FT Digital Media Conference 2014 – Live to Tape & Live Streaming

DATE: 26-27 MARCH 2014

LOCATION: INTERCONTINENTAL LONDON PARK LANE, LONDON W1J 7QY
QUOTE: £6,400 + VAT (3S-JAN-415 DATED 31 JAN 14)

LIVE TO TAPE FILMING/VISION MIXING OF 2-DAY EVENT: £3,500

Live to tape filming/vision mixing of the entire event.

Production to consist of one manned roving camera and two HD robotic cameras along with a projector feed for integrating any PPT or videos shown.

Also, inclusion of FT broadcast bug, speaker name strap lower thirds, opening/closing session slates and picture-in-picture and other effects for the integration of PPT slides.

Each session will be recorded in H.264 and clipped, trimmed and made available for uploading to the ft-live.com website within 6 hours of the session finishing – and will also be placed on a 3xScreen FTP for FT Live.

LIVE STREAMING OF LIMITED NUMBER OF SESSIONS OVER 2-DAYS: £1,500

Live streaming of a limited number of sessions during the event.

Venue connectivity will be supplied by 3xScreen – no venue internet or satellite truck required.

3xScreen will provide a mobile responsive iFrame/CDN delivery for the ft-com website if desired including all viewing.

We will also publish to any number of additional platforms as specified by FT Live – the FT YouTube channel and others as specified.

ON-LINE AUDIENCE INTERACTION – MODERATED TWITTER & VOTING: £400 (2 DAYS @ £200)

Online audience interaction consisting of voting and moderated Twitter feed during the live stream component of the conference. As a starting plan, this interaction will be incorporated in to the live video itself so that it carries through to all syndicated live platforms such as YouTube.

Provision of best-in-class voting, moderated Twitter and other social interaction widgets is also possible – but at an additional cost

POST-PRODUCTION OF 5-MINUTE SUMMARY VIDEO: £500

Creation of a 5 minute summary video post event that incorporates key editorial soundbites – edited in liaison with FT staff.

Delivered within a week of the conference concluding.

POST-PRODUCTION OF SEVERAL EDITED 2-3 MIN INTERVIEWS: £500

Production of several edited 2-3mn video interviews with key speakers – separate to conference footage.
Delivered within a week of the conference concluding.

3xScreen Media is a London-based studio that specializes in the video production and live streaming of events online. Each month, 3xScreen (pronounced three screen) delivers millions of live streams for leading Agencies, Corporates, Media companies, Events and Sports.

3xScreen marries state-of-the-art broadcast, IT and communications technologies to create live online coverage which is broadcast quality, innovative and affordable.

With our magic backpacks, 3xScreen can live broadcast in HD from anywhere without an internet connection or satellite truck. We also downlink and live stream from satellite and have bi-directional HD live links to BT Tower from our Live Stream Master Control Room – the most advanced in Europe.

3xScreen’s recent projects includes productions for BBC, The Football Association, The National Lottery/Endemol, Disney, Universal, The Press Association, The Daily Mirror, YouTube, Red Bull, EA Sports and VANS. [call_to_action title=”Check out our recent project portfolio” arrow=”yes” button=”3xScreen Projects” link=”https://screenx3.wpengine.com/recent-projects/”][/toggle]
[toggle title=”3xScreen Live Player & Delivery”]The unbranded live player we currently use is JW Player, which can be skinned and customised, within an iFrame. We auto-sense the viewing device in the iFrame, giving desktop viewers a Flash stream and iPad, iPhone and Android viewers a HTML Live Stream stream. Both Flash and HLS are adaptive multi-bitrate and consist of 3 or 4 streams each. For corporate clients we have started to use HLS for both desktops and mobiles since it is less impacted by corporate firewalls.

We deliver our own streams via a combination of Tier 1 Global CDNs – Akamai, Limelight and Edgecast – and have no practical limit to the number of viewers. For the royal baby coverage we did for the Press Association in 2013 we had 5.5 million live stream viewers, and at it’s peak, 30,000 viewers per second join the live.

An example live stream player can be seen here.

On-Site. For production, we have a small OB truck and flyaway production kits. Over the last 12 months we have produced live events around Europe, in the US and South America. We use Tricasters as our production switches and use a combination of manned and robotic HD cameras. The use of HD robotic cameras has three principal benefits – reducing production staffing levels, reducing production footprint and audience interference and providing higher sight lines to the stage over the heads of participants. We have recently been doing all-robotic multi-camera live production of classical music for the BBC. The use of Tricasters as our main production switchers gives us the ability to easily add production graphics such as speaker lower thirds and broadcast bugs, play in clips and other materials, mix and match cameras, projectors, computers and other sources, utilise multiple M/Es for picture-in-picture and other effects and drive the robotic cameras.

Connectivity. We send the live program output produced at the event to the 3xScreen Master Control Room via a LiveU backpack. The key value of utilising LiveU in our production workflow is that we don’t have to worry about the vagaries of the internet at the venue.  The LiveU bonds together seven 3G/4G mobile phone circuits along with whatever Ethernet and WiFi is offered up to create a point-to-point, groomed, high quality live video link. If there is no 3G coverage we also have Ka satellite flyaway kits and a Ku dish on our OB van to add bandwidth from those to the LiveU backpack.

MCR Production & Encoding. Our MCR has primary and backup 100 Mbps x 100 Mbps fibre links – so we have lots of bandwidth for live streaming to multiple platforms simultaneously. In addition to being able to take in multiple LiveU feeds, we also have satellite dishes to downlink and live stream feeds – and a bi-directional HD BT Tower connection – so we can take a feed from basically anywhere to live stream – and we can also send live to broadcasters via BT Tower. Each LiveU feed is received in to a Tricaster where additional graphics can be added if needed and we can play slates, tickers and other content prior to and after events. We can also split languages and add stream-specific graphics. We record all productions, clip and upload sessions and turnaround replays all at the MCR. We principally use Elemental encoders for live streaming at the MCR.[clear][/toggle]
[toggle title=”Conference Productions”]A selection of 3xScreen conference-related live stream productions are in the following playlist player. The majority of the productions are shot with robotic cameras.[clear]

In 3xScreen’s MCR-oriented live streaming workflow, the clipping and uploading of presentations can occur whilst the conference is running and without the need for on-site video editors. Highlight and promo clips are created after the event utilising vox pops, b-roll, time-lapse and other content recorded in parallel with the live production.

A selection of 3xScreen event promo videos are in the following playlist player.

A selection of 3xScreen productions are showcased in the following playlist player.

Social Media Integration in Live Productions
3xScreen integrates social media feeds in many of our productions. An example is our broadcast to digital cinemas across the USA for the cinema release of The Magic Flute in 2013. Twitter question lower thirds can be seen at 16:30.

A good example of what we can achieve with on-screen graphics is here:

NOTE. For the FT Digital Media conference we would record a clean program output, a dirty with speaker lower thirds and a full dirty that included the social media.