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Live webcasts of European Board Meetings
Background:
Since March 2005 the European Food Safety Authority have entrusted the live and on-demand webcasting of their Management Board Meetings to FlyOnTheWall.
The Board meets several times a year and discusses key statutory and business documents that include the Authority's Management Plan.
The Board meetings take place over one day, for four to six hours duration, and can be viewed both live and on-demand via the EFSA website in line with the Authority's commitment to openness and transparency.
The Management Board meets most often at their official residence, Palazzo Ducale in Parma, Italy and occasionally at other locations across Europe.
The following case study outlines the approach and results achieved resulting from the European Food Safety Authority commissioning FlyOnTheWall to delivery a high quality and reliable solution to their multi-language audience.
Goals:
- To webcast the meetings so that interested parties throughout the European Union, the Accession Countries and the rest of the world have the opportunity to view high quality visual and sound recordings via the Internet.
- To create an easy to use environment for viewers to access the meeting both live and post-event
Objectives:
- To film and record entire event with 4 different language audio feeds
- To uplink the live coverage via satellite for remote encoding at our London EarthStation for onward transmission via the Internet
- To create, manage and host an interactive broadcast microsite
- To provide live audio and video access via www.efsa.europa.eu in 4 separate language webcasts
- To provide the webcasts in Windows Media format optimised for both a narrow and broadband audience
- To provide video-on-demand by the following morning in all languages synchronised to the Agenda
- To provide free technical support to viewers
- To provide viewing statistics to client
Solution:
FlyOnTheWall provide the streaming media production support, from filming through to distribution, to enable the live and on-demand webcast over the Internet of the entire meeting.
A production team and equipment consisting of a multi purpose Outside Broadcast unit and satellite uplink vehicle plus a broadcast manager, director/vision mixer, sound engineer, satellite engineer, three camera operators and a bi-lingual production assistant are deployed to the location.
This team are supported at our London EarthStation by two streaming media technicians and a sound engineer. The EarthStation utilises the latest in satellite capture, encoding software and hardware along with broadband Internet access with 100% uptime SLA.
The broadcast micro-site for each meeting is launched prior to the event with a test video clip to ensure viewers are ready for the live transmission. This micro-site remains at the same address for the live and on-demand viewing for one year after the event.
Live coverage of the meeting is captured via a four camera solution, the four audio feeds are provided as original floor plus English, Italian and German. The video and audio feeds are then transmitted live to our London EarthStation where they are encoded into Windows Media format and integrated into the broadcast microsite which is linked to the main EFSA website.
The live and on-demand webcasts are delivered to the end user via our content delivery network the Akamai EdgePlatform, the world's largest globally-distributed computing platform with more than 14,000 servers deployed in 1,100 networks in 70 countries. Because it's architected on a distributed model rather than a centralized infrastructure, the Akamai EdgePlatform alleviates much of the congestion and vulnerability of the Internet ensuring a consistent high quality delivery to the viewer.
Results:
The live and on-demand webcasts have been regularly accessed by hundreds of viewers on the day and thousands post event helping demonstrate that the Authority's commitment to openness and transparency is being valued.
The link to the broadcast microsite of the latest meeting is featured prominently on the homepage of www.efsa.europa.eu with the archive of the Management Board meetings available for a year after the event.
Please click for complete coverage of these meetings as video-on-demand
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