The dynamically generated video clips provide an excerpt from the program, such as a scene from a documentary or sitcom, a snippet from a talk show, or a sequence of clips from a sportscast, enabling the user to rapidly get a flavor of the show’s content. This enables viewers to more rapidly discover appealing content to watch, and reduces time to viewing. Critically, this capability mitigates against user frustration and thus increases enjoyment and engagement.

The solution generates previews for live broadcast programs in near-real-time; this benefits TV service operators as they can utilize the previews when most catch-up and replay viewing occurs, helping more people more speedily make the right viewing choices. Fully automated, Preview Distillery does not need human intervention such as editing and manual reviews, making the solution both cost-efficient and scalable.

The company regards Preview Distillery as the next logical step from its Image Distillery™ solution, which generates unique episodic still images for each show, as an alternative to the series’ stock image.

Having video previews, much like autoplay functions on Instagram and YouTube, helps the viewer more quickly decide what to watch. By giving the user a better idea about a show’s content, they can more easily find something appealing to enjoy.

Preview Distillery generates previews of a program by performing audiovisual analysis of it. The solution uses a multitude of AI techniques (scene detection, content segmentation/chapters, topic detection, audio and speech detection, etc.) to create a representative snippet that gives the viewer a better understanding of what the program is about. To prevent spoilers, previews are generated from the first part of a program.

For live broadcasts, Preview Distillery leverages the company’s flagship solutions EPG Correction Distillery™ and Ad Break Distillery™ to ensure content is selected from the right program and does not contain ads.

TV service operators may receive movie and series trailers for some of their content. However, this might represent only a small percentage of the programming catalogue. Even when movie or series trailers exist, they might not be provided to every service provider. By deploying Preview Distillery, the provider can be confident of access to appealing snippets to entice viewers. Preview Distillery is therefore complementary to existing movie or program trailers already in use.

Helping to boost engagement, and alleviate decision paralysis
Research from Media Distillery’s partner Gracenote, reveals that viewers can spend a long time deciding what to watch. Gracenote’s report entitled “2023 State of Play” showed that viewers have a potentially overwhelming amount of content to choose from at any given moment. The study found that consumers on average spend 10.5 minutes to choose what to watch, with as many as 20% deciding not to watch anything. This poses a serious churn risk.

Media Distillery believes that providing consumers with meaningful insight into a program during browsing delivers value; By helping the viewer decide faster, there's an opportunity to increase consumption. Viewers can either opt to watch the program immediately, or add to a watchlist for later viewing.