TVU Networks Facilitates Samaritan’s Purse With Disaster Relief Video Processing

Based in Boone, North Carolina, the video division of international relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse travels to the furthest corners of the world to chronicle the organization’s aid to victims of war, disease, disaster, poverty, famine, and persecution. Producing videos from the locations and distributing them immediately keep those affected by devastating events top of mind during and beyond the traditional news coverage.

Delivering large video files quickly from often remote places torn apart by hurricanes, floods, and war has never been simple for Samaritan’s Purse. Internet connections, if they exist, are usually spotty at best. Uploading large files from these locations can be next to impossible.

“We have to produce our content quickly,” says Ben Cranor, Engineering Manager of the Broadcast Department of Samaritan’s Purse. “While events are in the news cycle, we need to communicate immediately ways in which people can help.”

While searching for ways to solve their uploading issues, Cranor and his team discovered TVU Networks’ TVU Router. TVU Router is a software option on the TVU One live mobile IP newsgathering transmitter that delivers high bandwidth Internet connectivity – up to 200Mbps – from practically anywhere. It provides high speed, two-way data transmission connection for transferring and receiving files, video streaming, and web browsing from a laptop or smart mobile device. TVU One with HEVC compression can deliver HD quality video with half-second latency at 3Mbps. It can transmit simultaneously over multiple mediums, including cellular, microwave, satellite, BGAN, WiFi and Ethernet.

“Now, we can upload video footage from places where, normally, we’d have little to no Internet, where it would be difficult at best to get a large, video file back to home base,” added Cranor.

TVU Router is also used any time a critical upload is expected. For example, when the organization is making a statement from a site with limited internet capability that will be dispersed on social media, TVU Router is used to insure the communication is delivered reliably online.

TVU Router has also proved invaluable in less remote locations. During a large event in a major city in the U.S., Samaritan’s Purse used TVU Router to supply Internet access to its technical team to save costs for high fees for Internet access.

“TVU Router has been a huge time save and stress reliever during crucial upload times,” explained Cranor. “At the very least, we’re able to increase our upload speed. But more than that, we can upload files from places we’d normally not be able to send anything at all. In some locations, the cell networks work adequately, but getting Internet with plugged-in Ethernet connectivity is impossible. With TVU Router, we’re able to use a combination of existing cell networks and several SIM cards to get a connection to send very large files very quickly.”

According to Cranor, the system has been plug-and-play. Once the unit is turned on, they begin uploading files. When they’ve required any configuration from the field, Cranor reports that TVU customer service responded and fixed issues over the phone immediately.

Cranor and his team have been impressed with the improvements in terms of bandwidth and stability to TVU Router over the course of the past year. “We can’t wait to see even more increased transfer speeds and additional functions in the future.”