Text / Li Jiajun
Editor / Guo Yang
What do people pay attention to when watching the competition?
With discussions such as "Spain, Croatia and Italy's Group of Death" and "the most romantic Olympics coming" on social media, 2024 has officially revealed the exclusive excitement of this big year.
For the industry, this could not be better. In an environment where traffic is king, a dynamic market represents the growth and prosperity of the sports industry in a sense, and at the critical juncture of the upcoming competitions, practitioners urgently need to seize such a valuable opportunity to provide sports fans with exciting content and event experience that can be converted into "retention".
However, in the face of changing event consumption habits, the traditional live broadcast industry must continue to improve its standards and expand its gameplay from its own perspective, so as to avoid or weaken the impact of "highlights" to the greatest extent possible and complete the transformation of the target group.
The Wall Street Journal revealed as early as last year that ESPN is considering offering its channel directly to consumers who have canceled cable TV as a subscription streaming service in the coming years, so that it can smoothly complete the transition and transformation when the day comes when traditional TV is completely gone.
But then again, the quality of "fast food" is still built on the "main course", which is the competition itself. Therefore, how to improve the quality of live broadcast and optimize the audience's viewing experience with the mentality of "thousands of people, thousands of faces" is still one of the most critical propositions in the industry.
Faster, clearer, and not stuck, has always been the underlying standard for the audience in front of the screen to judge the quality of the live broadcast, but when the platform "rolls in" and launches more characteristic settings and content, the high-level maintenance of these three underlying standards becomes a more difficult task, and many problems and pain points that need to be solved are also revealed in the process.
The links involved in the live broadcast of a game are extremely complex, from on-site signal acquisition and editing, to the second creation of the production center, to the platform broadcast, and presented to the audience, each link needs to be supported by stable technology, such as how to ensure the stability and security of cross-regional transmission, how to maintain a high degree of unity of sound and picture when adding different commentaries and guest forms, how to control the high popularity of the game itself, The distribution cost when the sudden bandwidth is large, etc., each of which directly affects the normal operation of the platform side, and some are probability events, but once they occur, they are irreversible broadcast accidents.
Therefore, this also requires the platform to have the ability to monitor the audience side in real time, and quickly identify, locate and solve problems when they occur, so as to ensure the quality of live broadcasts.
Although the major mainstream live broadcasters in the market already have rich experience, as mentioned above, this industry is changing with each passing day, and the live broadcast work in the new era has been further refined.
The Agora live broadcast solution recently released by Agora, the pioneer and leader of global real-time interactive cloud services, may bring more solutions to these problems.
It's not just the performance on the field, but the live broadcast also needs to be faster, higher, and stronger
Founded in 2014, as of the end of 2023, Agora has more than 742,000 registered applications worldwide, and its real-time interactive technology services span more than 20 tracks such as sports, live broadcasting, education, e-sports, AR/VR, finance, insurance, medical care, and enterprise collaboration, covering more than 200 countries and regions, and helping customers explore new perspectives and new possibilities with their own technologies in different fields.
In fact, not only sports events, but also for any live broadcaster, the transmission of local or interstate live signals at low cost, low latency, and high quality standards is an eternal universal proposition, and it is also the fundamental competitiveness that a platform must have to gain user recognition and stand out in the track.
However, just like the time it takes for a gamer to download Red Dead Redemption (107GB) and be able to download Tetris 1 million times, there is also an inverse relationship between the three key elements of signal live broadcast image quality, lag, and transmission speed, the higher the clarity, the higher the bitrate of the signal itself, the higher the network requirements and the lag rate for users, and the transmission speed will be slowed down accordingly, resulting in delay, so many live broadcasters will selectively sacrifice a part, so that the audience can not have the best experience.
But on such a seemingly unsolvable pain point, Agora stepped forward and brought its own solution ideas.
I believe that many friends who have the habit of watching the game have had this experience: before the lore ball in the game screen has been released, the push pop-up window at the end of the game appears on the top of the mobile phone, so for the live broadcast of sports events, the live broadcast screen is especially important for the control of delay. As a company based on real-time interactive technology, low-latency transmission is the key to Agora Network. In a scenario where latency is the first element, even if the signal reception and the audience are on both sides of the world, Agora can still ensure that the picture is transmitted to the audience within 500 milliseconds.
On such a solid "basic skill", Agora has independently developed and launched low-code high-definition technology for image quality and lag with a more intuitive conflicting relationship, which greatly reduces the bitrate while improving the image quality. Through this technology, a 1080P clip with a bitrate of 4-6Mbps can be compressed to about 1.6Mpbs, but the image quality has been significantly enhanced, and it supports broadcast-grade 4K end-to-end stable transmission, and supports Huawei HDR Vivid, which provides full-end rendering of static HDR and dynamic HDR.
This logic can not only ensure the balance between the three elements to the greatest extent and improve the audience experience, but also allow the platform not to use expensive private lines for transmission, reduce the cost of distributing signals, and allow the live broadcaster to have more freedom to pay attention to the audience's love and needs, and find the grasp and competitiveness they need through different attempts.
At the same time, for users with different network environments, Agora can provide users with up to 8 lines of adaptive bitrate seamless switching with low latency, effectively alleviating the network fluctuation of customers, and the audience can also choose according to their own network conditions and enjoy different lines smoothly.
However, when a large number of users around the world share the major events, even if you do your best from the perspective of live streaming, there are still many potential problems that may arise in the process.
In this regard, Krypton learned that Agora's strong and perfect quality tool "Crystal Ball" can monitor the quality of live broadcast in real time, from the quality of signal reception to the situation of the audience at a glance.
It is certain that Agora has shown a complete set of response logic to the problems in live broadcasting, but as an enterprise with rich service experience, Agora has further noticed the needs of major platforms for the expansion of live broadcast gameplay, and has given corresponding technologies and methods for these needs.
Adhering to the industry's top standards, Agora brings more possibilities for live gameplay
Whether it is the use of new screen formats such as vertical screens and live broadcast rooms, or the remote or on-site invitation of more and more viewing groups and commentators, major platforms are gradually embracing diversified gameplay to attract users and strive for "retention". And behind these new gameplay, there is also a need for technical support.
Li Zhijie, head of live broadcast products of Agora shared at the recent press conference that during the epidemic, many event commentaries needed to be remotely commented at home, so Agora launched its own "Big V Commentary Cloud Studio" to help the platform transmit different audio and video signal combinations.
This is not an easy task. First of all, because of the remoteness, the network environment and signal formats of the commentators are very different, and before the final combination, they need to go through adaptive transcoding and release, as well as a series of compatibility modifications, so that the picture of "ball in, lights on, multiple commentators and guests celebrating together" can be presented in the audience seamlessly.
Because this cloud studio form is quite convenient and cost-effective, many platforms have also applied it as a long-term weapon to their daily live broadcast work after the epidemic, and Agora has further added a variety of functions such as multi-track selection, commentary and face-showing, and gaskets that support signal editing, to expand and optimize the cloud studio and help the platform meet their diverse needs.
In fact, not only commentary, but also inviting celebrity viewing groups to share cross-border interaction and heat has always been a common way of communication in the sports world. The Agora solution also has a high degree of adaptability to this, not only allowing guests to participate without venue restrictions, but also maintaining the stability of the signal in the process, based on NTP to achieve the alignment of all ends of the commentary guests, the live broadcast picture difference is strictly less than 3 frames, and the commentary audio track is synchronized with the event screen, helping the platform reduce costs and increase efficiency, and maximize the possibility of breaking the circle effect with smooth interaction.
The addition of guests can provide analysis and comments on the process of the event from their unique perspectives, guide the audience to participate in the game, complete the contact and communication between different circles and groups, create hot search topics, ensure the vitality of the market, and further feed back the influence of the event itself.
However, when the focus is drawn back to the live broadcast itself, the copyright of the event is still the fundamental role in the industry to promote development and bring about increments, and the problem of piracy is one of the problems that must be solved.
In this regard, Agora proposes military-grade signal encryption in the scheme to achieve dual encryption on end-to-end transmission and content, build an effective anti-leeching chain, fundamentally eliminate the possibility of signal leakage, avoid bandwidth loss, and provide an important guarantee for the long-term development of the platform and the value of the event copyright itself.
It is undeniable that through the release of this plan, Agora has refreshed the standards in the live broadcast industry, and the way of reducing costs and increasing efficiency has further revitalized the vitality and sustainable development of the live broadcast ecosystem. We hope to see more forces to follow, embrace, and even challenge this standard with stronger ideas, so that sports fans in every year of the competition can continue to get a better viewing experience, so that the industry can burst out with more possibilities for good development.