The Challenge

Due to the volume of material available, the BBC’s iPlayer automatically encodes the multiple broadcast sources ready for the platforms and devices it supports. The process was to be governed by technical metadata written to the TV Anytime (TVA) standard. At the time of launch, the BBC needed a reliable source of this TVA data and an extended set of descriptions including cast and crew listings.

The Solution

Working with the client, we devised a new internal workflow to efficiently deliver the new requirements. Red Bee Media’s metadata platform was central to the solution, allowing the new data fields to be captured as part of the overall data hierarchy of each programme. Following initial testing, we were able to confirm the TVA data and some additional technical flags were correctly accepted by the iPlayer system and the service went live complete with its extended listings.

The Solution

iPlayer programme encodes are automatically initiated following the linear TV broadcast along with the ingest of the extended descriptions seen on the iPlayer website, ensuring content reaches iPlayer in a timely manner. Using metadata to control this provides a high degree of future flexibility, in that the technical parameters can easily be adapted to new requirements.