New Andria News 24 site goes live with extensive sports coverage
Primarily devoted to covering local news and sports, Andria News 24 City is live on digital terrestrial channel 190, with a web presence based out of https://andria.news24.city. The project is the brainchild of editor Dr. Giuseppe Inchingolo, the distinguished former editor of Viva Sveva.
The website was officially launched on February 1, 2016. A wealth of content can be found on the site, with live video streaming being accomplished via the Livestream platform. At the heart of the workflow is the Livesteam HD550, which is a compact and portable all-in-one live production switcher.
The production suite is physically located in a TV studio located within a main broadcast centre. Journalists are sent to some football fields and use single cameras with a single attached Broadcaster encoder from Livestream. The studio receives multiple streams that are produced by the Broadcaster encoder on site in H.264 / AAC format, with a stream of 1080p at 5Mbps. The encoder accepts full-size HDMI input, audio line input and a microphone.
In the TV studio the director receives a live mosaic comprising action from the various sports grounds, as well as a variety of additional information. Studio commentary can then be added as and when required.
The result is a straightforward but powerful workflow that allows a wide variety of sports events to be covered effectively for Andria News 24 City viewers.
Production capabilities
In practice, Andria News 24 generally oversees a number of venues or points of interest with single camera set-ups, but can also deploy multi-production suites with compact video switchers to the actual event sites if required.
In such instances the production suite might be situated within the venue and be used to create the multi-camera mix to be sent to the studio. The delivery of data to the studio can take advantage of the free CDN by Livestream for contribution, while for distribution the publisher has made use of a paid channel with “premium membership”, meaning the signal can be embedded in its website.
Livestream HD550 provides a standard five-card input with SDI or HDMI; the incoming streams are decoded and all work is carried out in H.264. Among many features, the suite incorporates four inputs for recording, two media playes, multiview outputs and onboard encoder. It is also possible to import social media content, such as Twitter fields, as well as take advantage of existing graphics capability – for example, the insertion of animated graphics or PNG file sequences, or the creation of picture-in-picture within the same image.
Livestream HD550 is available with four different types of subscription that give two different levels of service: a basic one in which the customer cannot embed the player into other websites, so content can only be seen in Livestream.com and there is no chat; or a premium subscription where the player can be embedded into any website.
The system also makes it possible to manage a huge amount of interesting information, such as tracking and analytics for the purpose of monitoring viewing patterns.