Actus 09 April, 2024
Traditionally, the complexity and cost associated with live event production have been significant barriers for broadcasters. From the need to work with distributed teams to the challenge of handling a multitude of formats and protocols, recording live stream footage can be a monumental task.
Regardless, it’s an increasingly common task as live video continues to grow in popularity. As of late 2023, 27.7% of internet users worldwide were watching live streams weekly. Virtual events such as conferences continue to become more common (among other business use cases), increasing the demand for remote live event streaming,
Some broadcasters struggle through, using various tools for different processes. However, this makes the capture of live events more difficult than it needs to be. But when you use one solution that handles everything, you save time and resources.
In this article, we’ll review the many technical challenges that live broadcasting brings, and we’ll explain how to simplify the entire operation end-to-end, from your video ingest workflow to delivery.
The Challenges of Live Broadcasting
Technical complexity is the overarching challenge in live event capture and delivery. Broadcasters must coordinate multiple feeds, manage audio and video quality in real-time, and ensure seamless transmission without delays or interruptions. Let’s look at the challenges in more detail.
Managing Multiple Content Sources and Protocols
Different content sources, like SDI, NDI, and web streams, may require specific interfaces or software protocols to capture. Integrating disparate systems can be technically challenging and it fragments workflows – in turn, this slows down production, increases the risk of errors, and demands more resources.
Ensuring consistent quality across diverse sources necessitates careful management and may require conversion or adjustment processes. Another factor to consider is managing numerous different protocols for recording and distribution.
What’s more, ensuring the integration between different source types and the broader production ecosystem (editing, storage, distribution) can be difficult, potentially leading to bottlenecks in post-production.
Latency Issues
Ensuring real-time transmission with minimal latency is a significant challenge. Delays between the actual live event and what viewers see can detract from the immediacy and engagement of live content.
Integration with Post-Production
Incorporating live content into post-production workflows (e.g., for highlights, replays, or on-demand access) demands compatibility and seamless integration between video capture software and post-production systems.
Scalability
Events vary significantly in size and scope, requiring broadcasting solutions that can scale up for large audiences or down for smaller gatherings without losing quality or increasing complexity disproportionately.
Geographical Constraints of Distributed Video Recording and Editing
Live events often occur in locations far from the central production studio. This separation presents logistical challenges; to overcome them, studios need web-based video editing tools that enable distributed collaboration.
Real-Time Editing and Delivery Demands
The nature of live events means content needs to be ingested and edited in real-time and delivered to audiences near-instantly. Traditional workflows and tools struggle to keep pace with these demands and may lack the editing capabilities required.
Error Management
Unlike pre-recorded content, live broadcasting offers no second chances. Mistakes, technical glitches, or unforeseen issues (such as network failures) are immediately visible to the audience. This makes error management critical, and using high performance, cloud based software is a vital part of mitigating the risks involved.
Streamlining Live Broadcasts with a Unified Solution
Despite these challenges, broadcasters must maintain quality and efficiency in order to satisfy their audiences. The solution is to use a unified platform that handles all tasks – everything from ingest to post-production – so there’s no need to use disparate systems.
Flexible, web-based solutions such as IN2IT live are designed on this basis, reducing the complexity that’s inherent in dealing with live content. Let’s look at exactly how such tools make thing easier.
Unified Source Management
Modern broadcast solutions can handle various sources, which eliminates one of the many sources of complexity in live broadcasting. IN2IT live, for example, can handle many different input formats including SDI, NDI, and various web streams.
Facilitating Remote Collaboration
Web-based tools allows multiple users to collaborate from any location, effectively overcoming geographical constraints and enhancing the flexibility of live event production. The best solutions should incorporate advanced editing tools for use in real-time so that content can be edited and delivered while the event is in progress.
Post-Production Integration Options
Look for a tool you can adopt without having to overhaul your current setup. For example, IN2IT live integrates with many popular post-production solutions including Avid, MediaCentral, Dalet, Galaxy, and Grass Valley Stratus. As such, it fits into existing workflows without disruption.
Support for Various Recording and Delivery Protocols
Using software that accommodates various protocols ensures compatibility with a wide range of platforms and devices. This makes it easier to reach a wider audience, whether they’re using traditional TV, online streaming services or social media.
Why is INT2IT live the Best Live Video Capture and Editing Software?
IN2IT live overcomes the challenges discussed above. To reiterate, here’s some more detail about its key features.
- Supported sources: Our solution supports content from all common sources including SDI; NDI (including Skype, MS Teams, Zoom and screen capture); web streams including RTMP, HLS, SRT, RTSP, RTP, and DASH; and SMPTE 2110.
- Advanced ingest features: The ingest process is elevated thanks to features such as SD to 4K ingest, edit-while-capture, and black and freeze frame detection. This ensures content is captured at the highest quality and is broadcast-ready in a short amount of time (VTR control for tape ingest is also supported). In addition, you can set up multiple ingest profiles, which enables multiple workflows within the same infrastructure.
- Intuitive user interface: The hectic studio environment demands user-friendly tools that lend to accuracy and reduce cognitive load. That’s what IN2IT live provides.
- Cloud integration: As well as integrating with post-production tools, our software connects with many popular cloud storage services including Dropbox, Google Drive, MS Azure, and Amazon S3.
- Recording and scheduling: Users can manage recording and scheduling across numerous servers (physical or virtual) and edit content in real-time.
- Enhanced metadata: Enriching assets with additional metadata ensures its efficient organization for future use.
- Supported recording formats: A huge range of video files/formats are supported including AVC-Intra, Avid proxy, DV, DVCPro HD, DNxHD, DNxHR, IMX, JFIF, XAVC Intra, XDCAM EX, and XDCAM HD, as well as custom formats i.e., h.264, h.265, Mpeg2, etc.
- Delivery protocols: FTP, SFTP, FTPS, SMB, Aspera FASP, FileCatalyst, and Signiant are all supported.
- Embedded workflow engine: A range of tools are available to streamline your workflows, including metadata transformation and mapping, advanced user management, and the option to deliver to multiple destinations.
