ITV has agreed to extend its partnership with M2A Media on a solution for the creation of catch-up assets for its live programming.
The broadcaster will continue to deploy M2A Media’s Live Capture product for its Late & Live workflow for a further 12 months.
The product was originally chosen by ITV to change the way the broadcaster’s catch-up assets are created for live programmes. M2A’s service includes continual assessments and updates, providing ITV with:
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Input source – 100Mbps AVCi stream, received from an AWS Elemental encoder
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All five ITV channels (ITV 1 / ITV 2 / ITV 3 / ITV 4 & ITVBe) are ingested by the M2A service
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VoD assets are delivered within 10 minutes of confirmation by an ITV editor
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All channels have dual resilience and in addition to ITV’s linear channels, M2A Media’s Live Capture solution is configured to receive two ‘Event’ channels, in readiness for the ad hoc ingest of off-schedule events, such as pay-per-view boxing.
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Each ITV channel is configured with a rolling 48-hour cache, which allows ITV operators to capture programmes broadcast within the previous 48 hours.
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Added this year is an archive purge functionality to manage storing and stream switching.
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Live programmes are edited manually by an ITV operator, via the Capture tool of the M2A Console. The Capture tool uses all the main functionalities of a non-linear editing tool, aiding accurate and efficient editing within a live context, enabling Operators to remove ad breaks from live TX’d content.
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M2A’s Live Capture solution is accurate at a frame level.
Zoe Carter, director of content operations at ITV, said: “Partnering with M2A Media led to a market-leading solution that has revolutionised the creation of our catch-up assets for our live programmes.
“Ultimately this has streamlined workflows and most importantly, improved viewer satisfaction. We are delighted to have renewed our partnership with M2A Media – the team’s expertise in Cloud-based video workflows is invaluable to ITV’s technical operations.”
Marina Kalkanis, CEO of M2A Media, added: “The M2A team greatly enjoyed working with ITV on its Late & Live Solution and we are delighted that our partnership has been recognised by the EBU.
“It is hugely gratifying to know that M2A Media’s Live Capture product is responsible for the UK public’s enjoyment of some of ITV’s top-rating live events and blockbuster shows, and with Love Island back on air this month, we’re looking forward to more of the same this year.”
