BBC Deploys Adobe's Project Primetime For Olympics

U.K. public broadcaster will use Adobe solutions to deliver live events and VOD content to digital platforms

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/26/2012 12:01:00 AM

Adobe Systems has announced that the BBC use key components of Adobe's Project Primetime to deliver live video and VOD content from the London games to the web and a wide variety of connected devices, including smartphones, tablets and connected TVs.

The deployment makes the BBC one of the first broadcasters to use the solutions. Adobe first introduced its Project "Primetime" effort at NAB as a suite of products that was designed to help broadcasters and content creators more easily deliver more content to multiple platforms and at the same time boost their revenues from those digital efforts.

The deployment at the BBC for the Olympics coverage builds on a longstanding relationship between the public broadcaster and Adobe, which worked with the BBC on its iPlayer, noted Ashley Still, director of product management, video solutions, Adobe, in an interview.

For the Olympics, the BBC faced a huge challenge of finding a way to efficiently handle and distribute a huge amount of content to multiple devices, Still explained. To overcome that problem it deployed Adobe's "Primetime Simulcast," which builds on the latest Adobe Media Server technology to provide 24 live streams to connected devices.

The BBC is also using Adobe's "Primetime Highlights," which greatly simplifies the creation of VOD clips and highlights and the distribution of that content to connected devices. "Humans still have to determine where they want to start and stop a clip but once that is done everything else is fully automated," she noted.

As a public broadcaster the BBC does not insert ads, but Still stressed that their solutions "seamlessly automate the insertion of ads" into the digital content.

"It is a core capability of Project Primetime," she explained.