Mediasat has recently posted research of rapid growth of live broadcast popularity all over the world. Owing to the media potential and great ideas, Ukraine is among the countries where organizers and TV channels give more and more frequently preference to LIVE broadcasts of significant events.

Additional and enhanced PR, possibilities of advertising monetization and large scale of technology usage always emphasize the gravity of the event preparation, among the relevant brands.

We analyze the best practices of the Ukrainian IT & Telecom leader COSMONOVA|NET that for years continues popularizing successfully high-quality live broadcasts, gaining firmly popularity among the international-level professionals and organizers.

We’re talking to COSMONOVA|NET PR Manager Dmitry Streletsky.

— Your IT brand actively implements large-scale live broadcast projects in Ukraine and outside of it. We’re interested in details and specific cases: what are you ready to share with organizers and growing online audience today?

COSMONOVA|NET has provided high-quality live broadcasts since 2010. There are UA: First (National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine), STB, ZIK, 112, ICTV, Victor Pinchuk Foundation and many others among the organizations that entrust their live broadcasts to us.

We successfully carried out broadcasts of such events as FIFA 2011, 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, also, for the first time in Ukraine, live broadcast of a farewell, participation and meeting of Paralympic national team of Ukraine in 2018. Also we’d like to mention live broadcast projects of 2017/2018 Biathlon World Cup, implementation of LIVE broadcasts of 2016/2017 Eurovision and Junior Eurovision Events in Tbilisi.

In this year, we ensured formation of live stream and HD broadcast of 2018 Eurovision. Within the framework of experiment with TV Channel UA: First, the broadcast was carried out with stereo sound. Over seventy TV operators and providers joined in a high-quality TV broadcast, so that hundreds of thousands of viewers in Ukraine could watch the international event, having obtained maximum positive emotions.

We also point out that we implemented broadcast of a number of the annual meetings of Yalta European Strategy (YES), 2nd Munich Ukrainian Lunch, 7th European-Ukrainian Energy Day and conference of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine "IT business in the cultural environment".

Our portfolios include a fair amount of cases and each of them is a single momentous experience.

— For the most part of technical assignments, what number of simultaneous solutions may be required from you to organize live webcast, for example, Eurovision and Olympics level events?

In particular, experts provide live broadcast signal receipt directly at COSMONOVA|NET data center, where in turn it is transcoded (parameter conversion) in several formats, afterwards the signal is distributed via our CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure enabling to optimize content delivery and distribution for the Internet users from the geographical standpoint.

At the different levels, live broadcasts may also include the need for audio track separation, simultaneous translation, applying a logo, cutting and editing materials in COSMONOVA|NET cloud, with subsequent publication in the social networks and on YouTube channels owned by the organizers, owing to its online real time developments.

We place our server hardware at the sites of the customers, perform signal pickup, visit locations personally as necessary, for example, during farewell of the Ukrainian Paralympic national team in STEREOPLAZA, Kyiv and official meeting of it by top officials and hundreds of fans at the Boryspil Airport.

As for the 2nd Munich Ukrainian Lunch organized by Victor Pinchuk Foundation, we sent professional equipment to the event venue beforehand. Indeed, there are many interesting examples.

— Work at the events with participation of celebrities, sportsmen and top officials always entails responsibility and anxiety… Please, share the team impressions, what do the professionals feel?

A particular feature of every event is that there is no right to make a mistake, since the engineering level of LIVE broadcast is always much more subtle matters than the work with prepared broadcast in a studio. Even minimal deviations may create risks of stoppage of the whole service. We duplicate all our facilities in order to avoid this. However, owing to the long-term team experience, we feel energy for the new ambitious projects.

Our capabilities of forming adaptive streams for different platforms, our own media player, comfortable advertising block, gathering relevant statistics in real-time mode, Highload for the high-loaded resources and paid broadcast possibilities take the opportunities of our customers to a noticeably high level.

Nowadays there are new trends observed in the telecom market and we are pleased to be involved from the very beginning of their introduction.

We’d like to note that the company is a pioneer and developer of engineering solutions for the TV channels and live broadcasts, being a recognized Ukrainian leader in signal delivery over IP, and TV platform cooperating with more than 180 cable operators, providers, OTT and IPTV platforms, not only in Ukraine.

These are good feelings and high-quality experience that we want to share with present and future live broadcast organizers of landmark events.