Back
Tech
Context
Lumni asks the broadcast control room to re edit the programs already broadcasted in order to create short videos on digital media intended for young audiences. . This operation was then carried out by an external company, it has been internalized since April 1, 2021.
To do this, France Télévisions / Technologies engineers worked on a solution to meet this need, taking into account the health context and budget and safety constraints.
How does it work ?
France Télévisions has cloud hosting at Amazon (AWS). The principle of Apollo is to make audio / video work in the cloud possible. The operator will work on his office PC which will allow him to use Cloud resources. And so, media and applications (and the PCs they are installed on) will be relocated.
On his workstation, with a secure transfer solution, the operator can see the media stored by the final control room and order their transfer to Cloud resources.
To handle these media in the cloud, the operator needs Nice DCV software. A simple consumer Internet connection is enough for Nice DCV to provide the remote user with the Cloud resource: keyboard, mouse, screen display, with a level of quality satisfactory for the editing work.
There is also a version accessible from a less powerful Web browser but sufficient for a supervisor who assists to the editing. Nice DCV is an Amazon product, included in the AWS offer and therefore does not incur license costs.
Apollo: a specific development led by and for France Télévisions
To guarantee the autonomy of users regarding Cloud resources and adapt them as best as possible to needs, France Télévisions’s technology engineers have developed a specific solution: Apollo. Apollo is an application available from a web browser. She allows to :
• Start, shut down virtual machines
• Know their state (off, on, used)
• Obtain usage statistics over a given period (hourly billing by AWS)
• Create additional machines
• Allocate more or less power to a machine depending on the use made of it
Operation
The user has a classic office PC connected to the company network on which Nice DCV is available. He will open the Apollo application in his browser to choose a virtual editing room in the cloud.
Concretely, he will turn on a PC in the Cloud on which he will find Adobe Premier Pro, its editing software and the media necessary for its editing imported securely from the storage of the final control room.
Once his work is finished, he will be able to transfer the editing from the Cloud to France Télévisions storage in a secure manner. The new media thus created will be able to integrate the broadcasting chain.
Other use cases
Audio programs from Radio France will enrich the offer of the Lumni platform. Apollo will allow these mp3 files to be put into images.
The flexibility of this Cloud solution, the management of virtual desktops on demand, allows to consider many other use cases and not to limit it simply to the editing. To be continued ...
