Near-Instant Volleyball Streaming with the Videon EdgeCaster

Videon’s EdgeCaster made viewing the FIVB Volleyball World Cup easy

The women’s tournament of the 2019 FIVB World Cup was streamed live from Yokohama, Japan last September and drew an estimated audience of more than 30,000 peak concurrent viewers and over 500,000 unique viewers. The event provided a perfect showcase for Videon’s EdgeCaster ultra-low latency (ULL) encoder working in a live streaming video workflow using Amazon Web Services (AWS).  

As the international governing body for all forms of volleyball, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) stages the World Cup every four years as a qualifying event for the Olympic Games. For the 2019 World Cup, the FIVB wanted to apply ULL to optimize the viewer experience and create a parallel OTT workflow for the linear television broadcast of the tournament. FIVB’s chosen solution was ULL-CMAF technology powered by Fuji Television and AWS, leveraging an EdgeCaster HEVC/H.264 video encoder.

The EdgeCaster was at the heart of the FIVB ULL video streaming workflow.

The low-power, small-form-factor Edgecaster provided direct output of HLS/DASH CMAF-formatted signals (EdgeCaster also enables traditional RTMP workflows along with many other common streaming formats). Through AWS Direct Connect, the HLS/DASH/CMAF output was ingested by AWS Elemental MediaStore, which was the origin point for delivery by AWS CloudFront to end-user devices worldwide.

The results speak for themselves.

Volleyball fans were able to watch FIVB World Cup matches using the iOS, Android, or HTML player of their choice with a stable latency of only three seconds while sharing the experience on social media. The FIVB provided multiple synchronized camera angles to create an immersive experience, enabling viewers to watch multiple screens and follow featured-player chase cameras. Wide-angle and ceiling views further enhanced the traditional broadcast experience.

It’s not just for sports.

While a live sporting event is an ideal application for ULL workflows, it’s not the only one. Imagine corporate town halls with interactivity between a worldwide workforce and the presenter or any event that can leverage social video engagement to create a deeper connection with viewers. The use of standards-based, scalable technology allows for this wide range of live events to achieve distribution and engagement never before realized.

With EdgeCaster, all types of organizations can take full advantage of the many opportunities that arise when live streaming is truly live.