Radio Soulwax - 2ManyDJs
Project Overview
DJ Due, David and Stephan Dewaele, AKA 2ManyDJs and Soulwax, have launched two new video apps that has jumped to the top of the iTunes and Android app list and immediately generated a huge number of hits.
Along with the apps, a video enabled website has been created.
Streaming Tank were asked by Live Nation to look after all of the video transcoding and content delivery for both platforms.
The app is available for use on the iPad and IPhone and all Android devices contains six hour-long visuals. They will then add a new hour-long set to the apps each week, until users of the apps will have a 24-hour musical extravaganza available for their listening and viewing pleasure.
The visual element of the hour-long shows are based around album covers, which are manipulated and animated in variety of ways, by a number of different directors and animators.
The resulting films are witty and eminently watchable with the films integral to the music, rather than just an accompaniment. The film and music come together to create a particular experience.
Solution
Streaming Tank worked on the project for many months due to the complexity of encoding.
The aspect ratio of the files was not a normal aspect ratio and the origional editing of the files increased the complexity of the job dramaticly to keep the output quality high.
Transcoding was in F4V for the website with each file encoded into a minimum of 6 different qualities.
This format was also used for the Android app.
For the iOS, each file was transcoded into multiple quality TS files. This was then segmented. Different encoding profiles were used for iPad and iPhone. All encoding profiles followed those recommended by Apple.
M3U8 files where created to point the user to the correct location and control the users experience on the platform.
Also, each file was encoded into an MPeg 4 file with a baseline profile to enable seperate download for all iOS platforms.
All the files were then placed onto the CDN of over 87,000 streaming servers ready for distribution, and using Streaming Tank's servers as the staging servers.
Result
The apps topped the both app markets.
