Carac.TV is the biggest TV station in French-speaking Switzerland. It is available wherever RTS is broadcast and online. Its 4 channels (Carac 1, 2, 3 and 4) use Infomaniak’s streaming and video-on-demand solutions to broadcast all programmes, live and replays, on all users’ screens. Carac.tv also represents a new website and API available to the other brands of the Media One group that manage One FM, LFM, Radio Lac and Rouge. The latest MediaPulse survey shows a strong increase in audience figures, with more than 800,000 listeners per week.

Four new TV channels

Carac is the name of a typical chocolate pastry from western Switzerland, recognisable by its green icing, a local attribute. The four TV channels rougetv.ch, onetv.ch, lfmtv.ch and tvsuisseplus.ch have merged to form a single entity, affirming its western Swiss identity. The new Carac.tv structure required a rethink to develop a single platform and website. The aim was to improve the quality and viewers’ experience across all media, as well as the efficiency of TV crews’ internal processes.

Media One’s terms of reference were to:

  • Make the existing media of the old channels available.
  • Make it easier to add and stream new videos.
  • Support the traffic load of multiple websites combined.
  • Modernise and differentiate the global experience with regard to the old channels.

The challenges

  1. Improving video quality and length (+50 min), offering HD and multi-bitrate to be suitable for all devices (TV, tablets, mobiles, web browsers).
  2. Centralising media management, improving internal processes and optimising the time needed to publish videos as part of the switch to the new Infomaniak VOD.
  3. Dynamically managing the server load associated with channel grouping to ensure availability even in the event of heavy traffic.
  4. Setting up an API to power other applications and feed on existing platforms such as EPG (Electronic Program Guide), the programme key of televisions.

Why Infomaniak?

Alexandre de Raemy, Managing Director of Media One Group, explains:

Infomaniak’s products are at the cutting edge of innovation, enabling us to be efficient and complete our various digital tasks with total confidence and peace of mind. Working with Infomaniak also means having responsive support and, for us, a long-standing history, as well as the excellent personal and professional relationships that we have maintained together for 30 years.

Implementation

1. Hosting and broadcasting thousands of hours of live video to almost 200,000 viewers

As far as programmes are concerned, Carac.TV is not starting from scratch. With almost 5 years of accumulated archives of the 4 previous channels, new well-filled schedules, hosting and availability are the first challenges to be met.

Carac.TV’s task was to:

  • Make old videos available.
  • Broadcast new and live programmes in HD.
  • Dynamically adapt the streams according to the different devices.

Behind its web platform, Carac.tv has deployed Infomaniak’s new VOD service, which hosts all its media. The team deposits its broadcast source files (extremely heavy), totalling several gigabytes each. The new VOD platform now handles long videos and there is no longer any need to split videos in half as was the case with the previous platform. The new version automatically transcodes each video into various multi-bitrate formats (1080p, 720p, 480p).

Infomaniak’s new VOD platform offers us exceptional speed for processing raw videos; multi-bitrate formats are generated in just a few minutes, even if the original video lasts 50 minutes and weighs more than 10 GB.
Stefano Allocco, Technical Director – Media One Group

The Infomaniak video streaming platform adapts the live streams for all devices, such as video on demand. Viewers always enjoy the best quality according to their device and connection speed.

For the monetisation of content, Carac.tv has several addressable players with advertisements targeted by content category (ecology, society, etc.). These players integrate the VAST standard with pre-roll or mid-roll videos.

The videos uploaded to the video hosting platform can also be used by the group’s radio stations to feed their websites and illustrate their articles using Infomaniak’s WordPress plugin.

2. Dynamically managing media from 4 TV channels

The Carac.tv website is based on 2 combined elements:

High-availability hosting of the site and its API.
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Media hosting and distribution.

The media are played live from the VOD platform, which communicates via callbacks from the Carac.tv website API.

Dynamically managing media within a website for four channels requires an agile, high-performance and scalable central system. The development team opted for Jelastic Cloud and Laravel as a technical solution.

Jelastic Cloud offers peace of mind if an activity or a live stream were to attract many more listeners and Internet users than average. The server dynamically adapts its resources to the current load.
Stefano Allocco, Technical Director – Media One Group

Recently, the live transmission of the Geneva International Horse Show, for example, resulted in a spike in visits to the website and in viewing of the live TV streams, without users noticing any difference while browsing.

3. Automating the website feed

The API has been designed to operate with complete autonomy, with a view to single input and to optimise the work of TV crews for whom powering a website is not the top priority.
Stefano Allocco, Technical Director – Media One Group

It was necessary to design a new API with an INGEST part that automatically receives information from the various systems of the channel. The OUTPUT section (from the API to the website) meets the needs of the frontend, taking into account the requirements: links to the media files of the VOD hosting service, content validity dates, player to be used, thumbnail and countless other parameters.

In a nutshell:

  • The site manages the data in XML.
  • The VOD hosting service manages the high-availability storage of the media.
  • The API combines the two.

The intelligence in place allows the team to enter data once from each media and the platform is able to exploit it automatically and dynamically.

Here is the story of a video at Carac.TV:

  1. Field report and editing.
  2. The video in broadcast format (1080p, 15 MB, H.264) is loaded into the TV broadcast tool (WinMedia).
  3. The video description is entered in the system with fields explicitly linked to the website.
  4. “OK for online broadcasting” stamped

The whole process is then fully automated:

  1. The streams separate.
  2. The raw video starts on one side, in the VOD hosting.
  3. The information comes from the other side, in an .XML file.
  4. The VOD service automatically generates the different formats and resolutions.
  5. The VPD service makes a callback to the Carac.tv API.
  6. The Carac.tv API draws on the database that has all the parameters and variables to reconcile the video with its data.
  7. The site frontend is powered by the API to display each video in its place and in the correct player.

The result: optimal video quality, constant availability and easy upload

Carac.TV can be pleased with the result: the transition to the four new TV channels took place without loss of audience (approx. 200,000 viewers at launch). Significant improvements have been made to the site:

  • Viewers enjoy high video quality on all their devices.
  • The Carac.TV website performs well, even with strong audience peaks.
  • The audience is monetised, thanks to advertisements in players by type of content.
  • The API, dynamic video management and the INGEST system simplify everything: the TV crew can concentrate on the tasks most useful to the programmes. The other projects of the Media One group use all the media without any technical difficulties or constraints.

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