Streaming Tank help share the love for the Starbucks Love Project using live video streaming
On December 7th 2009, award winning video streaming company, Streaming Tank, helped set a new world record. Working alongside a number of agencies, both here in the UK and across the pond, Streaming Tank was tasked with coordinating and implementing the technical logistics behind setting the Guinness World Record for the “Most Number of Nations in an Online Sing Along”.
For over a year, Starbucks and Product (RED) have partnered to help campaign and raise money for the Global Fund to help fight against AIDS in Africa. To celebrate the success of this partnership, having generated enough money to deliver over seven million daily doses of anti-retroviral AIDS medication in Africa, a global sing along was staged to unite the world simultaneously by singing the Beatles classic ‘All You Need Is Love’.
The event was streamed live and online, with Streaming Tank, specialists in Live and on-Demand video streaming logistics, brought in to work alongside lead advertising agency BBDO, and UK production company Gorgeous Enterprises.
Streaming Tank was asked to manage 4 crucial parts of the project:
- To implement the technological processes and infrastructure that would enable each country to broadcast a live video stream using the varying internet connections available in each country.
- To enable a possible 196 simultaneous live video streams to be received and displayed from within a venue in London.
- Hardware encoding the live footage produced during the event, to allow a worldwide audience to watch the sing along live and online.
- Setting up a method for each country to then upload their recorded live individual clips for the post-event edit.
Faced with a mammoth task, Streaming Tank brought in reinforcements and assembled an experienced team of IT technicians who helped contact the production company representatives from each participating country individually, to prepare them for the event.
Each representative was asked to provide an internet enabled computer with a video camera or webcam connected to it. Remote access software (LogMeIn) was then installed on each computer, allowing Streaming Tank technicians to remotely connect to each countries computer from London. In the weeks running up to the live broadcast, Streaming Tank accessed each countries computer to run internet and hardware checks, install encoding and video upload software, and run live streaming tests prior to the event.
A venue had to be found that had the bandwidth capabilities to view 196 live video streams, at varying bit rate qualities. Matter nightclub at the O2, an old haunt for Streaming Tank, had the connection to make this possible. A number of web pages were created to view the live feeds, and grids of the countries were projected onto screens at the venue.
Streaming Tank brought in a Shoot You Production to film the event, with the live content being streamed directly onto the Starbuck’s Love Project website.
The event was a resounding success as 156 countries sang together at 1.30pm (GMT) on December 7th 2009, live and online.
Highlights of the event can still be seen here: www.starbucksloveproject.com
