M2A Media’s Live To VoD Service adopted by Channel 4

Channel 4 has chosen M2A Media’s Live To VoD Service, running from the public cloud, to enhance its live events video on demand, helping it get the footage to viewers as fast as possible.

The platform has reduced the broadcaster's video processing and delivery times significantly. It now takes just a few minutes to get live footage to viewers' screens, meaning All 4 On-Demand viewers are getting better value every time they start watching the service.

M2A Media made it simple to integrate its service into Channel 4's regular workflow, allowing them to capture, package and deliver video from the live streamed broadcast event, making it available almost immediately.

One of the main reasons Channel 4 wanted to use M2A Media's solution was to speed up the delivery of Formula 1 reporting.

The broadcaster is now able to show the action live streamed from the track, removing linear advertising breaks from the video, adding log points for inserting on-demand advertising breaks and delivering multiple formats and DRMs for on-demand platforms, which it was previously unable to do.

"Formula One is all about speed and our viewers want to be able to watch our F1 action on demand as soon as each programme is over," Andy Bell, Channel 4’s video engineering manager for All 4, said. "With M2A Media’s Live To VoD solution F1 fans can now see the whole race, from start to finish, on-demand only minutes after the chequered flag.”

M2A Media's Live To VoD service works by ingesting the transcoded live stream in eight bit-rates into Unified Origin with a 24-hour cache. This video is trimmed, converted to MPEG-DASH, HLS, Smooth and HDS VoD, DRM’d with Widevine, Playready, Fairplay, Access and Marlin and then delivered to Channel 4 for distribution to its VOD platforms.