Racing.com Replay Hub: A Case Study
Co-owned by Racing Victoria and the Seven Network, Racing.com is a digital television channel delivering thoroughbred horse racing coverage to Australia and the world. Racing Victoria is well known as the home of ‘The Race That Stops a Nation’, the annual Melbourne Cup.
Racing.com engaged Hemisphere to architect and deliver their popular Replay Hub service, which allows racing enthusiasts to search for and replay races held by Victoria Racing. Following on from the success of the service and the workflow benefits delivered to Racing.com, Hemisphere were further engaged to build a bespoke in-browser editorial tool for use by the videography team.
The Replay Hub
Users of the Replay Hub can watch automatically generated highlights of the day's races from each track, bundled together as a single uninterrupted video compiled from multiple sources.
The automatic generation of highlights and custom interstitial cards (all created dynamically and stitched into the video) allows Racing.com to offer the service without any editorial or technical effort.
Users can also search for videos of a particular horse, and define whether they want to see full races, starts, finishes, or combinations thereof. The single video files are generated dynamically and presented for view without having to wait for transcoding or asset duplication.
The Editorial Tool
Such was the success of the Replay Hub amongst racing enthusiasts, Racing.com looked to leverage the underlying technology further to streamline workflow within its videography team.
Instead of splicing and editing videos using traditional video editing software, Racing.com are able to drag and drop pieces of content into a timeline using a browser-based tool designed by Hemisphere.
The content varies between races, race shows, promotional material and more. It is all instantly available without the need for transcoding or duplication of assets.
The Technology
The Replay Hub and the Editorial Tool were built using the Virtual Video technology from Linius Technologies, and hosted on Amazon Web Services. All video assets are ingested into Racing.com's VCMS, Brightcove.
The use of Virtual Video affords both solutions the luxury of just-in-time rendering of multiple assets without the need for transcoding or generation of new assets (which means less costs).
Why Hemisphere?
Racing.com selected Hemisphere to design and deliver these solutions because we have worked extensively with video delivery and workflow solutions for clients all over the world. We’ve implemented more Virtual Video solutions than any other team in the world. We've been working with AWS and Brightcove since 2011.
Of course, it helps that we’re fast, we’re reliable, and we’re good to work with. What’s not to like?
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