To meet modern live video production demands, it's essential to move beyond traditional encoders towards edge computing. This transition allows for direct source management of video, audio, graphics, and data. Videon's LiveEdge® leads this shift, integrating advanced computing capabilities to enhance live video workflow’s efficiency, scalability, and engagement.
Switching from encoders to edge computing devices, like Videon's LiveEdge, allows for the integration of encoding with advanced computing abilities directly at the camera source.
That means video, audio, graphics and metadata can be ingested, normalized and altered for different workflow requirements enabling things like on-device analytics, automated ad insertion, and even near-real-time social media clipping.
This is possible through Docker environments that offer an on premise lightweight alternative to traditional virtual machines, providing a more resource-efficient means of running applications. You can read all about how it in this blog post.
Live video workflows can be less reliant on usage-based cloud processing, have decreased latency and operational costs, making live video operations more scalable and responsive to evolving workflow requirements.
LiveEdge has a developer toolkit, APIs, and remote management and control capabilities, and is technology agnostic working with many live video technology partners. Adding to this, LiveEdge's versatility supports key use cases in live sports, demonstrating how its comprehensive capabilities can significantly improve live sports production, from automated ad insertion to real-time analytics and beyond, enhancing viewer experiences and operational efficiency.
Here are a few of the most popular use cases among customers.
Challenge: Addressing first-mile issues that compromise the Quality of Experience (QoE) and lead to viewer churn.
Benefits: LiveEdge offers remote management and control capabilities with LiveEdge® Cloud Control, which is free to subscribers. Remote teams can configure, manage and monitor workflows, receive key device stats, get alerted if any issues arise, and make changes based on workflow needs. This directly tackles first-mile challenges, significantly improving QoE and reducing churn rates. LiveEdge Cloud Control’s API, seamlessly integrates with any existing end-to-end management platforms, streamlining operations and ensuring a higher QoE level.
Figure 2: Interactive demo of LiveEdge Cloud Control
Challenge: Reducing dependency on cloud services for graphics processing to manage costs without compromising on production quality.
Benefits: LiveEdge Graphix supports native PNG and HTML graphic overlays, directly on the device, leading to significant savings on cloud costs. It allows for up to six simultaneous outputs at various latencies and qualities, facilitating both clean and dirty feeds with overlays such as score bugs, player cards or localized graphics. Compatibility with graphic overlay leaders like Singular Uno, Singular.Live, XYIO, FanDuel, and FloSports Flofx, alongside the ability to automate graphic insertions via data feeds, extends workflow flexibility and efficiency, making LiveEdge a comprehensive solution for dynamic live video production.
Challenge: Manually creating social media highlights from live events is labor-intensive and costly for immediate audience engagement and increasing viewership.
Benefits: LiveEdge produces real-time social media highlights, for both social media and high bitrate broadcast feeds, crucial for driving audiences back to live events effectively. LiveEdge’s methods for generating high-quality clips from timestamps provided by various sources, including manual button, API and highlight clipping services, alongside the support of a vast partner ecosystem, the process becomes streamlined. It can ensure timely, cost-effective audience engagement while reducing the operational complexities associated with generating and sharing live event highlights.
Challenge: Traditional methods of monetizing live video content, involving manual SCTE-35 ad marker insertion, are cost-prohibitive, inefficient, and difficult to scale.
Benefits: LiveEdge Ads transforms this process by automating ad marker insertion, significantly lowering operational expenses, simplifying workflows, and enabling scalability. This automation allows for real-time ad insertion based on predefined rules and data triggers, such as game clocks or scores, making live streams more profitable and engaging without the high costs and complexities of traditional setups.
Check out our blog post that dives deeper into automating SCTE-35 ad markers.
As we’ve covered, it is a no brainer to replace encoder real estate with LiveEdge. By bringing compute capabilities equivalent to an EC2 instance to the camera source, workflows can be more extensible, efficient and enable new ways to increase viewership and revenue. To learn more, check out videonlabs.com or book a meeting with a solution architect today.
Additional Resources:
Three reasons why you need LiveEdge® Cloud to scale your live video business and the features that make it possible
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