Signiant Helps Deliver On-Demand Video for NBC’s Online Coverage of the Vancouver Games

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver signified a huge leap in the volume of hours broadcast for the games. Including both cable and digital platforms, 835 hours for the Vancouver Winter Olympics were broadcasted in comparison to 419 hours for Torino, Italy in 2006. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were also the first Winter Games to be produced and broadcast entirely in multichannel surround sound and high-definition.

Signiant’s role was to manage the movement of content and automate processes on the back-end while Akamai delivered the content to consumers. NBC chose Signiant’s content management solution mainly because of the software’s process automation capabilities. After content is successfully delivered, a confirmation of receipt is automatically generated so that the URLs can be published. Because the volume of content was enormous, automation of workflows, job monitoring and delivery receipts were critical to deliver the Winter Games online successfully.

By using Signiant’s solutions, NBC was able to double its page views from the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics at NBCOlympics.com.

Challenge:

• Design an optimal workflow and architecture for content delivery in addition to improving the speed of delivery
• Digitalize more than 400 hours of live competition and more than 1,000 hours of full-event replays
• Meet tight deadlines to ensure that time-sensitive content is uploaded to the Web shortly after events take place

Solution:

• Create and utilize 14 different workflows to automate, manage and monitor Video On-Demand (VOD) content processes and jobs based on Signiant file movement software
• Generate confirmation receipts after content is successfully delivered so that the URLs can be published

Results:

• Achieved high video traffic: 45 million video streams, 46 million unique viewers, 710 million page views, and 3.5 million hours of streamed video
• Helped NBC increase unique viewers from 2006 Olympics by 243%
• Allowed viewers to access 650 hours of Video On-Demand content
• Assisted in producing 1700 clips and distributing 4000 clips of VOD content