Global Digital Sports Coverage

Using the digital solutions of deltatre, broadcast partners France Télévisions, RTVE (Spain) , CTV (Canada) and Terra (18 countries in Central and South America) offered their viewers the most complete video and information service they have ever provided for the Summer Olympic Games.

Blending our significant experience with both Microsoft Windows Azure and IIS Media Services, we have been working hard for the past 6+ months contributing Windows Azure Media-Services solutions for deltatre who has integrated them for the broadcasters. These solutions are described below (for a related post highlighting the use of Window Azure Media Services, see ScottGu’s write-up here).

Asset Replication and Management Console

Windows Azure is a cloud platform that exists across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Southworks created a tool that allows users to replicate video assets between data centers, providing redundancy in the unlikely event of data center down time.

We used the Windows Azure Media Services Client SDK to create a replication tool. The tool has a worker role that determines the difference between content in two data centers. Operators can use a web-based console to monitor the differences and initiate replication, either manually or automatically.

Partner Dashboard

Southworks created an online dashboard for creating, managing and monitoring live channels. The dashboard displays statistics about channels (including their health). Operations include the ability to create, start and stop channels, as well as archive assets.

The dashboard is a Windows Azure MVC application that makes use of the Windows Azure Media Services Live SDK. We used Silverlight, jQuery and Knockout.js to provide an intuitive and responsive user experience.

Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (formerly Rough Cut Editor)

The Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (MMP Video Editor) simplifies the editing and publishing process, enabling real-time, browser-based video editing, and providing the ability for publishers to improve collaboration, manage dynamic metadata and deliver exciting content to the Web. In support of deltatre, Southworks customized the Video Editor to integrate it with the deltatre CMS and support the asset publishing process.

The MMP Video Editor was created using Silverlight 5 and the Prism framework. It makes heavy use of IIS Media Services, IIS Smooth Streaming and composite manifests.

Azure Media Services Media Processors and Transcoding Workflows

In Windows Azure Media Services, a Media Processor is a component that handles a specific processing task, such as encoding, format conversion, encrypting, or decrypting media content. We created a set of Media Processors to:

• Translate a MMP Video Editor project to an EDL format compatible with Windows Azure Media Encoder in order to run a conform
• Publish an MP4 to be distributed to syndication networks

In addition, we implemented a variety of workflows to verify the correct functioning of the aforementioned Media Processors.

These components make use of the Windows Azure Media Services Platform SDK, the Windows Azure Media Services Client SDK, Windows Azure Media Encoder and the Media Platform Video Editor.