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Ravensbourne University streamed performances of the Royal Shakespeare Company to schools all around the UK using cloud-based tools LIVE STREAMING SHAKESPEARE
n industry-focused university dedicated to preparing its students for careers in digital media and design, London’s
provide students with hands-on experience with the latest in cloud-based video processing and delivery technology from AWS Elemental. “The most significant benefit has been the scalability of the streaming solution and not needing to worry about the number of schools participating or how they watch. This allows us to feel completely confident in the broadcast and that the solution implemented will offer the best quality. Data from the CDN showed that 63% of schools were requesting the highest quality stream from the HLS manifest (1080p 25fps 8Mbps).” Ravensbourne’s transcoder output two 8Mbps 1080 MP4 streams. These were pushed to AWS Elemental MediaLive and transcoded into HLS (Http Live Streaming) TN2224. AWS Elemental MediaPackage then repackaged the stream to an HLS manifest file (m3u8) with Player.js playing from the manifest on the website. Amazon CloudFront was used as the CDN and has delivered 13TB of data to 84,000 students across 600 schools. Ravensbourne is planning testing for an upcoming broadcast with AWS Elemental MediaPackage outputting MPEG DASH as well and using the dash.js player. With AWS Cloud now integrated into the university’s live OTT infrastructure,
collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company to bring live broadcasts of Shakespeare performances into hundreds of UK classrooms, the production team knew that viewer scale would outstrip the capacity of its traditional on-premises infrastructure. It opted to transition to a cloud-based operation to power its OTT TV distribution, resulting in the selection of Amazon Web Services, including AWS Elemental. “The RSC had a clear brief to ensure that streaming to schools and home-learners was as user-friendly as possible, due to limited IT support at schools,” continues Manning. “It was also important to consider bandwidth limitations, unknown numbers of schools participating and different viewing arrangements in auditoriums, school halls or single classrooms. Another huge consideration was the student experience gained from participating in this project. We wanted to ensure that, educationally, students benefited from our partnership and gained experience of working on live broadcasts.” SCALABILITY Consistent quality of service, easy scalability and access to detailed viewer analytics were key factors in its choice. The university also saw an opportunity to
Ravensbourne University offers courses that provide experience in using modern broadcast technology in real-world video production scenarios. “Ravensbourne University’s broadcast students have worked alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) education department for six years,” says Richard Manning, Ravensbourne associate senior lecturer in digital television technology. “Our collaboration on the Schools’ Broadcast series has seen Ravensbourne students broadcast a catalogue of RSC productions including King Lear, Othello and The Tempest to schools across the UK. They have also worked on international broadcasts to schools in the US and Asia, helping students learn more about the English language and English literature.” Shakespeare is a key part of school curriculums across the UK. The collaboration allows institutions which can’t take students on trips to the theatre, to offer a rich experience from the classroom. The broadcasts reach everyone from primary students of six or seven years old, right up to college-level students aged 17 and 18. When Ravensbourne launched its
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