Electronic Arts: “Elecard’s monitoring system and video analyzing tools have played an integral part in our broadcasting success”
Electronic Arts Inc. is a global leader in digital interactive entertainment. It is the second-largest gaming company in the Americas and Europe by revenue and market capitalization after Activision Blizzard as of May 2020.
EA regularly organizes streaming of e-sports tournaments and events onto various OTT platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. To ensure the best streaming quality, Electronic Arts has integrated the Boro monitoring system and StreamEye Studio analyzers into its live production process.
Elecard Boro monitoring system is a client-server application consisting of two parts: software Boro probes and a server designed to collect and process statistics. Elecard Boro is used to simultaneously monitor 50 UDP or HLS streams. Boro probes were installed on cloud platforms after encoders to immediately monitor live streams being used in production within Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) around the world. These probes validate and monitor any anomalies in the virtual production environment, enabling broadcast engineers to make more informed, confident decisions regarding what to use on air. Also, Boro probes were installed in partner CDNs all over the globe to monitor content delivery and regional ad insertion. Boro allows monitoring all of this connectivity from all over the world in one centralized location.
Ben Bradshaw, Manager of EA Broadcast Network Operations: “We face problems daily implementing a fully virtualized live production. Elecard Boro has been an integral part allowing visibility within our network, enabling us to correct problems before they become visible and to make key decisions when there is no time to spare.”
Elecard StreamEye Studio is a set of powerful software tools for video quality analysis designed for professional use in video compression, processing, communication and streaming media industries. StreamEye is used to validate and ensure the highest quality of MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC compressed media. In fully remote, fully virtualized cloud production, there are cases when it is necessary to compress and decompress video multiple times prior to distribution. StreamEye helps to accurately qualify each cycle and measure the visual picture quality of the decoded frames.
“If we see anomalies, macro blocking, degraded picture, we can methodically trace which cycle is the most problematic and execute a plan for corrective actions. We are very pleased to have this amount of granularity in evaluating the integrity of our compression and decompression techniques and equipment,” commented Ben Bradshaw.
Using Elecard solutions Electronic Arts can quickly evaluate the health, compliance, and integrity of contribution or distribution live video streams from anywhere in the world. 30 engineers of the EA Competitive Gaming Entertainment team use Elecard solutions in their day-to-day operation, whether it be R&D testing or live production and broadcast. One of the most important features is the possibility to share data and remotely collaborate with colleagues.
Top benefits as per the customer
- Top quality live streaming of e-sports events on various OTT platforms
- Enhanced troubleshooting thanks to possibility to correct problems before they become visible
- Improved compression and decompression techniques and equipment operation
- Simple deployment
- Remote collaboration of the Broadcast Network Operations team
- Elevated uptime percentage and improved viewership
“Elecard products are the most comprehensive solutions on the market for remote monitoring and analysis. Elecard Boro and StreamEye have played an integral part in our broadcasting success and aided in elevating our uptime percentage, which directly equates to viewership. Elecard products give invaluable points of reference and the ability to historically analyze errors that occurred in past streams to make better informed decisions. The flexibility and ease of use make Elecard products much faster to use and deliver results. Deployment has been incredibly simple to implement and the support is world-class. We will expand the current project to cover the entire globe.” said Ben Bradshaw, Manager of Broadcast Network Operations.