China is stated to have the world’s second largest film market, making it a country that big Hollywood films cannot ignore. Mtime.com is one of China’s largest web portal and promotion company. Recently it employed a solution using Blackmagic Design products to connect Hollywood stars with their Chinese fans.
Logistics mean that in-person appearances are not always possible. To combat this Yang Mian, senior system engineer of operations and maintenance department at Mtime, designed a multi-cam live production and broadcast system for a myriad of venues.
Rather than employing an OB van at each location, a solution that would be costly, Mtime decided to fall back on an mixture of AV and IT by deploying a live interactive video streaming solution with Blackmagic Design products and Skype at its core.
The live interactive video streaming solution comprised of a laptop computer with Skype running on it, Blackmagic Design’s UltraStudio SDI video capture device connected via USB 3.0 and a mini convertor HDMI to SDI connected via HDMI. Eight such live stations have been setup at the main venue in Beijing while eight other live stations were deployed in eight other cities.