Video Production for Streaming

Testing Saves
As is the case with pretty much any streaming broadcast, testing prior to the event is essential to see what effects your production choices are having on the end product. "You need to understand what your production choices do to your end product," says Manchester.

"When I encoded the Concert for New York City after 9/11," he recalls, "we spent 30 minutes trying to optimize the feeds we were getting from the concert site, as we were unable to get bars prior to test feeds. We thought we caught everything we could. In fact, when we looked at the high-bitrate encodes, we looked great. Then David Bowie walked on stage in an all-white outfit and a very bright key lighting package on him," Manchester continues. "We found he was a bit too white and tried to compensate. The high-bitrate feeds looked OK, but when we finally checked the low-bitrate encodes we found that Bowie looked like a giant white blob. If I were producing the show from end to end in the future, I would now not have recommended he wear white."

Digital Delights
Another effective way of improving the quality of a streaming video production is to take the plunge and dive headfirst into the digital revolution. "The biggest thing we’ve done in the last year to improve our Webcasts is our new broadcast operations center," says Manchester. "While we have spent time working on optimizing our encoding profiles for better quality and efficiency, the move to an all-digital space has had the greatest impact."

By staying digital, Manchester’s team is able to avoid the noise and artifacts typically generated through analog-to-digital conversion, which is vitally important to maximizing a video’s overall bit-budget usage. "The encoders on the market today are not able to differentiate between the noise and the actual content," he continues. "Each artifact would then be encoded into the stream and eat up valuable bits that I would have preferred to see spent on other areas."

Not only that, but moving between analog and digital introduces additional problems to streaming’s already sensitive light levels. "Each conversion in the process darkened our feeds," says Manchester. "Encoding in general prefers brighter feeds. This darkening caused a lot of time and resources to be spent improving the feed. We are finding that staying digital continues to streamline our process."

Listen to Your Elders
While much of this article has focused on the differences between video production for streaming vs. broadcast, in many ways broadcast is the model that streaming should strive to emulate. "Often people don’t treat a streaming broadcast with the same attention to detail as a traditional broadcast. Most people try to produce Webcasts on the cheap," says Mack. "They use cheaper cameras, don’t bring in extra lights, don’t use professional camera operators, etc. If you were doing [an event] for broadcast you’d have a pre-show, a host, a post-show, all of these things that make it seem like a broadcast production. A lot of streaming productions just start at a point and then cut off at the end."

Because of this, many Webcasts appear amateurish. "You should always aspire to a broadcast standard," says Mack. "We’ve been broadcasting for 50-plus years now. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Use the tricks we’ve learned over the last half century. You can get a leg up just by leveraging their knowledge into our world."