A Mini-Guide to Live Broadcasting/Online Streaming

These two potato potato terms aren’t exactly the same thing albeit they share the property of being in real time.

Are you tuned in to the local 9pm news? Tuned in to your favorite vloggers live stream or your favorite Fortnite-playing streamer live? Perhaps you are following all the action of the final Premier League matchday with the title on the line, for the sports fans. 

All these activities have one common denominator-they all are live. What is meant by live is that the feed is in real time – video is recorded and broadcast with minimal to no delay at all. 

The politically correct definition for live streaming is various types of media recorded and broadcast without significant delay. 

The most common media in live broadcasting would have to be a news program or broadcasting for accuracy. Anything from live radio to live television falls under this big, live umbrella.

The contrast between the two is that online streams are all via the internet which necessarily isn’t the case in live broadcasts – take the case of live radio for example. Even on your grandpa’s old radio, it still counts as a live broadcast.

How Live Broadcasting Works

Basically, in every live broadcast or live stream, a video file is delivered bit by bit from a remote storage location in real time without the video being recorded and stored. In other terms, content is not created beforehand and stored for later broadcasting or streaming for that matter. 

Instead, content is released and received by the audience at almost the same time it is created or being created I should say. On a technical level, here is how live streaming works;

Video Capture

The first step is capturing the video content. In the case of a vlogger perhaps, the content could be video for online streaming to social networks. Cameras or a camera, singular, capture raw video data which basically is the visual information captured. 

The camera is attached to a computing device that in turn converts this visual information into digital data. Computers only understand binary information-1s and 0s so this stage is as crucial as can be.

Compression and Encoding

Next up is compression and encoding of the segmented video. 

Compression is done to get rid of redundant information in the video files. The basic idea behind compression is getting rid of any unnecessary information in the video as well as trying to minimize the file size. With respect to that, not every frame in a video needs to be rendered.

Encoding on the other hand is the conversion of data into a new format. In this case, video is converted into different formats that different media devices can recognize.

Segmentation

To start with, video is multimedia – it has different types of media incorporated into it. 

Owing to that fact, videos are often larger in size compared to other media that contain only a single type of media like text or sound. It goes without saying that it takes much longer to download a video vis a vis a word document or a picture. 

That in mind, it is not practical to send the whole video at once, which is where segmentation comes in.

The video is divided into smaller segments, typically several seconds in length. After segmentation, your video is now ready for online streaming to social networks.

CDN Distribution and Caching

A CDN is a distribution of servers that cache and serve content on behalf of the origin server. This greatly reduces the workload on the origin server because some of the work is done by the CDN leading to faster performance.

CDN servers are distributed across the globe, which completely eliminates the need for requests and responses to travel all the way to the origin server. Whatever CDN server is closest to you receives your requests and responds just like the origin server would.

A CDN takes over the role of transmitting the now segmented, compressed and encoded video to anyone who needs it.

Decoding and Playback

After the CDN sends out the stream, it is received by a device. Every device can decode the video. Loosely, decoding is the opposite of encoding. The video is decompressed and a media player on the device begins playing your live match stream.

 

Live sport broadcasts are the bread and butter of match streaming for all sports fans and sports broadcasters alike. Sports broadcasters go through a lot of trouble to bring you the action daily, weekly or however often your favorite team plays. 

Challenges in Live Sport Broadcasting

Venue Changes

This in itself is a nightmare for perhaps every industry especially if the notices are handed out late or are unexpected. Imagine having hauled all your equipment in place, as a camera operator, and the venue is changed all the way across town. You pack up, get there, unpack and the match is postponed – I would be in quite the mood as well. 

In the case of live streaming, new locations could have crappy internet connection which frankly is public enemy number one for match streaming. 

There really is no telling if there will be decent connection until you are on site. Logistics are another issue in terms of optimal locations to set up your cameras.

Fast Paced End to End Action

The sheer amount of action and movement in sports, especially contact sports is just immense and hard to keep up with as a camera operator – imagine a camera operator for a race track. 

A way around this would be setting up one static camera strategically so it covers all the action without having to be moved. The tricky part is the location of the camera in terms of the view it offers so players don’t look like minions running around to people following the live sport broadcast.

Cameras and Computers Work Extra Hard

With all the movement involved and sometimes horrendous weather conditions, cameras and computers have to work overtime to ensure content is of good quality without lagging or blurry images perhaps due to rain or the CPU being overworked.

Simultaneous Events Are a Tad Tricky to Manage

Simultaneous events like tournaments are a barrage of incessant action which can be a lot to handle for both your equipment as well as manpower.