Tag: vod

The European Central Bank selects BCE for advanced live streaming

Posted on by contentntek in News, OTT & Streaming media

Following a European Invitation to tender, the European Central Bank selected BCE for handling the webcasting of live and on-demand monetary policy decisions press conferences.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the 19 European Union countries which have adopted the euro. The ECB was looking for a video partner to ensure the coverage of the Governing Council press conferences and other event webcasts.
BCE was selected for its advanced webcasting platform allowing content reception, transcoding, packaging and worldwide distribution.

 

This project benefits from the recent acquisition of Freecaster, combining expertise and know-how of both companies to perfectly answer the needs of the ECB.

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Connected to RTL City, its headquarters, via dark fibre, the teleport of BCE will ensure the downlink of the ECB production feeds. With its advanced IP-based infrastructure, BCE can transcode the live content and repackage the streams. BCE’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) will then ensure the worldwide stream distribution.

“For this project, BCE will rely on three pillars, its teleport, allowing content reception from anywhere in the world, its 1000 square meters datacenter with IP connectivity and transcoding platforms and its CDN with a worldwide connectivity,” explains Baptiste Fosséprez, Products & Services Development Director at BCE. “The software technology layer will be a mix between BCE’s existing streaming solutions and Freecaster advanced solutions.”

The live streaming expertise of Freecaster grants access to new solutions such as an advanced video player. Besides the stability of the player and its classical features such as adaptive streaming and multiplatform compatibility, the system will be completely customized to ECB’s needs and will integrate a video teaser with a countdown before broadcasting and multilingual selection during the live stream.

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The videos will be distributed as live stream and as Video on Demand (VoD) on the ECB website as well as on social networks including Periscope, Twitter and YouTube. The live stream workflow will be monitored from BCE’s Network Operations Centre (NOC) during each production and the ECB will have access to advanced statistics tools to both measure the audience and monitor the quality of service.

“Acquiring Freecaster was part of BCE strategy to develop its Total Video offer. The ECB project reflects perfectly the new dual expertise of BCE (linear and non-linear), with the combination of live broadcast and a VoD portal.” Concludes Frederic Lemaire, CEO at BCE.

Viaccess-Orca Secures New Android TV STB for Orange Spain IPTV Offering

Posted on by contentntek in News, OTT & Streaming media

Viaccess-Orca (VO) announced that Orange Spain has deployed a new Android™ TV set-top box (STB) secured by VO’s DRM solution for its IPTV service. This new STB will enable Orange Spain pay-TV subscribers to access a wide range of premium content, including Ultra HD, live, and VOD, protected by VO.

“Android TV offers a quick time-to-market for new services and a rich set of applications, which is exactly the type of experience we want to provide to our subscribers. The key is ensuring that content is well-protected,” said José Antonio Guzmán, Director of OrangeTV at Orange Spain. “VO’s DRM relies on powerful hardware-based content protection mechanisms, allowing us to meet the most demanding studio security requirements in the world.”

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Orange Spain is now using security agents from VO within both its legacy Linux-based STBs and new Android TV STBs, ensuring a superior television experience for all subscribers. VO’s proprietary DRM and a multi-DRM backend platform are currently in use by more than 30 leading operators around the world and successfully deployed on Android STBs for IPTV and OTT services. VO’s DRM passed a rigorous assessment by Cartesian, proving that it is a robust content security solution.

“Content security requirements are continuously changing and increasing in complexity, and VO’s wide range of security services and solutions are made to address these challenges. Our DRM solution ensures that operators can deliver a rich offering in any ecosystem, including Android TV,” said Paul Molinier, CEO of Viaccess-Orca. “VO DRM is available on Android TV STBs from a variety of manufacturers, and we have significant deployment expertise in this environment, making us attractive to operators like Orange Spain that want to quickly launch and monetize a new television offering.”

More info

Viaccess-Orca Joins Forces With Zodiac Systems, Enabling Advanced Services on Existing STBs

Posted on by contentntek in Distribution & Delivery, News, OTT & Streaming media

The partnership will offer a joint solution making it easier and more cost-effective for TV operators to deploy VO’s cloud-hosted TVaaS and Service Delivery Platform (SDP) with existing legacy STBs. The Zodiac Stack device software and Matrix cloud integration platform support both legacy and next-generation environments, empowering service providers to rapidly deliver feature-rich content on every screen.

With the jointly designed solution, any STB — including IPTV, hybrid, cable, and OTT — can be connected to VO’s SDP and TVaaS. The Zodiac Stack currently supports a growing list of over 150 STB models, making this solution more attractive over time. The comprehensive solution also acts as a cloud integration platform for any existing CAS/DRM or any other BSS/OSS system, enabling service providers to retain their existing third-party vendor ecosystem once integrated with Zodiac Matrix.

“The combined VO and Zodiac solution simplifies back-end migrations, allowing operators to provide a blend of services across STBs, smoothly handling the transition between existing backends and the SDP, whether on-premises or cloud-hosted,” said Derek Harrar, CEO at Zodiac Systems. “By enabling computational off-loading into the cloud, the solution opens up the possibility of launching new services on lower-end devices, which is an exciting opportunity for service providers.”

The Zodiac Stack device software and Matrix cloud integration platform target any STB, no matter how old. In fact, STBs over 10 years old have successfully been integrated with VO’s TV platform, so that all subscribers, even those with vintage STBs, can benefit from new features like advanced search, VOD, catch-up TV, NPVR, and advanced advertising models. Combined, the Zodiac Stack and Matrix include all necessary components that integrate with the target device’s hardware abstraction layer and the device drivers to enable customization, innovation, and feature replacement in the future.

“The jointly developed solution delivers an unprecedented value proposition for operators, helping them reduce churn by enhancing the user experience across the entire installed base of legacy STBs. Now, they can also easily launch attractive new services offered by VO’s TV platform, including browser-based applications and popular OTT services,” said Pierre-Alexandre Bidard, Vice President, Marketing Security and Partnerships at VO. “By extending the lifespan of the STBs, our solution helps operators maximize ROI and reduce support costs while providing uniform consistency across the installed base of devices.”

The jointly designed solution from VO and Zodiac Systems will be demonstrated at IBC2019 at the Zodiac Systems stand 1.D11.

More info

BCE, Take Media To The Next Level

Posted on by contentntek in Digitisation & Storage, Distribution & Delivery, Event, News, OTT & Streaming media, Production & Post Production, Products, System Integration

Live stream and manage your OTT platforms

Discover BCE’s online video solutions for both live and on-demand high-quality content serving customers such as TV and radio broadcasters, brands, event organizers and sport and cultural events.

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Live streaming massive events such as Tomorrowland and the fashion weeks, BCE has acquired a leading position on the market with a solid player, multiple features and global delivery.

Thanks to BCE’s Online Video Platform (OVP) and services, the customer can create video platforms (VoD, Replay, PayTV, etc.), manage and distribute its content, monitor and analyze its audience.

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Produce and broadcast with StudioTalk

StudioTalk is an all-in-one solution to produce shows, manage content, add special effects, control sets and broadcast your programs on any existing platform. Experience live production and 360° distribution through an easy touch interface and powerful system.

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StudioTalk touchscreen interface
  • Thanks to an intuitive Graphic User Interface and a touchscreen, the customers are able to control cameras, feeds and studio sets.
  • An automated mode can let StudioTalk work on its own to ensure seamless production and broadcast.
  • An advanced Content Management System is built-in and can easily be connected to your workflow.
  • Encrypt the content with BCE DRM.
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StudioTalk at RTS

Itstored, BCE’s cloud backup and storage solution

With S3 (Simple Storage Service) protocol being a worldwide standard, BCE ensures the protection of the files as well as its immediate availability as itstored is directly connected to the customer workflow.

  • The customer can perform unlimited actions on your content with a single, flat rate
  • Thanks to BCE’s bandwidth, The customer can access your content at any time
  • With more than 22 PB, the customer can backup all its content
  • The content can be stored on two redundant datacenters

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Discover as well BCE’s recent system integration projects for Groupe M6, BNJ, RTS and Antenne Reunion, the remastering of Baywatch for Fremantle, BCE’s DRM services and our 4K Broadcast services of Altice and Luxe.tv.

More info and Meeting

HEXAGLOBE and SGT will exhibit together for the first time as HEXAGLOBE Group at IBC

Posted on by contentntek in Broadcast & Playout, Event, News

At the show, a new, entirely virtualised workflow for linear and non-linear broadcast distribution will be unveiled, as well as updates to key products, including the premium VEDA MAM and broadcast playout automation system by SGT and Advanced Replay live video clipping tool by HEXAGLOBE.

VEDA Automation is a broadcast TV playout automation software solution for robust multi-channels playout systems. Based on more than 25 years’ experience, the VEDA Automation playout platform manages local, thematic and premium channels as well as multi-channels playout centres.

Its modern, innovative, friendly, and fully configurable user interface and proven reliability make VEDA Automation a versatile TV automation solution.

Advanced Replayby HEXAGLOBE features a complete workflow, from recording live streams to publishing VoD content within a user’s CDN, CMS (which may include metadata, titles, and thumbnails) and across social networks, websites and mobile apps.

More info

Vionlabs To Debut AI-Powered Content Discovery Platform

Posted on by contentntek in Distribution & Delivery, Event, News

“Viewers are spending 25% or more of screen-time looking for something to watch. Solving this issue is our major focus at Vionlabs and early customer engagement has shown that our AI-powered content analysis approach delivers game-changing results,” said Marcus Bergström, CEO, Vionlabs.

At deployment, Vionlabs measures everything in the videos in an operator’s catalogue and trains its AI engines to work out what matters in each asset. The platform uses AI and deep learning and combines this video analysis with a viewer’s detailed watch-history to provide content discovery services to operators through a cloud-based SaaS model. The platform is designed for linear TV, catch-up, streaming and all flavours of VOD.

“Our solution is based on deep thinking from our engineers and their key realisation that we could train AI engines to learn what variables should be measured in the video and audio and combine this with viewers’ watch history to significantly out-perform existing content discovery solutions. Our platform is now providing live content discovery that improves critical operator metrics such as VOD buy-rates and customer engagement and we’re excited to make our public debut at IBC2019.”

The Vionlabs content discovery platform analyses each video in detail and combine this with the viewer’s watch-history. The platform doesn’t need to know anything more about the consumer and it doesn’t try to guess who the viewer is. All that matters is the content they watch, for how long and how often.

“During the year we have productised our technology and deployed our content discovery platform for operators that are now enjoying a significant uplift in VOD buy-rates and engagement,” said Giles Wilson, CTO, Vionlabs. “By serving up the right content at the right time, our content discovery platform maximises the time viewers spend watching the content they love and minimises the time they spend searching for it. Leading to happier viewers that spend more time and money on a video platform.”

Vionlabs has trained multiple AI engines to measure everything in the video, including object recognition using computer vision as well as colours, pace, audio, and many more variables to produce a fingerprint timeline throughout the content.

The AI engine learns what matters and how changes in these fingerprint timelines are connected to what content individual viewers enjoy. Knowing similarities between content is vital, but it’s not enough on its own. Vionlabs has also trained an AI engine to analyse a viewer’s watch-history. Finally, it has an AI engine that takes the outputs of the other AI engines to provide the most accurate content discovery platform.

The content discovery results produced by the Vionlabs platform are made available through a cloud-based SaaS model integrated with the operators back office systems. The Vionlabs platform is already deployed and is generating very significant uplifts in VOD buy-rates and viewer engagement for its operator customers.

Digital Nirvana IBC2019 Show Preview

Posted on by contentntek in Distribution & Delivery, News, Production & Post Production, Products

MonitorIQ

MonitorIQ is a leading broadcast-monitoring solution from Digital Nirvana that offers services such as signal and loudness monitoring, air-check logging, competitive analysis, and content repurposing. The solution is Linux-based for secure scalability.

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This highly efficient solution automatically records and monitors linear and/or OTT streams and alerts for loss of video, audio, or closed captions. Some of its features include live streaming and recording, SmartSearch, SmartAlerts, and frame-accurate cut clip editing with an option for variable-speed playback. The new UI provides an improved user experience and features a built-in HTML5 player that eliminates the need to install Flash or ActiveX. The solution also boasts seamless integration with Digital Nirvana’s Media Service Portal, with the added benefit of AI-based cloud microservices that include closed caption generation, caption quality assessment, caption realignment, and video intelligence for objects, ads, logos, and facial recognition.

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Additional features and capabilities of MonitorIQ include:

  • Record content 24/7 or by program guide
  • Reliable, scalable client/server architecture for multichannel deployment
  • Expandable storage via NAS Connect
  • Hybrid approach to storage means content can be stored locally, on the network, or in the cloud
  • Ability to analyze the transport stream (TR 101 290), visualize stream errors in real time, and trigger alerts
  • Fast, frame-accurate clipping with custom metadata annotations
  • Fast search on all system metadata including CC text, as-run log, traffic system, and custom metadata
  • Display of SCTE 104 and SCTE 35 markers in the editor window to help with insertion, replacement, or removal of portions of the original content and repurposing of the end result
  • HD/SD, ASI, QAM, ATSC, and HDMI inputs in a single server
  • Open API allows other systems to easily integrate with the MonitorIQ solution
  • Backed by 24/7 worldwide support with an emphasis placed on quality of service coupled with quality of experience

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Metadator 2.0

Digital Nirvana’s Metadator 2.0 is a secure, scalable software-as-a-service platform that automates the process of metadata generation for production, pre-production, and live content.

Metadator 2.0 includes an off-the-shelf integration with Avid Interplay for automated speech-to-text generation that simplifies the process of automated transcription and metadata generation with locators for Avid users. The application, integrated with video intelligence, is capable of object identification, on-screen text recognition, shot-change detection, and explicit content detection.

Metadator 2.0 automates the entire process of transcription and metadata generation for Avid-based assets. It provides an opportunity to maintain consistent metadata, thereby facilitating faster time to market by ensuring relevant assets get identified more efficiently. Metadator 2.0 automatically generates locators that help users search and identify content effortlessly within Avid.

Caption Quality Check

To resolve the inherent technical complexities involved with producing closed captions for different distribution channels, Digital Nirvana is launching Caption Quality Check, an application built with content producers in mind. Some of the product’s key features include reporting operational and technical non-conformance, automatic corrections, format conversion, and frame-rate conversion.

Caption Quality Check accepts different file formats (such as SCC, SRT, EBU-STL, WebVTT, SMPTE-TT, and JSON) as inputs via the portal, S3 bucket, and APIs. Users can choose from a combination of automatic and manual services to ensure premium-quality output and receive publish-ready captions in the formats requested for distribution via various platforms, including OTT and VOD.

The design of the Caption Quality Check service improves overall user experience. Its simplified, automated, and customized workflow allows customers to automate their requests and work-order assignments to maximize productivity.

Closed Caption Generation

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Digital Nirvana offers postproduction captioning services with near-live and weekly turnaround options for a variety of video formats. The platform can take in video in a variety of formats and provide output caption files in multiple formats as specified by the customer. Secure protocol implementation, with layers of security, helps with the safe transfer of content into the cloud and back again. The speech-to-text (STT) integration helps transcript editors receive output from an automated system for further editing for higher accuracy. Adoption of STT makes the work process more efficient, thereby saving a great deal of labor and ensuring faster turnarounds while also handling increased volumes. The processed files are passed on to the caption editors, who edit the content based on the guidelines prescribed by the customer/regulation. Files are prioritized based on turnarounds and skill-set requirements. Upon request, Digital Nirvana will provide preliminary files in the form of direct output from the STT engine. Customers can opt for caption files in multiple formats for the same video asset, which in turn can be published over multiple platforms including OTT, VOD, and social media.

Closed Caption Synchronization

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Digital Nirvana’s Closed Caption Synchronization is a secure, scalable solution-as-a-service platform that automates the process of repurposing closed captions.

With the capability to receive and deliver content in multiple input and output formats, the Closed Caption Synchronization workflow is integrated with speech-to-text technology, helping to accurately identify lost or unsynchronized captions. High-quality, accurate, and time-synchronized captions help enhance the user experience across platforms.