Live Video Intelligence – Creating Enriched Metadata for the NBA

At IBC 2025, we’re showcasing the future of live video intelligence at the Microsoft Booth (Hall 14.A70, RAI Amsterdam) – creating enriched metadata that powers everything from automated broadcasts and game summaries to editorial workflows and personalized fan experiences.

Every minute of manual video processing means delayed content and lost revenue opportunities for rights holders. In today’s sports media landscape, being second means being forgotten. Whether it’s a broadcaster racing to post the perfect highlight, a social media team crafting viral content at halftime, or coaches needing instant tactical insights – the demand is always the same: understand what just happened, fast enough to act on it.

The NBA invited us to the Summer League with a clear challenge: prove that AI driven video analysis could meet the demands of live environments. We set three measurable goals:

Goal: Generate enriched metadata from a live stream in under two minutes.
Result: We consistently beat that target – often producing usable data in under a minute – delivering metadata significantly faster than manual workflows.

Goal: Show that enrichment could be tailored to league or team requirements.
Result: We introduced custom tag, proving that new categories can be defined and integrated on the fly.

Goal: Demonstrate a complete workflow from ingest → enrichment → real-time application.
Result: The same metadata powered multiple scenarios simultaneously:

• Automated game summaries and highlight clipping for web/ social
• Instant website updates
• Enriched analysis packages for editorial teams

 

We’ve built a system that can take any live video feed and turn it into rich, detailed metadata in under a minute. The result is actionable intelligence that works regardless of whether traditional data sources exist—turning raw video into the foundation for entirely new experiences.

Here’s how it works: As live content streams in, we analyze video simultaneously processing video frames and audio and most importantly its context and relationship to each other, extracting detailed information about players, actions, tactics, and key moments. When combined with grounding data like live sports feeds, this creates an incredibly rich dataset that powers not just avatars, but countless applications.

This isn’t just about automating what humans already do, it’s about creating metadata where none existed before, and then building entirely new experiences on top of that foundation.

The beauty of real-time content understanding lies in its versatility. The same metadata can drive a variety of experiences.

Our NBA Finals AI Showcase demonstrates the consumer-facing potential of this technology. Instead of browsing through endless highlight reels, fans can simply ask: “Show me Jayson Tatum’s 3-point highlights from Game 3” and receive a professionally narrated, story-driven compilation within moments.

What makes this special is the speed – and the story. Our AI Story Creator doesn’t just stitch clips together; it crafts compelling narratives with proper story arcs, context-aware commentary, and seamless transitions that rival professional broadcast highlights. We work with clients to adjust the story to match their tone of voice and brand.

While fans enjoy personalized highlight reels, the same technology is changing editorial workflows. Content creators can now generate social media clips, pre-match analysis packages, and multilingual content at unprecedented speed and scale.

We specialize in customizing this technology for our clients and building it directly into their existing workflows. We can set up automated templated processes where the AI handles the heavy lifting—finding clips, creating initial cuts, generating scripts—while humans add the final touches with script adjustments or final scene cutting.

Picture a social media editor preparing half-time content. Instead of manually scrubbing through footage, they simply request what they need and receive professionally packaged clips ready for distribution across platforms—complete with translations for global audiences.

This same metadata foundation opens up numerous professional applications: automated website updates, coaching analysis packages, tactical reports, and real-time editorial support.

Take live match reporting as one example—those minute-by-minute updates that appear on sports websites and apps during games. Currently, editorial teams manually track key moments and craft updates throughout matches.

Our live video analysis can automatically identify significant plays, momentum shifts, and standout performances as they happen, providing editors with structured data and suggested content. This allows editorial teams to focus on crafting compelling narratives while the system handles the heavy lifting of tracking and contextualizing the action in real-time.

But that kind of real-time insight isn’t reserved for matches with million-dollar production crews. What about Championship football, MLS, women’s basketball, college hockey, or youth tournaments? Most of these events have no team of experts breaking down formations, no instantaneous read on tactical shifts, no quick view of player performance. When analysts exist at all they’re still piecing stories together hours after the whistle, long after the audience has moved on.

The same workflow that levels the playing field for lower-budget sports can transform other sectors too.

• Newsrooms can auto-assemble breaking news packages
• Entertainment brands can drop social teasers before an encore ends
• Universities can tag lectures, so students search by topic instead of timestamp
• Retailers can spotlight products the moment they appear on screen

Any organization working with video can turn raw footage into structured, actionable data.

Our Premier League showcase pushed this even further. At NAB 2025, we previewed a fully automated broadcast where AI avatars acted as host and analyst, orchestrated by AI agents in the roles of producers and directors.

While the avatars caught the eye, the real story is the same Live Video Intelligence pipeline, enriching meta data and budling the foundation for these experiences.

With nearly two decades of experience building media software for NBC, Paramount, BBC, FIFA, UEFA, WWE, HBO, Microsoft and Amazon, we understand that great technology is only as good as its implementation. That’s why we don’t offer one-size-fits-all products. We create custom solutions tailored to your specific workflows, content types, and business objectives.

Our approach combines cutting-edge AI with deep media industry expertise, ensuring that solutions aren’t just technically impressive—they’re practically useful for real-world operations.

Visit us at IBC 2025 (Microsoft Booth, Hall 14.A70, RAI Amsterdam) to see live demonstrations of our NBA Summer League work and explore how this technology can transform your content operations. Whether you’re looking to enhance editorial workflows, create new fan experiences, or unlock value from archives, we’ll show you what’s possible when Azure-powered AI meets deep media expertise.

Ready to eliminate video processing bottlenecks and unlock new revenue opportunities? Let’s discuss how live video intelligence can transform your workflows.

Email max.heiderscheid@uicdigital.com or visit uicdigital.com