Many programmers today have expansive social media presences that can be leveraged to alert followers and entice new viewers into upcoming and currently airing live programs . There is no more powerful medium for enticing a live viewing audience than video . Social media platforms have adapted powerful engagement features making it more essential than ever to deliver compelling video highlights and messaging to drive an audience to your live programming . Any live OTT solution today must include rapid and light touch editorial workflows to engage these potential viewers . An approach that combines high quality mezzanine sources , powerful editorial tools and tightly integrated social media distribution profiles ensures that producers can rapidly deliver compelling highlight packages , activate “ free view ” social media channels and events , and optimize the second screen video experience ; all with targeted and platform specific “ calls to actions ” that promote the live programming within the desired context . This is one way today ’ s programmers can effectively grow their audiences . Expanding the live viewing audience and engaging viewers is paramount ; leveraging social media to market the live programming as it airs is one of the most effective ways to do this .
Centralized Production and Ad Insertion A modern , live video encoding solution should be at the hub of any media processing workflow . It must be able to do more today than ever before . It is vital that a live encoding solution should understand program boundaries with frame-accurate precision . Often times , the live program includes SCTE markers or other cue points that can inform systems where a program begins and ends and where ad breaks or other boundaries occur , including what kind of ad opportunities are available within those breaks . The encoding solution needs to be easily integrated with workflow automation , and today this means via a web services API . This is needed to ensure that out-ofband messages defining production requirements can be incorporated into the live video stream . A live video encoding solution that is content aware of both in-band and out-ofband signals can programmatically switch streaming context to support dynamic ad insertion workflows , alternative content and blackout rules , and sophisticated content protection and packaging rules . All of these combine to enable a better OTT audience experience while unlocking prized live revenue streams .
Catch-up Window With so many ways to alert today ’ s audiences about live programming , it is not uncommon to see a large number of “ late comers ” joining an in-progress live show . Traditionally , this audience would only be able to see the live program from the point where they joined , leading to a frustrating viewer navigation experience . The catch-up
viewing window can be made much better by crafting a “ content aware ” live production . By defining program boundaries and modeling those against a live recording cache , you can identify and point the playback experience to the exact location to restart a given program . This leads to more ads being seen , and happy viewers who don ’ t feel penalized for being “ late ”.
Replay Window There are few things more frustrating to today ’ s viewers than being stuck waiting for an on-demand version of a previously aired live program or event . Increasingly , audiences expect to be able to instantly access a live program in its entirety immediately following the initial airing . However , there may be many optimizations that programmers want to apply to the live airing to make it more accessible to a time shifted audience . A live recording cache can be used for the catch-up window mentioned above as well as an immediate post-live “ replay ” window , enabling “ instant access ” to the replay content . Programmers can design video production workflows that take a live program and record it to a highresolution production format like ProRes , MXF , or DNxHD . By