Global media industry responds quickly to help others impacted by COVID

For media companies, COVID19 is a story that touches every part of life around the world as broadcast and digital news teams provide round-the-clock coverage to deliver vital information to the public. Even as they contend with their own COVID-related challenges – such as cancelled advertisements, suspended content production, and postponed show and sports seasons — these media companies are prioritizing delivering information to support those on the front lines of the pandemic battle.

Many of these media companies are working with AWS to help with these unprecedented situations and surging digital growth by deploying alternative remote production solutions using group video conferencing tools and smart devices. Additionally, AWS solution providers and AWS Partner Network (APN) technology companies are using these approaches to help local news outlets, governmental leaders, and other organizations make essential information available to the public on all platforms and devices.

This blog focuses on AWS solution providers and APN Technology Partners who provide fully managed cloud platforms that can help organizations of any kind quickly and easily set up and scale systems for live and on-demand streaming, content management and publishing, and remote-team collaboration and production. These flexible, scalable solutions accommodate a wide variety of audience sizes and locations, device types, and distribution channels such as social media and syndication, while focusing on ease of use for customers across all levels of experience.

Live and On Demand Streaming

In response to limits on groups and gatherings, many businesses, government agencies, schools, and religious organizations have bridged the communications gap with simple live streaming services using social media channels or video collaboration platforms. However, these services allow only limited control over player customization, do not prioritize playback quality, are not built to deliver thousands of streams to different devices, and do not provide readily accessible technical support.

The following partners and providers offer live and on-demand streaming services that let you get started quickly, yet are robust enough to scale with your needs.

Ideally suited to: houses of worship, government agencies, educational organizations, enterprises

Primary use cases: streaming municipal, legislative, and parliamentary sessions to the public; townhall meetings, sermons, and large public events; capture of live events or lectures for rebroadcast; or user-generated content

StreamSpot and Subsplash provide complete solutions for churches including apps, websites, offering/donation capabilities, and media content management. StreamSpot’s streaming solution for churches enables unlimited live and on-demand streaming with no resolution or viewer caps, allowing for simulcasting to Internet-connected devices.

• • Offer: StreamSpot is offering a zero-obligation 30-day free trial to any house of worship broadcaster. Click here to get started.

Insys white label OTT solutions from Insys Video Technologies is a brandable solution for organizations that want to stream live and on-demand content to web, mobile, and over the top (OTT) channels. Features include automated VOD archival of live content as well as cloud digital video recorder (DVR) capabilities in a turnkey OTT solution.

• • Offer: Insys Video Technologies is offering extended support during the initial deployment process to help onboard customers. Contact Insys sales for more information.

StreamShark‘s live streaming platform enables streaming from WebRTC devices such as webcams and Internet-enabled cameras to mobile and social media channels. Additional capabilities include live-to-VOD, live DVR, embeddable chat, live clipping, a built-in teleprompter tool, digital rights management (DRM)/encryption, and single sign-on (SSO).

• • Offer: StreamShark is offering extended free trials along with free professional services and best practices instruction to onboard customers. Click here to get started.

Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms

Your organization might require a publishing workflow and media asset management capabilities that go beyond live and on-demand streaming, with functionality such as access and authorization by a company’s organizational structure, personalization by target audience or syndication partner, and integration with enterprise-class software solutions.

Ideally suited to: enterprises, government agencies, educational organizations, houses of worship

Primary use cases: enterprises with multiple levels of content approvals or workflows; governmental agencies with strict access or security requirements; content creators requiring syndication and digital rights management capabilities

Crafter Software provides customizable, scalable, multiscreen live and on-demand OTT video experiences via a video content management system (CMS) in a headless environment, including versioning and auditing, content modeling, DRM, and single sign-on integration.

• • Offer: Crafter Video Enterprise, a fully supported version of the end-to-end live streaming solution on AWS Elemental, is available free of charge through September 2020 for any organization on the front lines providing support and care during the COVID-19 crisis. Click here to learn more.

Arc Publishing’s Video Center is an online video platform with the ability to reach viewers on all channels (web, social, native & OTT apps) with both on-demand and live video, including live video clipping, live-to-VOD, live streaming directly from your phone via the Broadcast iOS app, FCC-compliant closed captioning and server-side Digital Ad Insertion.

• • Offer: Arc will offer 10 hours of free Solution Architect support to set up Video Center and Broadcast until June 30, 2020 for all customers that start using Arc for the first time during this period. Contact Arc sales for more information.

Kaltura Video Cloud for Businesses enriches a variety of use cases with video, including corporate communication, knowledge sharing, learning and development and sales and marketing. Additionally, the Kaltura’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering leverages Kaltura’s open API and “Plug and Play” architecture to allow developers and product managers to build video workflows into their products.

• • Offer: Kaltura is offering to help educational organizations and enterprises by enabling student and employee collaboration to continue their programs remotely. Click here to get started with Kaltura Virtual Classroom for free or to ask for a demo.

Nomad CMS uses AWS machine learning services in its cloud-based content and asset management solution. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is combined with Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Translate, Amazon Transcribe, and Amazon Textract services to provide automated content discovery, tagging, translation, and transcription.

• • Offer: For the next two months, Nomad is offering free standard licensing and a free consultation to all organizations turning to the cloud for their storage needs. Contact Nomad sales here for more information.

Collaboration & Production Solutions

The platform providers below offer fully managed solutions to solve your entire operational needs or in conjunction with other vendors that provide a complete solution, including media content creation, processing, and delivery:

Ideally suited to: news organizations, educational organizations, government agencies

Primary use cases: news organizations who remotely gather, edit, distribute, and syndicate news and breaking events; primary schools and universities requiring remote learning solutions; broadcasters requiring live video production and editing capabilities in the cloud

Kaltura Video Cloud for Education includes a complete suite of products for online learning and virtual classrooms to suit lecture capture and live broadcast, virtual classrooms, video galleries integrated into a LMS, automated captioning and other classroom enrichment tools.

• • Offer: Kaltura is offering to help educational organizations and enterprises by enabling student and employee collaboration to continue their programs remotely. Click here to get started with Kaltura Virtual Classroom for free or to ask for a demo.

Arc Publishing’s Video Center is an online video platform with the ability to reach viewers on all channels (web, social, native & OTT apps) with both on-demand and live video, including live video clipping, live-to-VOD, live streaming directly from your phone via the Broadcast iOS app, FCC-compliant closed captioning and server-side digital ad insertion.

• • Offer: Arc will offer 10 hours of free Solution Architect support to set up Video Center and Broadcast until June 30, 2020 for all customers that start using Arc for the first time during this period. Contact Arc sales for more information.

LTN Global’s Live Video Cloud (previously Make.tv) is a cloud-native, browser-based platform that enables broadcasters and producers to acquire concurrent live feeds, curate them in a single continuous playback multi-view, and deliver them across broadcast networks and social media platforms. This enables essential news organizations to run ‘business, as usual’ while working remotely.

• • Offer: LTN is creatively packaging various services during this period. Contact LTN sales for more information.

Grabyo’s browser based platform provides live cloud production for digital, social and OTT along with live clipping, video editing and distribution. Capabilities include live switching between feeds, remote guest commentary, enhanced production with graphic overlays, social interaction, ad breaks and more.

• • Offer: Grabyo is offering flexible pricing and pilot access during this period. Click here to learn more.

Nomad CMS’ integrated Zoom connector brings machine learning services to Zoom meetings. Video meetings and audio transcriptions can be automatically translated for multilingual audiences, and topics and keywords discussed in meetings are automatically discovered and tagged for searching.

• • Offer: For the next two months, Nomad is offering free standard licensing and a free consultation to all organizations turning to the cloud for their storage needs. Click here to learn more. Contact Nomad sales here for more information.

We appreciate the support APN Partners and solution providers are offering their customers as organizations around the world work to optimize collaboration, keep communication lines open, and help keep employees and customers safe. We hope this information will help you and your team stay safe and productive.