Corrivium delivers live broadcast and streaming workflows for clients’ events using Grass Valley’s cloud-based AMPP for all stages from ingest and monitoring, to graphics and playback.
Corrivium is a live streaming and media services solutions provider in Sydney. The company handles the onsite support services, cloud infrastructure, project delivery, testing and back-up systems for live OTT broadcasts, large and small-scale virtual meetings, presentations and conferences, and live sports event streaming.
Starting with strategy, microsite development and the technical aspects of live event delivery, Corrivium recommends and carries out services and equipment to fit different client budgets, audiences and objectives. Their clients’ requirements can vary widely, ranging from, for example, a one-off live stream event, to a series of live broadcasts, out to a custom platform for regular use. As well as live broadcasts and streaming, Corrivium handles video and event production, VOD, streaming MCR services and event management.
Efficient Delivery
Delivery might take the form of embedded live streams on a website or use Corrivium’s own live delivery platform for hosted streaming. This platform is customisable, secure and focussed on audience access, aiming to give more people access to events, anytime, wherever the client and audience are located. Interactivity is supported through social integration and audience engagement tools. The platform is operated with three levels of redundancy so that, should problems arise, Corrivium’s team can act quickly.
In 2020, while trying to improve delivery of their live streaming events, the company started using applications built on AMPP from Grass Valley. Founder & CEO Steve Jones at Corrivium said, “Since a large part of our business is delivering events for large organisations around the world, we were looking for ways to do the work more efficiently and be able to travel with less equipment. This led us to AMPP.”
Grass Valley’s AMPP basically is a microservices-based media operating system, providing a suite of broadcasting tools from across the entire production chain – for everything from video ingest, audio mixing, vision mixing, graphics, record, playout and more – made available in a single environment. The platform allows users to bring these tools together in servers on-premise, in the cloud or any mixture, to build rich video workflows for live content creation, management and distribution.
Agile Toolbox
“AMPP has turned out to be much bigger, with more capabilities than we were originally expecting. Now that we understand its philosophy – with wide, first-hand experience – we support its approach 100%,” Steve said.
“We currently use it for ingest, delay, monitoring, graphics, audio mixing, vision mixing, recording and playback. However, what we value most about the system is that in AMPP’s eco-system, ‘there's always a solution for that’. The apps available in AMPP’s App Store are like a toolbox – if we’re on a job and we need to resolve an audio sync Issue, add some delay, cross convert or add graphics, we can spin up the necessary application or service on the platform within a few seconds, and bring it into the workflow.
“It's allowed us to be more agile and offer more flexibility to our clients. By offering AMPP apps as a service, we can easily build a client’s workflow locally, and then run the project for them the following week on the other side of the globe. Also, as we've been using it successfully now for four years, we are finding opportunities coming to us from non-traditional businesses and would like advice on the best way to organize it for their use case.”
Some key advantages AMPP’s eco-system gives Corrivium are speed to market, and ease of working across borders and in different time zones. One of the main benefits the team has found is that no matter what it is they are trying to deliver, and no matter where it is in the world, they can build a workflow, test it, deploy it and be up and running within any major cloud region without having to leave Sydney.
A Double Challenge
Steve looks at AMPP from two points of view, resulting from two challenges. “On the client side, we have the challenge of organisations today that are moving to the cloud and want to avoid hosting infrastructure themselves,” he said. “They want to minimise their CapEx costs as much as possible – including the cost of the space and staff required to own, maintain and operate large amounts of equipment – and move to an OpEx model that is better aligned with their own business models. Grass Valley AMPP helps achieve these goals. Within it, you have all of the Grass Valley products and more at your fingertips, and you only pay for what you use, when you use it.
“However, the challenge on the AMPP side is that, with such a wide range of apps and solutions, before their users can fully benefit from everything AMPP has to offer, they need to explore the products within the ecosystem. Putting workflows together can be complex in itself, and AMPP is not a small eco-system. After all, any major broadcast involves a lot of elements working together.”
He also notes that it may be true that in the current age of fast, powerful laptops and cloud computing, an operator can deliver a live stream with nothing more than a laptop, a Stream Deck and access to one of the many cloud streaming services. “But we still see major professional broadcasts using teams of 10 to 20 people, all with individual roles,” he said.
Managing Complexity
“Anyone who works in a professional production environment understands the need for specialist roles. Each role has its own skills, responsibilities and tools needed to complete their job. Grass Valley was aware of this reality when they built the AMPP eco-system. Each of its services forms a part of the larger production workflow, and therefore can also be operated on its own.”
This leads to a further challenge – to utilise AMPP to its fullest advantage, the engineer building the workflow needs to translate the elements he or she wants to virtualize into the required services on AMPP. Equally important, the engineer can make important decisions about the AMPP infrastructure, based on nodes that can either be physical servers, cloud servers or a combination of both, to put the end-to-end solution together in a way that is effective, efficient and ultimately successful.
Initial Stages
When a client approaches Corrivium about a production that fits the nature of AMPP, Corrivium’s team works with Grass Valley in the initial stages of the engagement to understand the project’s requirements and to develop a working proof-of-concept so that the client can see how AMPP can work for them in a way that is specific to them. Once the engagement has been finalised, the focus then moves into assisting the client to build the infrastructure required to run AMPP, and train the operators on how to use it.
Steve remarked, “It is here in the initial stages where we find our skill and experience are valued the most. We ensure the infrastructure is built in a secure, scalable and reliable way as well as guide the operators on their journey of gaining a deep understanding of AMPP themselves.
“As we have found, once you fully understand the AMPP ecosystem, you also understand the power of the tool that you have at your disposal. AMPP allows its users to be able to achieve almost anything from a production point of view, in the cloud. It removes the restriction of not having particular equipment at hand to achieve the desired results. If you require a playback system, or a graphics system, a 32x32 Audio Mixer, or a simple scene-based vision mixer – it's all there at your fingertips.”
Unique Workflows
During the time that Corrivium has been working with AMPP, the team has been able to build up a deep understanding around the ecosystem, how it works, what kinds of projects it is best suited for how to be efficient in a way that minimises the costs for delivery.
“Nevertheless, our company may be unique in that we haven't built a single workflow that we use across multiple projects,” Steve commented. “Each project is different, because each one of our clients’ events has its own special set of requirements. Instead, we build bespoke AMPP workflows for every project, deploy them to the appropriate cloud region and run them either as a remote, onsite or hybrid delivery.
“For new clients coming into the AMPP ecosystem, the prospect can be daunting. It's not very common for a Video Engineer to also understand cloud infrastructure, or a Cloud Architect to understand complex video workflows. Within Corrivium however, we've been bridging that divide over some years and with our knowledge and experience, we can accelerate a client's journey.” www.grassvalley.com
