Conceptual Understanding

Video is the only medium that is capable of capturing the complete spectrum of human communication including: gestures, tone, facial expressions, and so on. By its nature, video carries more meaning than can be narrowed down into a few lines of text. Thanks to its unique underlying pattern matching technology combined with video and audio analytics, IDOL is able to extract meaning from all data files and to form a conceptual and contextual understanding of the entire data set. Because the value of information can only be extracted once it is processed, Autonomy Virage unlocks the value hidden in video and audio files. When computers “understand” information, they can start to automatically process it and begin to bring information to the user rather than the other way round. Through understanding, computers can automatically create taxonomies, alert users to new and relevant information as it becomes available in real-time or automatically profile an individual’s interests based on what they read and write, offer them interesting information without the need to search, or connect them with people with similar interests.

Understanding the concepts within data allows computers to cluster information, identifying inherent themes or groups of conceptually similar information. In addition, by using this approach, it is possible to detect irregularities in everyday scenes for security purposes, identify well-known speakers in broadcast media and analyze conversations to detect positive or negative sentiment.

Meaning Based Computing

Formerly, the rich quality of human information had to be reduced before computers could attempt to process it, for example, distilling a feature length video into a short, searchable text summary or metatags. This, however, is a counter productive process, as it eliminates much of the wealth and advantage of a video asset over a text-based file. As a consequence, structuring video assets into organized databases goes against the fundamental advantage of rich media mediums. Autonomy turns that on its head, allowing computers to handle the full richness of human-friendly information, whether they are text, audio or video. This meaning based approach represents a fundamental change in the IT industry and it is changing the way computers deal with information, liberating us from the restrictive and limited approach of a database.

Autonomy is the acknowledged leader in the rapidly growing area of Meaning Based Computing (MBC). MBC refers to the ability to form an understanding of all information, whether structured, semi-structured or unstructured, and recognize the relationships that exist within it. Through sophisticated functionality and analytics, MBC automates manual operations in real-time to offer true value. This creates unique capabilities when working with video as the computer is able to process information much in the same way as humans do - by understanding its meaning.

The true value of a digital asset can only be leveraged by processing it. By giving computers the technology required to form a conceptual and contextual understanding of the information, Autonomy Virage unlocks the full potential of digital video libraries, intelligently processing information and automating advanced processes such as categorizing, clustering, analyzing and more.

For example, automatic hyperlinking, which connects users to a range of pertinent documents, services or products that are contextually linked to the original file, requires that the meaning of the original document is fully understood. Similarly, for computers to automatically collect, analyze and organize information, they have to be able to extract meaning. Only MBC systems can do this.