Melting glaciers have caused almost 2cm of sea level rise this century alone, a decades-long study has revealed. From a report: The research shows the world's glaciers collectively lost 6.542tn tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023, causing an 18mm (0.7in) rise in global sea levels. The world's glaciers lost an average of 273bn tonnes of ice every year -- the equivalent of 30 years of water consumption by the entire global population. The assessment, led by scientists from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Zurich, found that so far this century, glaciers have lost approximately 5% of their total volume. Regional losses were highly variable; the Antarctic and subantarctic islands lost 2% of their volume but central Europe's glaciers lost 39%. "These numbers are staggering. They serve as a reminder that things are changing fast in some regions," said Prof Noel Gourmelen, the co-lead author of the study and personal chair of Earth observation at the University of Edinburgh's school of geosciences. A stark contrast in the amount of ice lost each decade was also discovered, with 36% more ice having melted between 2012 and 2023 compared with the previous decade.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Empowering users with video creation

We’ve invested in and developed video creation within Visual Creator to remove common barriers for those in the workplace, like “How do I make a video?” “I don’t have enough time” and “Will it look good?” Our goal is to put the power of video in the hands of our users, making it easy to create content that drives deeper engagement, faster comprehension, and more meaningful connections. 

At Clipchamp, we're thrilled to be making this new capability available and are committed to guiding and educating users as our technology evolves over the coming months. 

Video creation, powered by Clipchamp in Visual Creator is currently only available to Commercial users (Entra ID) with a Copilot license. This feature allows users to quickly generate a first video draft with the help of AI, before moving into the Clipchamp editor to utilize a full suite of editing tools. This integration streamlines the creative process and empowers users to produce quality videos more efficiently and creatively.  

Users can start by either selecting an inspirational prompt or simply asking Visual Creator to "Create a video" about a topic of their choice. Clipchamp's video creation skill will then generate a video script, source high-quality stock footage from internal libraries, add transitions, voice overs, and titles. The result is a draft video project created with Clipchamp, and a preview displayed in Copilot for users to review. 

If users want to continue editing the draft, the project will then open seamlessly in Clipchamp, launching into the editing timeline to make it easy for users to adjust, tweak and personalize their video, for their specific needs and audience, before exporting. 

At Clipchamp, our aim is to make video creation accessible and straightforward, especially for those who are new to video. By reducing the initial learning curve, we hope to empower our users to draft compelling videos with ease.  
 
For more seasoned video creators, our goal is to streamline the process of generating scripts and selecting stock content, saving precious time. 

How it works

Video creation in the workplace is rapidly growing, with more users engaging in video creation or editing as part of their work. However, many still do so infrequently due to factors like lack of time, budget constraints, or limited know-how. Our video creator capability aims to address these challenges with a simplified creation process to get started. 

Phase 1: The prompt 

The process begins when a user decides to create a video and selects or types a prompt to get started. The request is analyzed, and a draft is crafted to ensure the video aligns with the user’s goals—whether it's a how-to guide, an informational piece, or a narrative-driven story.

Phase 2: Script generation 

The script serves as the backbone of the video, outlining the key points and narrative flow. The AI ensures that the script is coherent, engaging, and tailored to the specific prompt requirements. 

Phase 3: Stock footage selection 

With the script complete, a combination of AI and semantic search finds the most relevant stock footage in the Clipchamp library. The use of stock media also helps mitigate the risks associated with generative media within organizations. It’s important to note that at this stage, we don’t generate images, music, or video clips during the composition.  

Phase 4: Composition 

With the script and high-quality stock footage sourced, the draft video will be assembled complete with music, voiceover, text overlays, and transitions. Currently, this first draft can’t be iterated on within the chat experience, and a video can’t yet be based on grounding data or the ability to use a user’s existing content.  

Phase 5: Preview 

Once the drafted video is ready, users can preview the finished video, all within the chat experience. From here, users can either generate another drafted video or select the ‘open in Clipchamp’ button. All videos are automatically saved to the user’s OneDrive (in a Videos/Clipchamp folder), allowing Clipchamp to load the video directly into the editor for further enhancements. 

Phase 6: Personalize, Export and Share 
Videos opened within Clipchamp can then be edited further by the users. Customizing content, music, voiceovers, and text to suit their audience or needs. Once exported, videos follow the same seamless sharing, viewing, analytics, searching, and commenting experience as documents, presentations, and spreadsheets within Microsoft 365 apps.

Who’s using video creation today? 

Whilst this function is still being developed, Clipchamp has been collaborating with global organizations, as well as internal teams at Microsoft, to test, iterate, and learn. We've been observing how organizations and individuals are leveraging video for work today and how video creation can amplify dynamic and engaging content.  
 
We’ve focused on identifying, supporting, and amplifying key use cases for 'How-to' and 'Informational' videos, including:  

• Product teams using video to communicate product iterations, UX walkthroughs, and roadmap updates in a more engaging way.

• HR, Learning & Development, and sales enablement teams creating videos to scale employee onboarding, training, and education on internal processes and product knowledge.

• Project teams leveraging video to share internal updates, team achievements, and valuable insights with others effectively. 

Current limitations. 

• The feature is only available after you activate the Visual Creator agent from within the Microsoft 365 Copilot sidebar.

• While we can help users kickstart their video creation experience with our extensive library of over 15 million videos, images, and audio assets, we do not yet support grounding data or generating videos with a user's existing content.  

• Additionally, users won't be able to request further refinements or edits to the drafted video within the chat. A revised version of the drafted video can be generated, but it will provide a new draft rather than an iteration of the original. 

• We do not yet generate new images, music, or video clips during the composition process, but this is another exciting capability we are exploring for the future. At this stage, creating a video with Copilot focuses on leveraging pre-existing assets to help users craft videos.  

• Video creation is a capability that is switched on by default. So, if an enterprise has Clipchamp turned off, then users will see the preview of the drafted video but won’t be able to open the project to work on it or edit further.  

We are actively exploring these features for potential inclusion in future releases as we continue to gather more insights. 

Providing feedback: 

In addition to existing support and feedback mechanisms, users can provide quick feedback by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon below their video. Clicking these icons will open the feedback dialog and allow users to enter comments and (optionally) include a screenshot or prompt information. 

We are committed to making video creation and consumption more accessible and straightforward in the workplace, and we are excited about the progress we are making in this area for our users.