Our Work
Our experience in the industry has seen us work with clients both large and small, across a variety of projects and products. For examples of our work, please explore the links below.
British Sky Broadcasting
Sky News HD Live | view website
Sky News HD Live is an interactive experience for members of the public visiting the O2 Arena in North Greenwich, allowing them to become part of the Sky News team. From reading the news to manning the autocue every aspect is covered. Once the experience is completed the recorded video is then branded and uploaded onto the Sky News website. From here the video can be viewed, downloaded and shared via a unique code.
The Challenge
The challenge was to create a system where members of the public are able to capture video within a controlled environment using a mini DV camera similar to what is used in the Sky News studios.
A unique reference number needed to be generated and handed to the customer which would allow them to retrieve the video online on a public facing website.
The video would need to be fully branded with the clients branding along with the website.
Our Approach
We created a suite of applications to complete the following functions:
- Contain an interface to start capturing video
- Capture video and upload it to a web application
- Brands the video
- Encodes the video into the appropriate format (H.264+ACC) for web
- Manage a queue of videos waiting to be encoded as well as monitor performance and lead times
- Notify developers and staff if any problems occur within the application, for example network or branding issues
Our solution of public and private facing applications enabled us to automate the entire process, therefore minimising human error.
We also developed an iOS application to run on an iPod Touch that was connected via WiFi to a Mac mini. This would allow for full control of our bespoke video capture application on OSX.
Once the capture is complete the application automatically prints out a card with a uniquely generated user code. From here the application on the Mac Mini uploads the video to an API we developed for our web application.
The web application then automatically brands the video with the Sky News logos and news ticker, before marking it as ready to access for the customer. This entire process takes just over 6 minutes to complete from the moment the record button is pressed, to being branded and accessible to the customer online.
