RTBF Creates More Live News Content and Streamlines Production With a Complete AVIWEST Ecosystem

Published: 12 November 2020

RTBF Creates More Live News Content and Streamlines Production With a Complete AVIWEST Ecosystem

AVIWEST, a global provider of video contribution systems, today announced that Belgian TV group RTBF (Radio Télévision Belge Francophone) has deployed a complete AVIWEST ecosystem for live news, cultural events, sports coverage, and content sharing. AVIWEST's solution streamlines news production for RTBF through a wide range of top-notch solutions including the company's bonded cellular PRO3 and AIR transmitter series, rack mount HE and RACK video encoders, QUAD antennas, MOJOPRO mobile live streaming applications, StreamHub receiver, and Manager management platform.

In 2018, RTBF wanted to upgrade all of its transmission tools. Since then it has relied on AVIWEST's double Emmy® Award-winning SST (Safe Streams Transport) aggregation technology for highly secure and low-latency video transmission. The AVIWEST transmitters and its MOJOPRO mobile applications enable remote journalists to stream broadcast-grade live coverage, as well as record, store, and forward video stories over cellular networks across the country and from abroad. The field units' high-performance HEVC encoder achieves low bit rates and reduces cellular data consumption without compromising on video quality. Thanks to its large fleet of field units, RTBF can deliver rich content and more varied live programs to its audiences.

"AVIWEST's solution provides us with powerful live streaming tools, enabling us to further augment our live video production and reduce our operational costs by using cellular networks,\" said Benjamin Dominicy, system, multimedia, and transmission administrator at RTBF. "The customer experience we have received has always been excellent, with efficient, professional, and responsive replies from the AVIWEST team, which is really important during a large-scale project construction."

"At AVIWEST, we set up a dedicated expert team to take care of RTBF's solution's transition. Replacing all field unit fleets with a new solution can be stressful for such an important national media organization,\" said Jérémy Guével, sales and business development manager at AVIWEST. "Supporting and working closely with the RTBF team, from establishing a new and streamlined production workflow to the complete deployment, was important for us."

RTBF is also part of the Médias Francophone Publics (MFP), which groups together all French-speaking TV and radio broadcasters from Canada, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. The aim is to share high-quality live video feeds with fixed low latencies to many locations using the public internet as the main contribution network.

"Within the framework of the MFP project, AVIWEST created a bespoke installation, allowing us to receive video feeds from French-speaking TVs and distribute our content back,\" said Dominicy. "Since the AVIWEST StreamHub transceiver is fully compatible with multiple IP transmission protocols, including open source SRT, we're able to receive content from any kind of field units, all brand combined. There are no technical restrictions, and we can offer an increased amount of content and boost our viewer engagement."

The universal nature of AVIWEST's StreamHub enables RTBF to support a variety of streaming protocols, such as RTMP, RTSP/RTP, HLS, TS/IP, SRT, and NDI to ensure that broadcasters can freely distribute video content over the public internet and to virtually any IP networks, including 3G, 4G, and 5G. In addition, the tool allows RTBF to build a live video multiview composed of all input streams, which can be fed to affiliates. The multiview can be enriched with overlay information for each source. The main advantage of this capability is that it reduces data while feeding affiliates with multiple streams, allowing them to choose a main stream from those available.

"Our StreamHub provides broadcasters with a scalable and tailored video solution for easily managing and sharing live streams from multiple transmitters via a single interface,\" said Guével. "With our advanced StreamHub server, video professionals save a significant amount of time and money."

More information on AVIWEST and its products is available at www.aviwest.com.

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