France Télévisions Broadcaster Moves Beyond TV by Streaming Major Events Across Multiple Platforms in HD

France Télévisions strives to provide exciting coverage for a variety of programming, including online content that can be accessed conveniently on a variety of devices. France Télévisions began using Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming when it streamed live coverage of Roland Garros 2009 through a Microsoft Silverlight–based video player. Building on similar successes, France Télévisions, along with partners Ucaya, Level 3, and Akamai Europe, delivered 6 million online videos in France to more than 300,000 viewers to stellar reviews. The broadcaster provided an unparalleled, HD experience on multiple platforms, including Linux, providing higher quality than many TVs. In addition, audiences loved the DVR-style functionality, including “chase play” or the ability to watch the event from the beginning, even if the viewer paused the live stream or joined after the start time.

We want to offer online programming that delivers brilliantly, no matter which platform or device our audiences are using.… With Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming, I found a solution that delivers video beautifully on multiple platforms. Philippe Daguerre, Web CTO, France Télévisions

Situation

France Télévisions, a state-owned public-TV broadcaster, provides news, sports, and entertainment to people in France through five channels and its cutting-edge Web properties, where the company has streamed video for many events. The 2010 Winter Olympics provided both opportunities and challenges to build on previous successes.

Meeting the Needs of French Citizens

“In France, our viewers have diverse reasons for wanting to access content outside the traditional TV set,” explains Philippe Daguerre, Web CTO of France Télévisions. “For example, people in the workplace don’t want to miss out on important live events, like sports, when they are away from their TVs. In addition, some younger viewers simply watch more TV programming on the computer than on the TV.”

In addition, HD TV is relatively new in France and broadband is readily available, so picture quality is often better on the computer than on the household TV. Constituents are not always using Windows-based PCs, either—many of them seek online programming via Macintosh and Linux-based computers as well.

“We want to offer online programming that delivers brilliantly, no matter which platform or device our audiences are using,” says Philippe Daguerre. However, broadcast programming is notoriously difficult to translate to the Web. Myriad issues, including bandwidth, user hardware, content rights, and delivery mechanisms, cloud the ability of programmers to offer the level of ease and immediacy that this audience demands. Undeterred, the company began offering its viewers a high-quality, highly personal way to watch sports online, starting with the French Open Grand Slam tennis event in 2009.

“As soon as the IIS Smooth Streaming technology was available, I wanted to try it immediately,” says Philippe Daguerre. “So we tried it with Roland Garros 2009, and it worked perfectly.”

France Télévisions followed that production with other major sporting events, such as Tour de France and the Roma09 FINA World Championships for swimming. The company wanted to stream the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver online and offer the experience across different platforms to include access for Linux viewers. Explains Philippe Daguerre, “With Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming, I found a solution that delivers video beautifully on multiple platforms.”

“Time shifting” (recording of a broadcast for future viewing) has been around since the days of the VCR, but technology like IIS Smooth Streaming is advancing the concept further. “Recently, a radio network declared there was a revolution in the video-viewing experience, thanks to [advances in] time shifting,” notes Philippe Daguerre.

France Télévisions wanted to offer full, DVR-style time-shifting functionality to viewers so that they could join an event at almost any time. “It’s very compelling for viewers to be able to go back in time during a game or event to see key points,” suggests Thierry Bouquain, Co-Owner of Ucaya. “By using IIS Smooth Streaming, we were able to create a special timeline, where we could include key-point markers; for example, in the Tour de France, we marked geographic elements, such as the ascension of a hill.”

Delivering the 2010 Winter Olympics and providing sophisticated time-shifting functionality would be more complicated than the previous events. Both the schedule and volume of content were more complicated, as Gautier Demond, Solution Consultant at Level 3 Communications, explains: “Technically, it was challenging, because we were doing 13 to 14 hours of live video streaming per day. That also included unexpected stops. For instance, sometimes there was a lack of snow, a storm, or someone getting hurt and the race would stop, and there would be no program for one or two hours. We needed to understand that the Games did not have a fixed timeline; we had to evolve.”

By using IIS Smooth Streaming, we were able to create a special timeline, where we could include key-point markers; for example, in the Tour de France, we marked geographic elements, such as the ascension of a hill. Thierry Bouquain, Co-Owner, Ucaya

In addition, France Télévisions wanted to offer an experience beyond traditional TV. The company wanted to provide improved video-on-demand (VOD) options, especially because the Games were happening overnight for the citizens of France. “We wanted to provide viewers with VOD immediately after an event completed and a way to easily skip to the key points of each day,” notes Philippe Daguerre.

For the 2010 Winter Olympics, France Télévisions built on its experience with Microsoft Silverlight and Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming technology to provide online coverage for the Games. France Télévisions’s partners, Level 3, Akamai Europe, and Ucaya, helped to deliver an impressive 800 hours of video coverage for the Olympics alone.

Encoding and Streaming Infrastructure

As illustrated in Figure 1, six feeds of SD video were delivered through the Akamai Europe content deliver network (CDN) and one feed delivered 200 hours of HD video via the Level 3 CDN.

Level 3 had dedicated IIS servers for live and on-demand video. Level 3 also closely monitored statistics sent from the Silverlight-based video player to a database running Microsoft SQL Server. Explains Gautier Demond, “We created some services so that France Télévisions could have visibility into concurrent users, bandwidth at any given moment, the number of players connected, and so on.”

In addition, Level 3 closely monitored the streams and quality of video. “We have a dedicated broadcast-monitoring center; so basically, during the events, we have at least two video engineers monitoring the feeds to ensure that everything works smoothly,” Gautier Demond notes. This included watching the network to make sure that the IIS servers and all caches behaved properly and that everyone received the video. The other important task was broadcast monitoring, which required someone to actually watch the feed and pay attention to the quality of the video, audio, and the encoding.

Building in Time-Shifting Flexibility

To meet the challenges of interrupted broadcasts and the multiple feeds that were coming in at different times of the day (or French night), the videos needed to be put into a single timeline for direct access throughout the day. This meant that Level 3 had to coordinate the streaming and encoding and collaborate with developers from Ucaya, who created the video player, to integrate with an electronic player guide so that the player could react to schedule changes.

Figure 1. The general workflow of the video streams, from video camera to computer screen.

Level 3 worked closely with Ucaya to re-create a unique manifest that would be a combination of all the previous manifests for every day. The team at Ucaya used a Web service to update the video player with timing for the start of each event for each day of streaming. The time information was synchronized in the IIS Smooth Streaming manifest file as a sparse track, and then the stream was delivered to the video player.

Transitioning to VOD

The second challenge for Level 3 was to make the video archive available immediately after each event. Says Xavier Gregoire, Account Director at Level 3, “During much of the Games, the last event finished at 6:00 in the morning in France; so, at 6:05, we had everything up and running on an IIS server for VOD.”

IIS Smooth Streaming gave viewers the ability to transition seamlessly between live and on-demand video. Live content was syndicated to VOD servers, and all of the content was synchronized in a manifest file on each of the publishing points. “As soon as the live stream ended, the video-player application automatically redirected to the VOD server for playback of archived video content,” explains Xavier Gregoire.

The Ucaya team expanded on a video player that it had developed from the core functionality in the Silverlight Media Framework to include HD-quality video capability, DVR-like controls, rich data integration, and social-media tools. The DVR functionality included “chase play” options, which enabled the viewer to watch the event from the beginning, even if the viewer paused the live stream or joined after the start time. In addition, Ucaya delivered a Moonlight-based player for Linux users.

“Of course, many people in France work during the day, so this video player, combined with live and VOD access, enabled them to watch the Winter Olympics in HD before, during, or after work,” notes Romuald Boulanger, Co-Owner of Ucaya.

France Télévisions, in concert with partners Ucaya and Level 3, delivered more than 800 hours of the 2010 Winter Olympics online to rave reviews. The combination of Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming offered high-quality viewing and features that took TV programming to the next level.

“Viewers spent an average of 64 minutes watching video and they watched a total of 6 million videos,” says Philippe Daguerre. “This is an impressive number considering that the Games were being broadcast live while almost all of France was sleeping.”

With so many of the younger generation in France tuning into TV programming on their computers, France Télévisions is positioned to give them what they want. “This is where the big difference lies, especially with sporting events,” contends Philippe Daguerre. “HD makes a difference because many of our viewers are unable to receive it on their TVs. Of course, the average person who primarily watches TV is not the same as the average Internet viewer. In France, we reach the younger demographic through compelling online programming.”

France Télévisions was especially pleased to be able to offer the Winter Olympics on-demand immediately after each program was done. “The wonderful thing about IIS Smooth Streaming is that we were able to combine on-demand and live video, which was a huge value for viewers; it let them go back and forth even during a live event, which was an invaluable experience,” explains Philippe Daguerre. “For example, when viewers visited the Web site two hours after an Olympic skiing event, we could point them to the exact location of the event on the timeline.” Figure 2 illustrates how the timeline markers appeared in the video player’s user interface.

Figure 2. The France Télévisions video player, with markers to indicate the start of each event. The red frame highlights the popup that appears when a user hovers over a marker.

Expanded Programming

Compared with traditional TV programming, the online experience offered more accessible programming. The video player offered up to six streams of events either live or VOD, whereas TV audiences had only two channels to watch select events at specific times.

For player development, creating such a sophisticated player for three platforms was a tall order. Says Thierry Bouquain, “The challenge of this project was to produce a video player very quickly—less than two weeks between the first line of code and release to production. By using the Silverlight Media Framework, we were able to do it.”

In addition, the team from Ucaya met the directive from France Télévisions that the video player should be available on Linux as well as Macintosh and Windows-based computers. “We get a lot of mail from the Linux community, which is very active,” says Philippe Daguerre. “So we were pleased to be able to provide the Winter Olympics video player on multiple platforms, including Linux.”

France Télévisions doesn’t limit itself when thinking about the future of broadcast programming. Recently, the company tested mobile phone access for live streams. “It is extremely important to know that smartphones are going to be prevalent,” says Philippe Daguerre. “But, there is instability with those networks and there's going to be a need for stream adaptation.”

Philippe Daguerre would love to bring even more life to sports broadcasting. “I would be interested in using Silverlight to broadcast 3-D events over the Internet,” he enthuses. “I think that would be exciting!”