Celtic Media Festival
Celtic Media Festival
Delivering a live webcast is always a challenge, but MultiStream took this one in their stride and successfully delivered three days of live streaming from the Isle of Skye in the western highlands of Scotland.
Now in its 28th year the festival looks to promote the cultures and languages of the Celtic countries in film, on television, radio and new media. The Celtic Media Festival is also in a position to offer a distinctive view of the media industry to government consultations, which may otherwise be underrepresented.
The festival organisers wanted to give those that were unable to make the trip to Skye the ability to still take part, so early on the decision was made to webcast proceedings - which despite the remote nature of the venue the organisers wanted to deliver completely live coverage of the full festival.
The commission saw the live streaming of over 20 hours of presentations, discussions, debates, interviews and anecdotes from leading media luminaries from the Celtic nations, all delivered in real time from the Aros centre in Portree on the east of the island.
Tessa Jowell, Member of Parliament for Culture, Media & Support delivered a keynote speech, and sessions from Iona Jones (Chief Executive of S4C) and Cathal Goan (Director General of RTE) featured in the programme. It wasn’t also all about speakers as the festival was witness to inaugural screenings including SEACHD: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, much of which was filmed on the island.
Audio and video production was delivered by event and production company Metro Ecosse, who provided vision a mixed feed of three cameras, along with numerous ‘play ins’ of clips and extracts from tape and DVD.
Due to local bandwidth constraints the webcast was delivered live in Windows Media format with on demand content being subsequently made available (in a matter of hours) in both Windows and Real Media format. The stream was delivered in multi-bitrate and offering a slightly higher quality experience for broadband users without neglecting those who may only have dial up access.
Despite the limitations of the connectivity on the island MultiStream still delivered a resilient webcast by using dual encoders linking to different entry points on the content delivery network to minimise the risk of interruption to the webcast experience.
The on demand archive of the webcast can be accessed in perpetuity on the festival website and since the closing ceremony the website has grown to become a well used reference for media professionals across the globe. The webcast was a significant success and received many live and on demand viewers from all corners from many different countries.
Highlights of the Celtic Media Festival webcast are available on the Celctic Media Festival website.
Picture Top Left - The Aros centre in Skye. Picture Middle Left - The main stage. Picture Bottom Right - Encoders in operation.