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Clevercast Failsafe Simulcasting

The boundaries between TV and online broadcasts are getting more and more blurred. Global events with high viewing density and great appeal are increasingly often being broadcasted as live streams for both online and TV channels. Therefore, these live streams must meet very high requirements in terms of quality, reliability, redundancy, routing, latency, packaging, flexibility …

For example, the FIFA eWorld Cup™ Grand Final was broadcasted live in six languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Portuguese and Spanish – from the O2 in London and was carried by 21 broadcasters in more than 75 territories. The three-day event generated more than 47 million views across online platforms.

To ensure that all requirements are met, event organizers can rely on Clevercast. Our streaming and network engineers are experts in designing complex and failsafe setups for global and high-profile live streams. We can scale and adjust our setup at any time, thanks to the combination of our own optimized streaming servers and virtual instances in the cloud. Our advanced software lets us configure, test and monitor all incoming and outgoing streams, so we can react quickly to any change in circumstances.

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EA – FIFA 20 Summer Cup Series
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EA FIFA 19 Series: failsafe simulcasting to global channels

Challenges of a high-profile live stream?

A multitude of streams with different resolutions and frame rates to be delivered to the right online and TV channels worldwide

A fully redundant setup with the ability to failover for any stream at any time depending on various encoding, broadcasting and network conditions

Setting up, testing and active monitoring in consultation with the various stakeholders

Frequently Asked Questions

What is simulcasting?

Simulcasting means that you simultaneously broadcast to multiple destinations. Our streaming server does this for you by relaying the stream to multiple destinations at the same time (YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Periscope, other online and TV channels). This way, you only need to broadcast one stream from the event site.

What is server-side transcoding?

Our streaming server can do realtime transcoding of the incoming stream. This way different resolutions can be relayed to your channels and stakeholders, depending on their needs.

Why different resolutions and frame rates?

You want to offer the streams in the highest possible quality, but not every endpoint may be able to handle this. For example, Twitch viewers have come to expect a frame rate of 60 fps, while Facebook can only handle 30 fps. The same applies to the video resolution.

How many concurrent streams are possible?

Basically, as much as you are able to broadcast (encoders, bandwidth limitations). We can easily extend our setup with extra virtual streaming servers to relay additional streams.

Why do we need redundancy?

If you have an event with high visibility, it is important that your stream does not falter or fail. This could happen if an encoder stops working. Network issues could arise between encoder and our relay server, between relay server and proxy server or between proxy server and endpoint. Therefore, the setup should be fully redundant.

Are global live streams stable?

Yes. We use streaming servers that are located in different parts of the world, so that every endpoint always has a fast and reliable connection to every stream.

What if something goes wrong during the live event?

We do extensive testing to avoid this as much as possible. During the live stream, we have our engineers monitor all streams using our in-house developed software. When they detect a problem, they can initiate failover to the backup stream.

Does Clevercast need to handle the live stream encoding and broadcast?

No, we don’t. We can work with any professional broadcasting company. In exceptional cases (eg multilingual stream with many languages) we will prefer to do it ourselves.

Interested?

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