Streaming graduation

Charlie Watts

Author: Charlie Watts

Published 1st September 2015

by Charlie Watts Issue 104 - August 2015

Graduation is a big deal for students, families and for the degree awarding institutions, and so it has been this way in Portsmouth since 1995. Now twenty years later it should come as no surprise that the University of Portsmouth has elevated the Graduation Ceremony Broadcasting Operation into something so organised that it runs like a refined and well oiled Swiss watch.
In 2009 a decision was made to attempt the live broadcasting of the ceremony across all of the campus, the Portsmouth City Council BBC/LOCOG Big Screen and the web. BSc Television and Broadcasting was up to the challenge and Gary Bown, Principal lecturer for the School of Creative Technologies, entered into uncharted territories.
I still remember the phone call states Gary, and although we instantly said yes to the challenge, the moment the phone call ended that sense of panic of how the hell are we going to do this set in. Thankfully we had recently purchased a NewTek TriCaster and this became the absolute hub of how we were going to achieve many broadcast graduations for years to come.
Things have now changed a lot, along with the kit that is now being used, and thankfully so has the initial attitude from some. Gary adds, I can still remember some people asking why an earth anybody would want to watch graduation live? We are now in our sixth year of doing this and I think 45,000 views later we have a pretty definitive answer that there is a big audience out there wanting to watch!
So what of the kit and workflow being employed? Michael Parsons, CCI TV studio technician picks up the story¦.

Graduation seems to get bigger every year, and this year we added a 4th HD camera mounted on a jib, put our portable 8-input Datavideo mobile studio through its paces, and we successfully broadcast Graduation 2015 in full 1080p/25 to YouTube thanks to our new Minicaster Encoders.
Being on location in the Guildhall for two weeks allows us the opportunity to build a temporary control room where we manage the mixing, recording and broadcast of the ceremonies. At the centre of this years control room is a recently acquired 8-input Datavideo Mobile Studio MS2800B incorporating monitoring, talkback, mixer and recorder in one handy flight case. Alongside this we used our previous graduation mixer a 3 input Tricaster to continue to provide images and video playback into 8-input mixer. Some may therefore ask why not simply use an 8-input Tricaster much like the one we have in our TV studio? Although we are a great advocate for Newtek Tricaster we also have the need to offer a diverse range of equipment to our students, and the Datavideo Mobile studio provides a more traditional mixer housed in a flight case unit for outside broadcasting.
Four HD cameras were used for the broadcast which are operated by our students who are temporarily employed by the University, thus offering them a proper paid experience. In addition to the cameras, this year a social media web page was fed into the mixer showing tweets and photos approved by the Universitys marketing department, this provided live content that could be shown during the build up of ceremonies and this was all displayed on the universitys screens during breaks between ceremonies. Graduation is directed by members of CCI TV staff as there is a lot of pressure for the Universitys most prestigious event and it also gives an opportunity for staff to continue professional development, break in any new kit, enhance skills and ensure that everything runs according to plan.

Last but not least is senior support specialist, broadcast technician and lecturer Stephen Bellinger. I design the workflow each year and take overall charge of the transmission signal for all video feeds. At the centre of our operation is a miniCaster Encoder, encoding a stream to YouTube, and providing a multicast to both the University TV screens and the Portsmouth Big Screen. This is the second year we have utilised YouTube to broadcast graduation, mainly because of the stability and bandwidth issues YouTubes servers provide. In previous year we relied on bandwidth from the university servers, but this limited our audience to around 400 per streamed graduation service. YouTube removes that cap and it also allows the broadcasted stream to be instantly available to replay as soon at the ceremony has ended. The popularity of this speaks for itself with over 10,000 replays during graduation alone!
So with Portsmouth Graduation 2015 now complete, what new kit and streaming workflow will 2016 require? Rest assured the broadcast service is in good hands.

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