The Future of Automation Requires Visual Media Management Today

Early adoption of the correct media management platform is crucial for laying the foundations as we shift towards automating insights extracted from visual data.


Companies, such as IBM, have banned removable storage devices and encouraged their staff members to use internal network tools to store and move corporate data. Measures such as this are becoming more common as the typical organization has seen an explosion in the number and variety of digital assets it needs to operate in the digital era. Yet, these measures have not solved the growing issue of media assets being stored ineffectively, as assets can be found across multiple locations and teams. Navigating and finding relevant assets in times of need becomes time-consuming and difficult.

Having a centralized home for all visual media assets captured by CCTV, field workers using smartphones and drones, and other cameras prepares organizations for the inevitable: The adoption of automating visual data insights, even if automation is not on your agenda yet. With the growing trend towards automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is perhaps the technology trend that will impact how we live, work, and do business. Therefore, it's important to have a platform that can support the storage and analysis of the images and videos the AI is and will be trained to examine.

We recently announced a major release of Media Drive featuring new media management capabilities to make using the Unleash live platform more powerful and intuitive for enterprise, public safety, and government organizations.

Media Drive Feature Suite

Media Drive enables a centralized home for visual media assets

“AI-enabled systems have the greatest impact on workflows that are currently routine, predictable, and repetitive. Hence the importance of managing your visual data - images and video captured in the field today. These assets are the foundational building blocks of a future of building and training A.I. for improved operational effectiveness, financial performance insights, and much more,” says Hanno Blankenstein, Founder & CEO at Unleash live.

“This is an area where consumer tech is leading the enterprise space. Google & Apple Photos are commonplace for media storage of your personal memories. Enterprises have a similar need to ingest in real-time all manner of images and video from their devices in the field and across their organization.

Media drive benefits

Unleash live brings powerful and easy-to-use tools to enterprise workflows

Managing wind farm inspection media - a case study

Consider a wind farm inspection where blade technicians and drone pilots capture images needed for the inspections. They use a mix of devices: body cam, phones, and drones, and are typically executed by in-house and contractor teams. Different teams have their own ways of naming and storing files, and they upload them to different folders or storage devices. Without a centralized and holistic view of specific assets, it is difficult to manage and unlock this data's valuable insights. And even though just enough imagery is collected to get the job done, the number of images collected exponentially grows during inspection season. Multiply that by thousands of wind turbines that each need to be inspected - that is a huge amount of data to manage. Altogether, this causes issues for inspectors to manage and review the media effectively and have it attributed to specific wind turbine assets.

Enabling the future state of media management - now 

At the heart of the Unleash live platform is Media Management, providing an endpoint for ingested media for storing, organizing, filtering, searching, and annotating images collected from the field. Furthermore, users can view metadata and file information to navigate files and understand the status of assets through our geospatial map - making navigation of assets on the platform intuitive and effective. There are also various ways in which teams can upload assets to Media Drive, such as live streaming directly into the library, uploading from Google Drive and SD cards, etc.

The latest product release is a major overhaul of the library’s capabilities, including: 

  • Device agnostic ingestion: The ability to store data from virtually any visual sensor. From drones to CCTV, bodycams, satellites, and smartphones.

  • Beyond traditional image and video file types:  2D, 3D, and VR models. 

  • Powerful tools to work the assets: Customized tagging, folder nesting, filtering, annotating, and running A.I. apps in the library. 

  • Intuitive contextual navigation: View metadata and file information to navigate your files and understand the status of your assets through our geospatial map. 

  • Enhanced Viewing: Deeper integration of raw images with worked assets and AI outputs.

Media Drive features and benefits

There are many ways in which Media Drive boosts an organization’s media management. It is also critical for the future of automating visual inspections, which rely on the ability to store and analyze the enormous amount of captured data in one reliable platform. For more information about these new capabilities, visit https://unleashlive.com/media-drive.