The National Assembly of Wales engages Vualto, THEOplayer (THEO Technologies) and Unified Streaming for their new online video microsite in a joint venture partnership. Plenary meetings and committees are now streamed live across PC, Mac and mobile devices, and are subsequently available in a searchable video on demand archive.
In a project managed by our partner Vualto, global specialists in innovative content deliver and management, the Unified Streaming platform has been used for its unique sub-clipping feature which provides an instant archive of the session as soon as the live feed has finished. THEOplayer, the only HTML5 video player that can guarantee cross platform HTTP Live Streaming playback without any plugins, is used for the playout of both the live VOD assets.
One of the key issues for the National Assembly for Wales is that its citizens want to access content on whichever device is convenient at the time, with the same user experience,said James Burt, CTO of Vualto.Our solution puts the Assembly on iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices as well as online, but without adding to the complexity of the operation or the look of the website.
DVR
Plenary sessions of the Assembly can run for several hours. Consumers watching on the website have full DVR functionality so they can rewind, pause and fast forward. Using these tools, they can also create their own clips from the proceedings whilst the meeting is live, as well as once it is available on-demand, and embed them elsewhere or publish them on social media, furthering the debate.
Closed captions
Functionality provided by THEOplayer enables live closed captions to be rendered on top of the video as opposed to the captions being burnt in on the video stream. Out of video captioning is available on all HTML5 enabled browsers, both PC, Mac and mobile.
The benefit of having the captions feed as metadata available in the website means that, as a future enhancement, the captions can be searched, allowing users to track individual member’s contributions on a particular topic, for instance.
Time Accurate Metadata
Consumers watching plenary sessions often want to re-watch previous sessions and need the ability to seek back to the starting time of the sessions of these speakers. THEOplayer implemented support for Program Date Time tags in the HLS stream and together with the work of Vualto, consumers can now seek back to a specific point in time by synchronizing time accurate metadata about sessions and speakers with the player.
Other examples of this are synchronizing an electronic program guide (EPG) with a HLS live stream or synchronizing your HLS stream with an external slide deck.
For more information on this project, visit the website of our partner Vualto.
Or get in contact with our team of experts.
