How to use video cloud technology to make a popular "reaction video" project?

In February 2021, the "New Content and New Interaction" Global Video Cloud Innovation Challenge kicked off. The competition is hosted by Intel and Alibaba Cloud, in cooperation with Youku's strategic technology, and jointly hosted by the Tianchi platform and the Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud team. Since the start of the competition, more than 4,600 contestants from around the world have signed up for the contest. We have selected outstanding cases and moving stories from the contestants to enter the world of video cloud entrepreneurs and innovators.

The old and trendy "Reaction Video"

"Reaction Video", translated as "Reaction Video" in Chinese, is a video that records people's reactions to things. In terms of presentation form, the screen consists of two parts, including the video resources watched and the viewer's own reaction.

This video format first originated in Japanese variety shows in the 1970s. This small window format is called "wipe", and the wipe that expresses the expressions and reactions of guests is called "wipe performance." Many Japanese variety shows still retain this way of performing. This kind of "instant response from small window guests" has also become a major feature of Japanese variety shows.

The screenshot is from the Japanese variety show "Moonlight Night is Young"

In 2013, "reaction videos" spread from TV to the Internet. With the third season of the American drama "Game of Thrones", a large number of YouTube netizens recorded their fierce reactions while watching the drama, which triggered a collective resonance from global audiences, "Reaction" "Video" has become popular all over the world, and has developed into a mature and large branch on multiple video platforms. The most popular Reaction channel on YouTube has accumulated 11 billion views and 20.1 million subscribers.

With the global popularity, "reaction video" began to take root in domestic video platforms and developed a "localization" trend. Station B is currently the platform with the most Reaction content in China. Among them, "Mosquito Jiji" is an earlier batch of up masters doing Reaction videos. Since January 2018, the first phase of Reaction videos has been released. So far, the number of fans has reached 548,000. .

Picture taken from bilibili

"Reaction video", existence is reasonable

While the "reaction video" has exploded, some people have also begun to question whether this video format is really valuable? Is it just a flash in the pan under the blessing of hot spots?

In this regard, let us first look at the history of the development of video platforms. Early video platforms only provided text comments. After watching the video, the audience can leave comments at the bottom of the video, and then the "barrage" evolved from comments. Popular, it has now become the standard configuration of almost all video platforms.

Behind the comments and barrage, what is hidden is the sense of identity and the desire to share that the audience needs. In the foreseeable future, with the popularization of video cloud technology, a more vivid interactive form of "reaction video" is bound to be widely used. While watching the video, the audience can record their own immediate reactions in real time. Become a new track.

How to realize "reaction video" with video cloud technology?

In this global video cloud innovation challenge, some players paid attention to this interesting interactive form. Contestant Liu Shaorong is a fledgling programmer. After work, he likes watching "reaction videos" very much. He found that making a "reaction video" is not easy, and it takes a lot of time to edit and produce. For the audience, a "Reaction video" can only see the reaction of a fixed person or a few people. So he decided to start from the perspective of "reaction video" and develop a distinctive video application.

Liu Shaorong named the video application he developed "Let's Watch Video Together". In the application, viewers can invite friends to watch entertainment videos, live events or press conferences together in the viewing room, and share their feelings with each other. In terms of technology selection, Liu Shaorong chose to develop based on Intel Xeon SG1 GPU, use Alibaba Cloud on-demand to manage video resources and users to upload videos, and use Alibaba Cloud audio and video communication services to ensure real-time and stable calls for users. For the function of automatically generating reaction video, using Intel Media SDK and Intel Quick Sync Video to achieve video hardware acceleration on the SG1 machine.

In addition to interaction with friends, users can interact with people who have never met before but who have similar interests. In order to take care of users who are shy and do not want to show their faces, Liu Shaorong generates AR Face through WebGL + DeepLearning and combines Alibaba Cloud audio and video technology to add interest to users' chats.

Regarding the future of “watching videos together”, Liu Shaorong said: “In the future, I hope to bring users a stronger sense of identity and desire to share, use more video cloud technologies to quickly enrich website functions, and provide beauty, voice change, AR Face and more. This kind of gameplay increases the interest of the video and improves user stickiness."

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