22 Dec NBC Universal, Monkey Kingdom and 3xScreen Media Create Periscope Roulette

3xScreen engineered a unique workflow that allowed a periscope broadcast to integrate multiple remote contributors who appeared on a split screen.

NBC Universal and Monkey Kingdom approached 3xScreen Media to develop a technical solution to a unique and challenging brief.

The desired outcome was for a Periscope broadcast to integrate up to seven remote contributors who would appear and interact in the broadcast within a split screen. The basic design of Periscope does not allow for any variation of the periscope workflow, which is shooting and transmitting from the one mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

3xScreen’s approach was to integrate a number of existing systems that were already tried and tested in their workflow.

The first obstacle was integrating the various contributors who would be located across the UK. We supplied each of the contributors with an iPad and a mifi. The mifi provided wifi for the iPad allowing the contributor to Skype the 3xScreen MCR from the iPad. The Skype call was received in the MCR by a Newtek Skype TX box which converted the Skype feed to a HD SDI camera feed for the tricaster. Each contributor had with them a producer with another mobile device using the Unity app. This device also used the wifi provided by the mifi device, connecting the engineers and producers in the 3xS MCR with the Periscope host and all seven remote producers.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Ensuring all contributors were sending a consistently high quality feed, finessing the orientation and ratio of the feeds and creating a Periscope appropriate program output required significant work.

This program output was broadcast to periscope through 3xScreen’s own designed and built optical coupler which takes a HD SDI video feed and converts it into a Periscope friendly format. The added benefit of having the program available at our MCR as a HD SDI feed is that we could simultaneously publish this to any other live stream platform such as YouTube and Facebook Live – extending the potential audience reach.

The result of weeks of hard work was one content and fun-filled Friday night – and a world first Periscope broadcast.