LiveU technology ‘key part’ of Austrian Press Agency’s video services expansion
As part of its current growth, The Austrian Press Agency (APA) has partnered ORF – the national public service broadcaster – with both parties sharing content in the form of live streaming.
APA has expanded its video services to include live streaming, raw footage and ready-made video clips, and is claiming that it has already passed over 100 productions per month. In order to increase its live offering, APA is working with ORF for the latter to begin to supply live streams of around 10 hours per week. According to APA, the target audience for these streams is largely online domestic news portals.
Both APA and ORF are LiveU customers, using a variety of LiveU technology, including multiple LU500 and LU400 portable transmission units, as well as the LiveU Central browser-based cloud management platform. It’s this technology that is forming the basis of APA’s live output. In addition, the news agency is able to quickly repackage live streams into video clips and also to supply those to its customers.
In the pilot phase, APA streamed the partial eclipse last year with over 40,000 concurrent users. Other notable usage includes extensive coverage of the ongoing refugee crisis, which is very hard to cover using traditional newsgathering technologies. On a lighter note, the Eurovision Song Contest was also covered using LiveU.
APA chief editor Michael Lang said: “Video is the next step alongside our existing text, image and graphics services and forms the fourth part of our core APA service. We wanted to take into account the changing needs of our media clients and to provide them with an even greater level of service.”
Ronen Artman, VP marketing, LiveU said: “Live video in particular is increasingly an essential part of today’s media world. To bring the levels of dynamism and cost-effectiveness required means cellular bonding and that means LiveU. We are very pleased that both APA and ORF recognise this and also that their partnership is proving so fruitful, adding another string to journalists’ bows.”
LiveU technology has been supplied to both APA and ORF by LiveU partner ETAS.