Rugby Africa Cup (RAC) goes live with LiveU’s Remote Production Solution

Rugby is one of the most popular sports in South Africa and has been growingin popularity in other African countries, with Morocco, Kenya, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast and others having impressive results.

Rugby Africa is he administrative body for rugby union across Africa, including 38 member nations. It runs several rugby tournaments for national teams, including the Rugby Africa Cup which is the main 15-a-side competition for African nationsal teams. In 2019, Rugby Africa (RugbyAfrique.com) initiated the new Rugby Africa Cup (RAC) international rugby union tournament in a format that was "easier to follow for spectators and more inclusive for teams across the continent".

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SBS Korea Delivers Highest-Quality 5G Live Streaming of South Korea’s Historic Election Using LiveU Solutions

Multiple 5G-integrated LU600 HEVC and LU300 HEVC units were used to cover the voters, candidates and election results in the world’s first national coronavirus election

SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System), a leading national South Korean television and radio network, turned to LiveU’s integrated 5G technology for its live election day coverage in South Korea last week, utilizing the advantages of KT’s (Korea Telecom’s) premium live broadcasting solution with its 5G network. SBS chose LiveU for its field-proven video transmission quality and reliability, provided by its core HEVC hardware encoding.

SBS deployed LiveU’s 5G-integrated high-end LU600 HEVC units in the most congested areas, representing the first broadcaster to leverage KT’s 5G-Premium QoS solution. Live streaming provided by the MNG (mobile newsgathering) units reached the highest performance levels. SBS was able to secure the new network path, guaranteeing fast and reliable connection without any interruptions. In other congested areas, SBS used LiveU’s compact LU300 HEVC units together with the LiveU Xtender integrated antenna solution to maximize the network capture, ensuring high-quality streams.

LiveU’s devices were used to cover the polling stations, major candidates’ offices and reactions to the election results under the strict safe distancing measures in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All the live feeds were streamed to a single server and completely synched, operating as part of a cost-effective, remote at-home production model.

The success of SBS’s broadcast-quality coverage helped to drive a higher viewership rate and ratings.

Yaal Eshel, General Manager LiveU Asia, said, “We’re extremely proud to have been selected by KT and SBS for their first 5G-live streaming service, with the election coverage during the coronavirus situation having a huge impact in the region. South Korea is recognized as one of the most technologically advanced countries and is leading the market in 5G deployment. We see great potential for utilizing 5G networks for live video streaming for news, sports and entertainment.”

SBS is now looking to integrate the LiveU system not only in its news broadcasting workflow, but as another layer in its live content delivery solutions.

Live Coverage During The COVID-19 Crisis: German Broadcaster Deutsche Welle Deploys LiveU Technology For Remote Productions From Home Offices

Deutsche Welle’s reporters and correspondents increasingly turn to the LU-Smart app for smartphone-based live coverage as the COVID-19 pandemic continues

The foreign news channel Deutsche Welle, headquartered in Germany, is relying more than ever on LiveU’s mobile IP broadcasting technology to maintain and expand its global live coverage during the current coronavirus crisis. While the delivery of trustworthy news in real-time remains the first priority, Deutsche Welle’s worldwide reporters and correspondents are working under difficult conditions with many of them being locked down at home and unable to access a studio. This is why Deutsche Welle draws on LiveU equipment even more frequently than usual these days for flexible, location-independent production solutions. As an early adopter of innovative broadcast technology, the station has been building a comprehensive LiveU infrastructure with the help of Netorium, LiveU’s local partner in Germany.

For its mobile smartphone production kits, Deutsche Welle is taking advantage of LiveU’s LU-Smart app, usage rate of which has grown significantly over the past weeks. The mobile application is currently used by more than 400 trained reporters within the worldwide Deutsche Welle network to broadcast live from any location. Max Hofmann, Head of News at Deutsche Welle, said: “A couple of years ago nobody would have imagined that we wouldn’t need to book an SNG truck anymore for broadcasts outside our studios. Being able to deliver high-quality live videos simply from the smartphone means much more freedom for us. Now we can always be in whatever location to inform our viewers in a fast, direct and accurate way.”

Using the LU-Smart app, reporters can deliver a live signal directly from their smartphones to the Deutsche Welle master control room, without the need for additional technical equipment or streaming skills. During the corona crisis, Georg Matthes, for instance, turned his garage in Brussels into a technically full-blown studio with an LU-Smart equipped smartphone as its centerpiece. Leveraging LiveU’s proven bonding technology, the app combines the bandwidth of WiFi and cellular to transmit the smartphone’s camera signal in broadcast quality. Deutsche Welle also deploys the LU-Smart app for file transfer as well as automatic audio and video ingest into the station’s various production systems as the smartphone streams integrate smoothly into the existing workflows.

In addition to the LU-Smart app, Deutsche Welle has been deploying dozens of LiveU field units of various sizes and types such as the LU300 HEVC portable encoder or the LU610 fixed location encoder. The transmitted signals are received by one of the 20 LiveU servers worldwide that Deutsche Welle operates together with its partners and can be easily managed and controlled via LiveU Central. This centralized web platform is used by Deutsche Welle on a daily basis for managing all incoming live feeds delivered with LiveU technology.

Germany-wide support is taken care of by Netorium whose sales representative Gunnar Schmidt said: “We are very excited to be able to help our long-time LiveU customer Deutsche Welle keep live coverage going at times where many aspects of social life are being shut down. Deutsche Welle correspondents are spread all over the world, broadcasting in 30 languages, which makes this a truly global venture for us.”

Zion Eilam, VP Sales and General Manager, EMEA, LiveU, said: “It is fascinating for us to see how customers like Deutsche Welle have proven extremely agile in this challenging situation and continue to deploy our mobile technology in completely new production environments such as the reporters’ homes. The Deutsche Welle example shows that our live video solutions, especially the LU-Smart app, are very easy to use and facilitate live broadcasts from virtually any location.”

In response to the latest developments, LiveU has recently launched its new Guest Interview feature for LU-Smart. This feature makes it even easier for guests to be added to a live show from remote locations.

Take a look behind the scenes at the garage studio of Deutsche Welle reporter Georg Matthes in Brussels, Belgium: https://www.dw.com/av-53278506

See how creative Deutsche Welle reporters around the globe master the challenge of live broadcasting under crisis conditions (with LiveU technology in focus after 1’15’’): https://www.dw.com/en/still-here-for-you/av-53082502?maca=en-EMail-sharing

How to Win the QoE Battle in OTT Video

Once upon a time, content was all that mattered for a streaming service to be successful.

It’s still the main concern, of course. But with the proliferation of streaming services, it’s no longer enough. Great content at the right price lets you in the game; great quality of experience differentiates you.

But delivering a high quality of experience on an OTT platform can be a challenge. And the challenges are intensifying with the emergence of next-generation video formats – with 4K and HDR entering distribution streams and a potentially embracing surround viewing, virtual and other extended-reality formats, volumetric holographic content and, eventually, 8K.

Addressable advertising and more personal customer experiences are also making high QoE more difficult to achieve. And there are even performance challenges with traditional in-stream advertising. One recent global survey tracking ad performance found that in-stream ads failed to play as intended at least once in 36.5% of OTT sessions across all viewing platforms. Most of these failures involved long buffering delays; some were complete misses in placements due to mismatches in formatting or errors in ad selection.

Yet given the efforts service providers have poured into achieving current performance levels with streamed video, what more can be done?

The short answer is, plenty. But it will require new thinking about designing the video processing and delivery infrastructure – with net gains in cost efficiency as well as performance.

Three things OTT providers need to achieve high QoE

It comes down to three criteria that OTT providers must meet if they want to stream high-value video with the QoE that’s essential to success.

1. Best-of-breed encoding – Software-based encoders running on commodity on-premise appliances or in the cloud now out-perform purpose-built hardware encoders. But service providers need to choose them carefully.

2. Content delivery network performance needs to surpass the capabilities of public CDNs to achieve ultra-low latency, to scale up temporarily when needed, and to support applications such as personalised advertising.

3. Full integration of the encoders and CDN to ensure a superior viewing experience.

So what exactly should service providers look for in encoders and CDN – and how can they make sure that the two will work together seamlessly to ensure a high quality of experience?
ATEME and Anevia recently published a whitepaper called “How to Win the QoE Battle in OTT” that addresses these questions. You can download it here: https://anevia.com/how-to-win-the-qoe-battle-in-ott-video/.

BaishanCloud Upgrades “Enterprise Secure Acceleration” Solution to Empower Digital Transformation

In 2020, all industries have undergone a sudden “stress test” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While digital transformation is providing a way out for businesses and organizations, it is bringing the same amount of challenge.

How to transform the business while reducing cost and improving efficiency? How to enhance security measures to protect core data assets? How to protect brands and the customer experience in times of uncertainty? Companies are on the lookout for more comprehensive and efficient digital solutions.

BaishanCloud (Baishan), a global edge cloud service provider specializing in cross-border content delivery and edge security, has upgraded its “Enterprise Secure Acceleration” service to a one-stop solution that will help businesses and organizations to accelerate their digital transformation.

Feature 1: One-stop in-depth security defense for both internal and external networks

The digital era has brought rapid technological changes, and the game between offense and defense continues to escalate. Enterprises running traditional security systems are dealing with the growing security threat from both internal and external.

Empowered by Baishan’s edge security product, the “Enterprise Secure Acceleration” solution integrates four layers of security capabilities to provide a one-stop security solution to digital businesses, protecting corporate data assets and ensuring business continuity in times of uncertainty.

Layer 1 provides unlimited DDoS protection to ensure business availability and continuity to the greatest extent.

Layer 2 provides cloud WAF protection with multi-engine analysis capabilities based on AI, semantics, and intelligent rulesets. Baishan leverages a threat intelligence database of 1,000+ customers to achieve collective cross-network defense.

Layer 3 identifies deep threats that are hard to be detected by traditional security measures, especially those that happen less frequently but can bring devastating long-term consequences. Supporting this layer is a big data platform built on AI, user behavior analysis, real-time streaming, and machine learning algorithms.

Layer 4 captures often-overlooked intranet threats by accurately identifying and coping with data leakage, Trojans, mining hosts, C2 IP address, and other threats.

Feature 2: Upgraded intelligent content acceleration; 10%-20% increase in content loading speed.

As companies are exploring diversified online operations under new business models, they are more actively using applications and tools such as websites, apps, live streaming, and long/short videos. Strong network coverage and site performance have become a core competence for these businesses.

Baishan’s intelligent content acceleration, built on innovative adaptive algorithms, Brotli compression, and WebP image format auto-conversion technology, can increase text and image loading speed by 10%-20% compared to that with the traditional acceleration approach. This has helped enterprises to significantly reduce their bandwidth cost.

With a traditional acceleration approach, it takes a long to fetch the static content from the origin which negatively impacts users’ experience. Baishan’s CDN platform adopts an intelligent routing mechanism to route both static and dynamic content via the most optimized and shortest path to achieve the fastest response time for user requests.

Feature 3: Instant purging to enhance risk management

A website is an important window to display a corporate image and communicate brand value. Once hijacked, whether it is displaying irrelevant pop-up advertisements, illegal or prohibited content, the brand image will be severely damaged.

Built on P2P and ant colony algorithms, Baishan’s instant purging capability enables customers to remove stale content across its global network in milliseconds. This helps them to update content, make corrections on hijacked sites, or ban illegal content instantly. The technology has been widely used and recognized by e-commerce and media customers in such scenarios as inventory updates, product launches/updates, and press releases.

In addition to the three leading features, Baishan has also significantly improved its service availability. Leveraging its intelligent resource failover and cross-regional disaster recovery capabilities, Baishan’s platform can instantly balance requests between servers and PoPs to avoid downtimes, ensuring business continuity in the time of uncertainty. Today, Baishan’s CDN operating platform processes more than 800 billion user requests per day with over 15 million user requests per second, providing a fast, reliable, and secure network experience for 84% of Chinese Internet users and 210 million overseas end-users. Already trusted by over 1,000 corporate clients worldwide, Baishan will continue to collaborate extensively with industry partners to help companies and organizations achieve lower cost, higher efficiency, and enhanced security in their digital transformation.

BaishanCloud is a leading global data service provider specialized in cross-border content delivery and edge security. To get more articles on trendy topics related to cloud delivery, streaming best practices, edge security, cloud technology in China and Asia, and more, please visit www.baishancloud.com and subscribe to the BaishanCloud newsletter.

CP Cases: The 1-year milestone for our UK Sales Engineer

CP Cases has a long-standing tradition of making high quality ruggedised transportable cases; with trading starting back in 1971. Our products range from off the shelf items right through to completely customised cases which are used to transport a vast range of items. The experience learnt from the varied products we have designed gives us a huge wealth of knowledge for us to help find the correct case solutions for you.

That knowledge is an important part of working for CP Cases, which is why it is always a pleasure when we can celebrate an employee’s milestone with the company. Our UK Sales Engineer Stuart Watson has now been working with us for a year (how time flies).

Stuarts background

Originally from a motorsport background, Stuart has a huge range of work experience behind him that he has adapted and grown in his 1^st year in the role. His responsibilities centre around focusing on our UK sales and working with our customers to help them find the right solution and fit to their requirements.

Covering a large range of complex products from rucksacks for potability within the communication industry, to Rotomoulded plastic cases for missiles within the Defence and Aerospace sectors. Aluminium 19” racks for offshore research projects, to wooden cases that ship medical robots around the world. Stuart has expanded and developed his skillset and demonstrated a real passion for what he does.

Will all of the uncertainty of this year and the absence of face-to-face, Stuart has worked around the clock to keep our prospect lines warm and kept building those needed relationships with new leads and existing clients.

A few works from Stuart on his first year at the company:

“It is great to come and work in a company with such a strong and interesting history, with such varied products, technology and markets. It keeps everyday interesting.”

We are confident that Stuart will continue to grow within his role at CP Cases, and we are excited to see what other experiences and knowledge he can bring in the years to follow.

A note from our Commercial Director, Fiona Haggerty:

“Using a combination of CP’s 50 years’ experience and his own technical experience Stuart has worked hard to understand our customer’s needs.

We look forward to working with Stuart over the next 12 months and beyond when we expect to grow and sustain our place in the UK market.”

Some of you may have spoken to Stuart already and if not, why not give him a call. Find out more about how he can help with any technical queries or inquiries you may have.

Call: 0208 8568 1881 or email: swatson@cpcases.com

Qumulo Advances Collaborative, High Performance Media Workflows for Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe Creative Cloud Video Applications

Content creators are under constant pressure to cut production times and deliver new content more frequently to grow their business and remain competitive. In addition, creative professionals are working remotely and accessing files from dispersed geographic locations. Now, more than ever, remote editorial workflows are an urgent priority for enhancing collaboration and improving productivity.

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Qumulo Advances Collaborative, High Performance Media and Entertainment Workflows

Qumulo’s hybrid file software and cloud data services provide a modern infrastructure for data-driven media and entertainment organizations, and meets the needs of today’s in-house and remote creative teams for post-production, animation and visual effects, games production, broadcast, and corporate video production.

Qumulo’s file system provides reliable, high-performance data access to speed creativity and collaboration, as well as robust management, storage and protection for petabyte levels of HD, 4K and 8K content across on-prem, and public cloud environments. Qumulo’s file system is designed to provide support and visibility for billions of files, with easy scalability to enable rapid growth and expansion.

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Industrial Brothers Keeps Animation Rolling with Qumulo in the Cloud

Industrial Brothers– a full-service animation studio that creates and produces its own children’s content– thrives on a collaborative model with its artists working together in close physical proximity. When the studio needed to implement remote working for its team members due to the pandemic, Qumulo stepped in to recreate the studio experience and deep collaboration with production in the cloud. Within days, Qumulo’s file data platform replicated Industrial Brothers’ creative workflows on the AWS cloud, enabling the artists to keep production timelines on track.

Based in Toronto, fast-growing Industrial Brothers adopted Qumulo’s file data platform on-prem in 2019 to improve performance and scalability when creating new digital content.

But when COVID-19 hit Canada in early 2020, the Ontario province ordered non-essential businesses to close their offices. Industrial Brothers turned to Qumulo to quickly shift its workloads to the cloud and get its artists working in the cloud.

Industrial Brothers and Imaginations on Fire

From Kingdom Force to Dino Ranch, Industrial Brothers produces top-quality children’s entertainment that’s viewed all over the world. Industrial Brothers believes that quality children’s entertainment gives kids a sense of personal empowerment and, through their imaginations, become part of a much bigger world.

Challenge #1: Boost Productivity–With Ready Access to File Data

Jean-Paul Godmaire is head of IT at Industrial Brothers. When he arrived in 2019, the studios’ fast growth was straining the data center. It needed to address its ability to scale the ways it was producing and managing digital content.

The studio’s legacy storage could not scale to meet growing data volumes, and its frequent slowdowns and stoppages impacted productivity. The company was losing 162 labor hours a month for a total of nearly 2,000 lost annual labor hours.

Production deadlines were set in stone, so the teams worked overtime to make up for the missing hours. One missed deadline could have cascaded to affect many others, which would severely impact the business.

For these reasons, Godmaire wanted to replace the failing storage system with a more efficient and scalable file data solution that they could depend on anytime, anywhere. He made his business case by saying, “We have more than one hundred people on staff, all of whom depend on ready access to our files and applications. For every hour that they have to wait, the company loses more than one hundred hours of labor productivity.”

Solution: Zero Downtime with the Qumulo File Data Platform

Godmaire looked at several file systems, but already knew and trusted Qumulo. He recognized it was not a cut-rate starter system but was extremely cost-efficient because of its reliability, performance, scalability, and ease of management – all features that the starter systems could not match.
“We selected Qumulo because its file system gave us both the scalability and high-performance that our studio requires,” Godmaire said. “I also appreciate Qumulo’s frequent software updates, which ensure that we have the most up-to-date features and functionality.”

Deployment was extremely simple. Industrial Brothers’ reseller delivered and set Qumulo’s file data platform up within an hour. The data administrators at Industrial Brothers used simple scripts to migrate the data and accomplished the migration over a single weekend.

Industrial Brothers went from downtime of almost 2,000 annual labor hours, to zero downtime with Qumulo File Data Platform — saving approximately $80,000 a year.

Ease of management and support were essential considerations when selecting the platform. Qumulo’s support engineers monitor the system remotely and contact his team immediately with solutions should any problems occur. Scaling the Qumulo platform is easy as well. Industrial Brothers’ admins can simply add more nodes for performance and capacity without disrupting the cluster.

Solution: Real-Time Analytics to Optimize Workflows

Qumulo’s real-time analytics also enable Godmaire to optimize file data workflows. Industrial Brothers does not render in the cloud, so Godmaire’s team is able to view the company’s on-site render farm for bottlenecks and sub-optimal performance.

Godmaire uses Qumulo’s analytics for valuable insights, which will be especially vital as the company looks to scale its business.

Challenge #2: Multiple Deadlines–Stop the Pandemic Blues

When Ontario declared a state of emergency in March 2020, Industrial Brothers had to close its physical office in Toronto. Its highly collaborative culture did not support remote work, and there had been no previous need to implement a cloud presence.

With the office closed virtually overnight, the team had to scramble to meet multiple show deadlines. Producers and executives could still work with business apps and email, but the artists were dead in the water without access to their apps and data-intensive, high-performance processing capabilities. And, without the artists’ work, there would be nothing to produce.

The only way they could accomplish the move on time was with Qumulo in the cloud. There was no Plan B.

Solution: From Onsite Office to Cloud in Under a Month

The Qumulo and Industrial Brothers teams went to work. They built the company’s pipeline in AWS, leveraging Qumulo as the file data platform and Teradici to give a real-time experience from the remote creative workstations.

Godmaire said, “I don’t want to say Qumulo saved the company. But we were relying on this solution, and if it didn’t work, I don’t know what we would have done. We consulted, deployed, tested, and onboarded the Qumulo cloud file system within three weeks, and then we were up and running. We essentially moved the office to the cloud in under a month. Kudos to Qumulo for making it simple.”

Even when COVID-19 restrictions ease, Industrial Brothers’ physical office is a tight space. Social distancing will be impossible to observe if the entire staff returns. Godmaire said, “Before the pandemic, we were considering cloud services at some point. But the pandemic forced our hand. For the foreseeable future, we’re in the cloud.”

Working without Limits

The Qumulo File Data Platform runs the same enterprise file system in the cloud as on-prem. Data can be natively and seamlessly replicated between instances or across regions. Today, at Industrial Brothers, powerful connections between the data center and the cloud support remote users and data-intensive workloads. In the future, Qumulo’s easy scalability will enable the studio to support more artists and exciting new projects, including cinematic-quality Netflix productions.

Rugby Africa Cup (RAC) goes live with LiveU’s Remote Production Solution