extraction feature in Azure Video Indexer?
The keyframe extraction feature in Azure Video Indexer helps to summarize the video by extracting representative frames from the video.
Can Azure Video Indexer recognize the emotions of characters in a video?
Yes, Azure Video Indexer has the capability of recognizing the visible emotions of characters present in a video.
How can Azure Video Indexer help in content moderation?
Azure Video Indexer can identify and tag potentially inappropriate content, helping in automatic content moderation.
Can Azure Video Indexer detect songs playing in a video?
Yes, Azure Video Indexer can identify songs and associated artists in a video.
How can a user interact with Azure Video Indexer and process videos?
Users can interact with Azure Video Indexer either via the Video Indexer portal or by using the Video Indexer API.
What are some use-cases of Azure Video Indexer?
Use-cases of Azure Video Indexer include video content moderation, media metadata extraction, video cataloging, ad targeting, and sentiment tracking.