Optical character recognition (OCR) has long since been used in business and logistical settings. But, did you know OCR has several exciting applications in the entertainment industry? Let’s take a look at a few ways OCR can be used for streaming.
Image to Text
When entertainment is broadcasted live, this can add new challenges for capturing results, data, and creating captions. This is where OCR technology comes in. For example, when you play the latest live casino games you’ll find the games are streamed in real time by a real dealer or croupier sitting around a real table in the studio. As the host will be dealing actual cards and spinning physical roulette wheels, OCR technology can be used to capture the result of each round during the live stream. The results can then be displayed on screen for anyone who missed it, and the data can be stored by the platform to ensure the fairness of the gameplay. In this sense, OCR helps live casino games to provide an immersive and authentic casino experience.
Source: Pixabay
Similarly, this same technique can be used to translate films and TV shows to other languages. Let’s say you’re watching a show that has been dubbed or subtitled – despite this, there may be captions on the screen, newspaper headings, storefronts, building names, and so on, that are still in the original language. Here, OCR can be used to automatically capture the text in the images to streamline the translation process, enhancing the viewer experience.
Automatic Camera Switching
Visual object tracking by a multi-camera set up has attracted much research interest over the past few years, particularly for its potential applications for driving and security. However, the implications for the entertainment industry could be exponential. Put simply, OCR technology has the ability to recognize characters and transform them into a machine readable format. When coupled with AI or other software, this means that the data can be used to inform and automate decisions.
Let’s say that you’re streaming an online game or even a remote interview where each attendee has a username. When someone speaks or moves, typically the person capturing the video would need to switch the camera manually. However, OCR and visual object tracking can automate the process by triggering specific cameras and camera switching depending on the behavior of the attendees.
What About Music?
Source: Pixabay
Now, you may be thinking, how can OCR technology support music streaming? Well, a distant cousin of OCR is a computer program called optical music recognition (OMR). Once OCR has created the digital file, this technology aims to make sense of notated music by allowing users to play scores aloud, transform it into an editable format, or extract certain data for computer analysis. In other words, OMR can assist musicians in taking their compositions from the notated score to a publishable file.
For independent artists, this software can be invaluable, as it can streamline the process of isolating sounds, extracting noise, and playing with different levels. It can also be used to recreate or reconstruct historic notation, as if any phrases are missing, the existing patterns can be analyzed to provide educated estimations of what should appear.
And there you have it – just a few ways that OCR (and its musical relative) can be used in the entertainment industry. With this technology, casino game, TV, film, and music streaming can all be enhanced for both the production and consumer alike.
