Live Stream - Live video from Journalists' mobiles

Aims

How might we automatically broadcast live in IP from small and large form newsgathering devices. How might we contextualise these live streams with related content and social?

Existing Newsgathering 'lives' traditionally target our linear output. We will be exploring how to hook into the existing On Demand workflow to enable live streams on digital platforms simultaneously.

Live streaming and semantic tagging

We know that audiences have huge interest in live coverage from breaking news stories. We wanted to see how frictionless we could make this for everyone from the BBC journalists on the ground to the audience on their mobile devices. In addition, by encouraging interaction between viewers and correspondents in a live environment we hope to open up a more directly engaging experience for audiences.

Following conversations with editorial staff, we developed use cases and wireframes around the idea of streaming direct to a correspondent's page. We also wanted to semantically tag the streams to enable them to surface elsewhere and also to show related content alongside the stream.

Working from a 'mobile first' standpoint, we developed a prototype to explore some of the challenges and opportunities presented by hand held live broadcasting.

Node was used for a server-side app with a largely static front-end with interactive jQuery elements. Live video comes from one of the four Elemental encoders used in the newsroom as part of the existing infrastructure, and the Twitter and Socket.io Node libraries were used to consume and broadcast a live twitter stream, tracking any given phrase or hashtag.

This project should illuminate opportunities in faster, lightweight live workflows and availability.

If you want to get in touch, send us a tweet @BBC_News_Labs

Results

• We showed off the potential with several live demos, but the project was not prioritised for production.