Beyond the Maadi Cup: The live broadcaster
The final three days of Maadi were streamed over the internet, attracting thousands of viewers
This year the final three days of Maadi was streamed live over the Internet.
Chris Penman, National Service Delivery Manager, i-Film, along with his peers streamed the regatta live from Lake Karapiro.
Penman said the company used multiple cameras. “Three cameras are being used at the Maadi Cup. One on the water, one on the finish line, and one for the medal ceremony.”
Surrounded by three laptops, and three computers, Penman selects footage from the three cameras to show viewers.
Penman uses the best angle, and that becomes the live feed for the viewers for at least 30 seconds or so before he decides to tune in for a new feed.
At the end of the event, Penman switches to the graphics footage. Different graphics contain different information. Some graphics contain the starting order or the event classification, while others might contain the championship status.
This is the same feed that the commentators use at the Karapiro tower to brief the audience.
According to Penman, the live streams consume 1 or 2 gigs of viewer data, and a normal ADSL (Asymmetric digital subscriber line) connection is enough to watch a stream with good picture. i-Film streams in multiple bit rates, so one can watch using a low bandwidth connection.
On Friday, 800 people watched the stream at any given point of time. Penman predicts the number would go up during the finals on Saturday. In total views, 12,000 people watched Thursday’s broadcast.
The majority of the viewers were from New Zealand.
Penman points out the multi-day, multi-event Maadi is difficult to cover. “It’s a multi-day event with lot of parallel activities. It’s difficult to cover all of them. So, we tend to cover just the A-Finals here for example, and do what we can for the B-Finals because that’s all we have got the time for.”
