special report


bandwidth. This avoids the buffering and stuttering that plague ‘traditional’ IP-based video streaming, instead gracefully degrading the quality to accommodate drops in bandwidth, and bringing it back up when conditions improve. While adaptive streaming is now


firmly established in the multi-screen video delivery lexicon, there have still been opportunities for optimisation within it. While, as above, adaptive bit rate delivery improves the overall ‘quality of experience’ for the viewer by switching between bit rates as necessary, it’s still critical to maximise the visual quality within each of the individual streams. After all, if available bandwidth allows playback to stay constant at a particular bit rate, you want the quality of that stream to be as high as possible to keep your viewers engaged. Meanwhile, advances in encoder


performance provide significant efficiencies over earlier implementations. At the time of the 2010 Winter Games, simultaneous real-time creation of the six or seven outputs typically used for live adaptive streaming required multiple encoders to be synchronised and encoding the same source. Today, advanced encoders such as our StreamZ Live platform can encode all of those live streams and more - including concurrent encoding for multiple adaptive streaming formats, protocols and devices - in a single unit. This significantly reduces workflow complexity, equipment costs and physical deployment requirements such as footprint, power consumption and cooling. For broadcasters and media outlets


which hold all of the required rights to distribute the games live over multiple platforms including ‘traditional’ television, upcoming ‘hybrid’ encoding platforms such as our StreamZ Live Broadcast encoder will provide further efficiencies. Combining our proven multi-screen encoding technology and benefits with robust features for broadcast, cable, telco and satellite television operations, StreamZ Live Broadcast will feature simultaneous H.264 or MPEG-2 encoding for ‘traditional’ television and multi-format encoding for ‘any-screen’ streaming delivery - all in a single encoder.


Increasing demands for on-demand


Of course, the increased audience


olympics everywhere supplement


expectations for the 2012 Games aren’t limited to live coverage. On-demand viewing will be even more prevalent, simply by virtue of letting viewers watch their favourite events and highlights at their convenience. The plethora of popular viewing devices, each of which may have their own format, protocol and metadata requirements, is significantly driving up the number of file-based deliverables that Games media outlets must produce. Just reaching all popular mobile phones at each device’s optimal resolution, bit rate and format requires numerous discrete variants to be created for each piece of content. Add in tablets, PCs and ‘connected TVs’ as targets and combine that with the extensive amount of source content to cover the entire Games, and the volume of content to be processed creates more operational pressure than ever before. To address these needs, media


organisations creating on-demand clips of the Games must find further efficiencies in automating their remaining manual processes, as well as finding ways to scale cost-effectively to meet this significant yet relatively short-term peak in demand. Advances in media processing


solutions enable new levels of automation ‘intelligence’ that can eliminate even more manual effort, enabling faster turnaround, reduced errors and lowered costs. By seamlessly blending workflow automation, continual frame-by-frame analysis, logic branching and transformation functions such as transcoding all at the same application level, solutions such as version 2.0 of our Digital Rapids Transcode Manager software enable self-adjusting and self- correcting automated workflows that can adapt to anomalies or changing attributes even within a single source


file - thus reducing the number of ‘exceptions’ that must be handled manually. Even before multi-screen distribution


Where live web coverage of an event was noteworthy just a few years ago as the exception rather than the norm, today it would be significant if an event wasn’t available across all consumer platforms, from the web to tablets and mobile phones.


became a factor, covering Summer or Winter Games presented broadcasters with significant cost considerations. The equipment and infrastructure required to cover the Games is costly, but may no longer be required once the event is over, making large capital investments wasteful. Meanwhile, the fast pace of technology change has often meant that hardware purchased for one Games may not be useful for the next just two years later. The availability of cloud media processing solutions presents a potential solution to this challenge for the 2012 Games. By allowing media organisations to


elastically scale and manage their media processing capacity, the adoption of cloud-based technologies - particularly in hybrid models that allow users to blend the additional resources of the cloud with their own on- premises capabilities - enables them to ramp up for the demands of the Games while minimising infrastructure investments that may sit largely dormant after the event is over. By seamlessly integrating on-premises and cloud media processing, hybrid solutions allow users to take full advantage of their existing investments in processing capacity and workflow development, while using external infrastructure - typically charged as operating expenses - to expand their capacity beyond their facility walls as needed.


London calling


Advances in technology will enable the consumer viewing experience of the 2012 Summer Games to be the most comprehensive yet. Let the games behind the Games begin!


www.ibeweb.com l olympics everywhere supplement november/december 2011 l ibe l 31


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