Contentual research
Reviewing the Content in New Environments
Neo Arena has developed an open testing and development environment for the needs of content production companies. The system was designed to serve the channel’s services. The used software were primarily open source, in order to minimise the costs for free utilisation.
Data collection, archiving and distribution systems were set up in the test environment. The primary focus in designing the system was on multichannel distribution and supporting as many terminal devices and media players as possible.
Free source code and commercial license solutions were both considered when designing the system architecture. We noted that the commercial solutions available at that time generally only support one system at a time. For instance, a Windows Media Encoder stream requires Windows Media Player, Quicktime Streaming Server streams need Quicktime and Flash Media Encoder requires Flash Player. The solution was to produce six different streams for the three most common media players: Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quicktime. The streams were optimised for 40 kpbs – 1 Mbps so that watching would be possible through most broadband and mobile connections. Neo Arena chose an open source, license free solution for its production system. The essential components were the Darwin Streaming Server (DSS), FFMPEG and VLC software.
The commercial software Wirecast was chosen for broadcasting live streams due to its value for money. This software can produce live broadcasts and it supports the video formats at the server end.
The Applicability of Various Contents and Services
The premise in the research project of content and services was that multichannel distribution was implementable in numerous forms of content production. Besides, the tests executed by TV-channels indicated that the entire production chain must be developed in order to make multichannel distribution sensible.
We researched the applicability of different services and content to multichannel distribution was researched in several productions. These included academic and public events, entertainment and live music events. Festivals, sport but also the multichannel distribution of short, documentary and experimental films were tested. These experiments confirmed that there is plenty of content suitable for multichannel distribution and that there is a need for live broadcasts, as an example. The limitations of multichannel distribution must be taken into consideration in the productions and a completely new production approach must be embraced, compared to traditional TV productions. An open-minded content producer can find plenty of new forms of business opportunities from this baseline.
The content production phase of Neo Arena has been completed. The results are presented in the wiki-document The Multichannel Distribution Toolbox.
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