While a Source is a continuous stream of video, it may contain within it multiple “Events”. Events may be created on-the-fly or scheduled in advance, and they are essential to automating AWS MediaConnect.
An Event may be defined differently between the Distributor and the Subscribers, or between Subscribers. Each Event has a start and end time which identifies the content’s time slot. These Events may be adjacent in time, disconnected or they may even overlap.
For example, a linear news channel schedule will contain both news coverage and programme slots. Subscribers may create Events with timeslots that cover only the hourly headlines, the entire news hour, or a separate programme within that hour. These could be three or more Events from the same Source timeslot, but without separate booking and routing. In the screenshot below, there are four Events, one for the entire morning, and the others for bulletins or programmes.
Another example is a live sporting event. The Source may cover the entire event with build-up and post-analysis. Subscribers, however, may define the Event as the main action only, and set their Events times accordingly.
An Event may also have multiple Sources, an option to be used for adding resilience where identical streams exist across multiple input routes.
M2A CONNECT manages the activation and deactivation of Cloud infrastructure according to valid Event requests from a Subscriber.
How to integrate with existing scheduling systems?
M2A CONNECT has a public, open API which you can use to integrate with your existing scheduling systems.
Although confident in the simplicity of our open APIs, M2A Media also offers professional development services and has extensive experience in integrating with both off-the-shelf and bespoke scheduling and metadata systems.
For more information contact sales@m2amedia.tv.
Identifying content using labels
M2A CONNECT has a powerful metadata system to aid in defining, classifying and identifying events in your schedule. Subscriptions can use label metadata to enable comprehensive rights management.
When creating or editing Sources and adding events to the schedule you have the option to add any number of new or pre-existing labels.
Through their extensibility, Labels are designed to allow you to express your own business rules and content identification schemes. The type and content of Labels you use depend on the nature of the content distributed and how your schedules are arranged.
Consider an example of a tennis tournament schedule, with many competitors and multiple rounds, with one Event per match.
| Label name | Description | Example label value(s) |
|---|---|---|
| player | Each event has two of these labels; one for each player in a match. | djokovicnadal |
| stage | Identifies the match with the tournament stage. | semi-finalfinal |
Given a schedule full of Events with these Labels set, it is easy to see how you can use them to gain tight control over what access is granted to Subscribers. For example, by issuing a subscription which only includes matches featuring Djokovic. Or issuing a Subscription for just the tournament’s final match. Or a combination of both. Through Labels, modelling complex rights agreements across vast schedules is easy. However, even for simplified use cases, labels provide a valuable tool to help keep track of groups of related Events within your content schedule.
Reliable Distribution
M2A CONNECT uses AWS MediaConnect to provide reliable and flexible global distribution of media without the need for complex agreements, lengthy set-up times or the need to build and operate the solution according to its peak capacity. The high-performance technologies which underpin the transport of Source mean that your content reaches your broadcast partners or operations teams securely and with minimal latency and loss of fidelity.
Schedule Events for your Sources and create a subscription to begin distributing a Source.
