Cannes Film Festival upgraded its content distribution to IPTV this year, hiring Exterity to relay video content on demand to global media. The event’s IT management decided to transmit Festival TV in digital form to each attending journalist as well as selected broadcasters.
Broadcasters included CanalSat, the Canal Plus channels, Orange TV, orange.fr, the Orange World mobile portal and cable in the town of Cannes itself.
Marc Tayar, head of IT at KM which is responsible for the management of editorial content (subject to ratification by the Cannes Festival) and executive production, explained: “Up until now, the production team and the journalists could watch Festival TV on three screens set up in the open space area at the heart of the Palais des Festivals, which had the effect of making the workplace noisy and that was becoming off-putting for the members of the team.”
The solution was Exterity’s AvediaStream HD encoders, installed within fifty metres of the control room, which took live feeds from broadcast cameras and equipment and distributed via IP to each workstation. Video streams were available on demand to workstations with additional distribution to central TV screens using AvediaPlayer receivers specially provided for the purpose. With an editorial team of more than 30 journalists and a control room of 200 technicians offering 20 to 25 videos every day, images could be watched at any time, depending on individual requirements.
To further enhance the solution, Exterity’s IPTV streams share the network with a VoIP system. This allows each workstation to provide on demand access to video footage from the Exterity system, while allowing journalists to make voice calls all using the same IP network. Each workstation is also equipped with a micro-headset so that users are able to make voice and video calls via the inbuilt VoIP features which sit alongside the IPTV streaming and complete the upgraded communications package.