The impact and limitations of the Covid-19 pandemic still remain in force and have led to the cancellation of a large number of events or the search for possible alternatives to organising them. Conversation Festival LAMPA, which is very popular in Latvia and in 2019 gathered more than 20 000 visitors at more than 37 discussion stages/tents of Cēsis Castle Park, was also forced to rethink the format for organising the festival for the sixth time this year.

As the festival is a large-scale initiative, open platform with more than 300 organisations and active individuals working together to create a place for exchanging views and discussing the current issues in a free, relaxed atmosphere, the festival organisers had to think about how to create the format, so that the festival did not lose its actual purpose – the opportunity to express and exchange views – and to provide remote access to discussions for the festival audience in real time. “Conversation Festival LAMPA is truly happy that Telia has become the cooperation partner and co-creator of our festival this year. At a time when the organisation of events has changed significantly and the opportunity to also join the events remotely has become an integral part of them, the involvement of Telia in the festival was significant support in these times of change,” says Lelde Prūse, Producer of the Conversation Festival LAMPA.

CHALLENGE

The biggest challenges of the event were to enable more than 285 creators of festival content to broadcast their content remotely from anywhere in the world, while providing the worldwide availability of this festival to the audience – the spectators – not only live, but also in the archive after the live broadcast. It should be mentioned that the creators of the festival content were both organisations with professional filming teams and live streaming experience, as well as individuals with only basic knowledge of using such technologies. It should be emphasised that a large part of the festival events took place at the same time.

SOLUTION

The programme of the festival consisted of more than 242 events, which took place in parallel for a total of 4 days in a wide variety of locations, from professionally equipped studios with high-speed internet access to picnic conditions and laptops with mobile phone online connection. The Telia team provided live coverage of more than 39 events, as well as the delivery of these live recordings and content to end users worldwide.

Although it was possible to receive streaming on a wide variety of devices – from professional devices to ordinary computers and phones – the technical solution for all the events that were broadcast by Telia had common principles.

The creator of the festival content had to have a device with a connected camera that could provide online streaming in the RTMP or SRT protocol. Such devices included laptops with built-in cameras and mobile internet connection, as well as professional sets of studio-level equipment consisting of several cameras with professional operators, microphones, video and audio mixing console and professional equipment for signal transmission. Each participant was assigned the publication details of streaming, which indicated the point of receiving the stream in the Telia Video Cloud infrastructure. Telia Video Cloud platform further performed the real-time transcoding process, or the conversion of the received signals into several types of qualities, and adapted it for streaming online in formats supported by computer media players and telephone browsers. The streams were distributed in real time worldwide using the Content Delivery Network solution. In addition, all broadcasts were recorded in the archives of the platform, from which the festival organisers could download them for further use.

RESULT

All creators of the festival content, including those who had no previous experience in using such platforms, were able to join Telia Video Cloud independently and broadcast their live content. All live broadcasts were successfully provided and the events could be viewed worldwide on any device. After the festival, the event recordings are available on the platform, which by using the embed code functionality of the platform with an already integrated player function can be published on any selected platform separately or an entire archive of the event recordings can be created.

“Taking into account the very different levels of preparation of the participants in providing live broadcasts, often – even for the first time on their own live broadcast, preparatory work was carried out together with technical staff of Telia before the festival. After learning about Telia Video Cloud infrastructure together with Telia representatives, the festival organisers themselves then also trained the event participants. The technical executive producer of the festival acted as an intermediate between the representatives of Telia and the participants, assisting and helping to solve various situations. It must be said that we really appreciate the responsiveness and help of Telia technical staff, when adapting to the not-so-easy scheme of festival organisation, as well as when providing advice and resolving non-typical situations,” emphasises Lelde Prūse.

Find out more about Telia Video platform here: Solutions for media and content owners

Photo Copyright: Sarunu festivāls LAMPA