Aframe Delivers for London’s Olympic Delivery Authority Putting Broadcast Video Into the Cloud

London 2012’s Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) had an Olympic-sized task to deliver – building new and temporary venues, improving sports facilities, and transport infrastructure for the London games. When it needed to create and distribute promotional videos to accredited broadcasters around the globe –fast – and handle the demand that the Olympics would generate, the ODA relied on Aframe, the cloud video production platform. Aframe’s new-age workflow delivers broadcast-quality footage faster, easier and more cost-effectively than traditional video production and delivery methods.

Operational in London since 2010, Aframe recently expanded its private cloud network to the US. Aframe’s highly secure, exceptionally fast cloud allows professional video creators to share, search and collaborate without on-site equipment or full-time staff – anywhere, anytime – requiring only an internet connection. Aframe also provides “metatagging” services that allow a video to be searched via keywords, that greatly expedites finding just the right clip.

“Being able to work with worldwide broadcasters on a project like this would have been impossible for the ODA without a cloud-based system like Aframe,” said Neil Hatton, managing director of full service post production house, Azimuth. “We knew from previous experience there would be a surge in a demand as soon as it was announced to broadcasters. Aframe provided the necessary bandwidth to deliver footage quickly to the end user.”

“Since Aframe’s platform is web-based, it doesn’t matter whether the users are in Manchester or Manhattan to be able to successfully access the footage,” Hatton said. “In addition, Aframe’s interface allowed users to review the clips and only download what they needed.”

In early 2012 the ODA retained TV production firm SMS Media in London to produce a package of promotional video clips. SMS Media used Azimuth to produce the content, which featured HD and SD footage of the Olympic Park, including aerials, timelapse and various interior and exterior GVs.

Instead of using time-consuming and costly DVD distribution to circulate ODA’s clips, Azimuth used Aframe’s online service to send ODA’s content to Olympic accredited broadcasters across the globe, including the BBC, ITV, Sky, NBC and CNN. Azimuth also used Aframe to add summary metatags to the footage, so that the broadcasters could quickly find and select specific clips by searching them by name.

“By adding metatags to the video, broadcast users could find the exact clips they were looking for using simple keyword searches,” Azimuth Post’s Neil Hatton explained. “This really helps in the process of putting news pieces together.”

“It was just brilliant for Aframe to be working with SMS and Azimuth on producing the ODA footage of the Olympic venues – a great team effort,” said David Peto, CEO of Aframe. “It really showed us all what a uniting experience the Olympics will be, and how cloud services are set to be at the heart of global media projects going forward.”

As Olympic film crews, production teams and journalists descend on London,Aframe’s network is already being tapped to assist them both locally and in their turf – with high speed uploads and ingest of footage to be sent back home, and with faster, easier collaboration on broadcast-quality content for the London 2012 games.