CASE STUDY EVENT-STREAMING

Rats-TV of the town of Monheim am Rhein: Full service with video production on-site

themen-cs-eventstreaming

Transparent. Close to the people. Innovative: Rats-TV of the town of Monheim am Rhein as live stream.

The town of Monheim am Rhein has been streaming council and committee meetings live since the beginning of 2018 – and is thus serving the wishes of its citizens for enhanced transparency and participation in political events via a digital web service.

 

The initial situation

Desire for greater participation by expanding the web offering to include live streaming

The town of Monheim am Rhein sees its website as an important instrument for information, communication and interaction with citizens. At www.monheim.de, interested parties will find a wealth of information, as well as extensive and practical online functions relating to the organisation and handling of municipal services.

 

More political proximity: Live Streaming for the citizens of the town of Monheim am Rhein.

As a platform for interaction, the town’s website, which is central to the town’s communication mix, also represents a special point of contact for the process of political participation. Citizens should benefit from enhanced political transparency, as well as the additional access possibilities to information in the sense of political participation.

The expansion of the website to include the reliable live streaming of board- and committee meetings, as well as a video-on-demand service was, therefore, an important, modern building block that could be used to deepen the ties that had previously been built up in the political process. In this way, this component should sustainably promote the interest of the town, expand the political participation of its citizens and increase the comprehensibility of political decision-making processes.

 

The challenge

A contemporary full-service solution for the live broadcasts of committee meetings

Approximately 30 different meetings per year were to be broadcast live – with different stakeholders and via several stationary cameras on-site. Data protection concerns and consideration of the rights to one’s own image and sound had to be taken into account for this. In addition, there were certain requirements for the video’s direction: different cameras had to be able to switch quickly to accommodate the different seating positions of the various participants and to ensure that the names and functions of the people were shown.

As an experienced full-service provider, G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky managed the reliable provision of all necessary components of the live broadcast – consisting of the two parts: on-site video production and responsibility for subsequent video streaming.

 

The solutions

Full service on-site, as live video production with 3 cameras

G&L offered the town of Monheim am Rhein an individual solution, tailored to their needs and according to their wishes, for the reliable expansion of their online presence with the aim of enhancing the image of their town as a brand. As a full-service provider, they offered both building blocks seamlessly from a single source: the video production on-site, as well as the responsibility of the subsequent live streaming or the reliable delivery of the subsequently archived streams of the events.

3 PTZ cams record the different sessions on-site and broadcast them live for viewers on the network at https://www.monheim.de/service-verwaltung/rathaus/stadtrat/rats-tv/. The controllable PTZ cams can be tilted and swivelled and can enlarge sections of the picture. They are operated by G&L on-site. Video mixers, recording and the necessary feed-in of crawling texts and captions are also responsible on-site.

Streaming at 60 fps & Akamai Media Services Live 4

The live streaming provides reliable high quality video for the audience with 1080p and 60 frames per second at the highest quality level. Akamai products are used to ensure high performance and reliability, such as Akamai Media Services Live 4 with low latency or Akamai Token Authentication. Akamai Media Analytics is used for streaming analysis, which ensures optimal video performance.

Akamai Media Analytics provides the town of Monheim am Rhein with insights into the viewer experience and the operation of the videos, which are important for monitoring consistent quality. This is because prolonged loading times, insufficient resolutions or intermediate buffering negatively affect the viewer experience. This leads to losses in the perception as a brand and is contrary to the idea of reliable bonding and communication with the citizens of the town of Monheim am Rhein. Transparency of video performance is thus important – and Akamai Media Analytics offers optimal conditions for this: through numerous metrics, dimensions and reports in all media platforms used.

The key advantages

  • Immediate availability of the video recordings as live streams on the website www.monheim.de

  • Highly reliable broadcasting in the highest quality

  • Device-independent streaming via THEOplayer as playback component

  • Full-service package – consisting of event streaming on-site and video broadcasting via the internet

  • High-quality video streaming solution with image gain for urban brand development and interaction plus with citizens in terms of increased political participation

Why G&L?

In G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky, the town of Monheim am Rhein found a provider that optimally fulfilled their criteria for expanding their web offering to include live streaming and was able to take responsibility as a full-service provider, as well as having experience in the public sector.

An individual package of bundled technical and service-oriented services was to ensure the high quality of the live streaming. From a technical point of view, very low latencies in the video transmission between recording and streaming were just as important as the immediate availability of the recorded sessions on the website under www.monheim.de. G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky was able to offer the town of Monheim am Rhein a customised service package that successfully combined all requirements.

Video production on-site:

  • 3x pan-tilt-zoom cameras, remote control, 60 fps
  • Video mixer
  • Recording
  • Feeder of crawling text and captions
  • Point-to-point connection via SRT protocol

Video-Streaming:

  • Encoding with 60 fps
  • Akamai Media Services Live 4 mit Low Latency
  • Akamai Token Authentication
  • Akamai Media Analytics
  • THEOplayer

The company

Stadt Monheim am Rhein

www.monheim.de

Sector: Institutional/Public Sector

About the town of Monheim am Rhein: The town of Monheim am Rhein belongs to the district of Mettmann in North Rhine-Westphalia and has about 43,000 inhabitants. Through its website www.monheim.de, it offers citizens and people interested in tourism a wide range of information and services. By offering the video streaming of committee meetings, the town of Monheim am Rhein wants to create an offer that promotes political participation in the long-term.