PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Amazon Delivers Vertical-Video Tech
Keeping score
Amazon Web Services announced a new service, AWS Elemental Inference, that allows clients to turn live and on-demand video into vertical videos ready for social media in real time.
The Big Picture: Vertical video is the format of virality. By making it easier for traditional broadcasters, cable outlets, and even streamers with livestreaming content to turn live moments into snackable content within minutes, a tighter dialogue may emerge between live programming and social media.
Behind The Feature: Amazon is collapsing the window between the small screen (your TV) and the smallest screen (your smartphone).
AWS Elemental Inference uses AI to automatically transform live moments filmed traditionally (horizontally) into vertical video with just a 6–10 second delay.
The models “analyze each frame to identify subjects, track movement across scenes, and intelligently determine the right vertical placement,” according to AWS Media Services product head Regina Rossi.
That ensures that the resulting videos “keep athletes centered during plays, speakers in frame during interviews, and key action visible regardless of aspect ratio.”
Final Render: All that automation enables networks, studios, and streamers to post clips to social platforms in near real time — supercharging conversation, fueling discovery, and ensuring they capitalize on cool moments. In a digital economy where engagement is capital, that’s huge.
NBCUniversal and Fox Sports have already signed on to use the tool. With 90% of Fox Sports’ digital content reportedly consumed vertically, this could be a game-changer.
Prediction: Expect viral videos of live content to start appearing later in the very same broadcasts. Trippy.
Together with Shortform
Become A Nonfiction Expert With Shortform
It can sometimes be impossible to find the time to dive fully into great nonfiction books… so Shortform wants to pull out the nuggets, insights, and connective tissue that make you feel like you read them from cover to cover.
Used by top authors like James Clear and Robert Greene, Shortform doesn’t summarize books — it analyzes them. That gives you the power to take in more information faster.
For the price of one book per month, you get:
A 1-pager of the entire book, chapter-by-chapter breakdowns, and exercises to make the information stick.
Smart insights, commentary, and analysis from a team of expert writers and editors.
Connections to other ideas, counterpoints, and arguments from other authors, and updates from recent works.
PDF and audio versions of books so you can learn where you want, when you want.
But Shortform knows that real knowledge is all about connecting the dots, so the service includes master guides on specific topics, article and podcast recs, and a browser extension that unlocks everything the internet has to offer on a subject.
That’s how you become an expert when everyone is still on Chapter 3.
PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.