ITV has selected M2A Media as its partner on a new solution for the creation of catch-up assets for its live programming.
The broadcaster will employ M2A Media’s Live Capture product for its Late & Live workflow.
Live Capture enables ITV viewers to catch-up with programmes more quickly after the end of transmission.
The service enables ITV to:
- Input source – 100Mbps AVCi stream, received from an AWS Elemental encoder.
- Ingest all five ITV channels (ITV 1 / ITV 2 / ITV 3 / ITV 4 and ITVBe) into the M2A service, allowing ITV to deliver VoD assets within 10 minutes of confirmation by a content operator.
- Have dual resilience across all linear channels, as well as two ‘Event’ channels, in readiness for the ad hoc ingest of off-schedule events, such as pay-per-view boxing.
- Configure each ITV channel with a rolling 48 hour cache, which allows ITV operators to capture programmes broadcast within the previous 48 hours.
- Manually edit live programmes 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.
- Have accuracy at a frame level.
- Deliver assets within 10 minutes of confirmation.
Andrew Burnett, director of online technology and operations at ITV, commented: “After a successful proof of concept, ITV chose M2A Media to move its Late & Live workflow into the cloud.
“The ability to replace the original adverts in live programmes, combined with the need for seamless joins and accelerated encoding with fast turnaround made this platform a great fit for ITV’s needs. Partnering with M2A Media to evolve the product features has resulted in a market-leading solution.”
Marina Kalkanis, CEO of M2A Media, added: “Our Live Capture solution is designed to help content owners better monetise content and improve viewer satisfaction. What greater endorsement of the service than ITV’s decision to choose our product to deliver some of its biggest, highest rating blockbuster shows.
“It is fantastic working with the ITV team to push the boundaries of technical innovation and once again, M2A is proud to be at the cutting edge of the shift in broadcast technology.”
