The Swedish B2B company Twebcast seamlessly integrates nanoStream Cloud into their event platform to run GDPR-compliant interactive events.
Snapshot
When Twebcast approached nanocosmos 2021 to inquire about corporate streaming with seamless audience interaction, the following key elements were leading the conversation:
- The live video streaming solution needed to be based on ultra-low latency as a minimum to allow smooth interaction with the audience without delay.
- The integration into their event platform must be “white label” and GDPR-compliant.
Leveraging nanoStream Cloud, Twebcast has run successful events for three years achieving sub-second global video delivery, and uninterrupted viewing experiences for the final viewers. We met with Gisela Grerup, CEO and cofounder of Twebcast to learn how our real-time video streaming solution enables interactive video streaming.
Gisela: “nanocosmos plays an important role in our delivery of interactive experiences for our customers and their viewers. It works seamlessly, without interruptions.”
Who is Twebcast?
Since 2012, Twebcast offers a premium event solution for enterprise clients. Their event platform offers everything in one place for event creators from the invitation and live control to interactivity and post event analysis to run on-site, hybrid, or digital events.
Streaming real-time interactive events for enterprise clients
TWEBCAST: Typical examples are digital events running with nanoStream Cloud for employee interaction and business communication. While the production is handled by studio technicians and production managers on our client’s side, Twebcast’s platform covers the whole workflow of events from invites and sign-ups to post-event data analysis.
Technical objectives for streamed events:
- Streaming with minimum latency: Ultra-low latency streaming to allow smooth interaction between presentation and audience
- Seamlessly stream to at least 20,000 simultaneous viewers
- Targeted locations: All over the world, especially important however is often to deliver to various regions in Asia. Twebcast’s clients span the globe and streams served in Asia must be as seamless as streams served in Europe or the U.S.
- Access to Stream Management: Twebcast’s business customers get access to the Twebcast dashboard to create and manage streams.
- Flexible Live encoding depending on the preference of Twebcast’s customers (advice is given as required/needed)
- Smooth playback regardless of viewers’ bandwidth
- Stream Data Analysis: Instant Access to stream data to understand how live streams are functioning and gain insights into the performance metrics and the quality of service
- Consulting and event stand-by support
- Recording possibilities and streaming from file
Gisela: We collaborate with numerous prominent clients who demand reliable, flexible and branded solutions. These requirements range from town hall meetings and digital expos to company-wide anniversaries or even events as prestigious as Nobel Week Dialogue.
Tools to offer interaction along with streaming
Twebcast seamlessly integrates Interactive elements like chat, polls, Q&A, live reactions, and gamification with real-time streaming from nanocosmos to engage viewers and allow instant feedback. The global delivery of streams in under one second gives large numbers of attendees the chance to interact with the presentation in real-time.
Gisela: “No matter what tools are used for an event, smooth interaction is a vital component that must be upheld for successful audience engagement. For the interaction between the stream and our video meeting tool Emeet, ultra-low latency is a must.
Combining features for a comprehensive solution
TWEBCAST: Our goal is to offer a complete solution for virtual and hybrid events, where our customers get everything from participant registration to stream analytics and attendance reports. nanoStream Cloud is a white-label solution that allows us to integrate it into our setup via API. We can have ultra-low latency live streaming that is branded by our customers.
With today’s requirement to communicate globally during some events, our job is to make sure employees can be reached anywhere. This means we must deal with different internet qualities, and potentially different time zones. To ensure interaction runs smoothly via streaming, we rely on transcoding and adaptive bitrate streaming features of nanoStream Cloud.
Solutions achieved by integrating nanoStream Cloud
| Challenge | Solution |
| Interaction between presenter and audience | End-to-end latency sub-second globally, facilitating seamless interaction with nanoStream Cloud |
| Address a range of different encoding software | Flexible encoding, more info — Ingest with RTMP, SRT, WHIP, and WebRTC such as with OBS and Osprey Talon — Ingest plugin-free directly from your browser with the included nanoStream Webcaster |
| Delivery to all regions including remote ones. Plus: Delivery to Asia is often a standard requirement, here smooth delivery can be a challenge | Content Delivery Network (CDN) that guarantees comprehensive coverage worldwide. Transcoding adjustments can be made while the stream runs to overcome delivery issues. In regions with weak bandwidth, buffering issues may occur. With Adaptive Bitrate Playback and Live Transcoding, this can be prevented. More info |
| Smooth playback for all viewers without interruptions. | Combination of CDN, adaptive playback and live transcoding to ensure smooth streaming for all viewers via all devices. |
| Information regarding the following stream specification | Access to streaming data to allow adjustments such as bitrate and latency for optimizing audience engagement and post-event analysis. |
| Integration into the event platform and website | API routes and documentation allow flexible integration at Twebcast’s control. White-label branding. Detailed stream monitoring and insights based on data like latency values, video quality, etc which can be monitored to make improvements and to optimize quality of service. |
| Data, insight into the matrix quality for stream optimization | Adjustment of streams based on data available on nanoStream Analytics |
| GDPR compliance for all streams: everything produced in the EU and streamed to the EU must stay on EU servers | GDPR compliance regarding the whole streaming workflow. As nanocosmos is an EU headquartered company, Twebcast felt safe that it must be GDPR compliant, different from international companies that are not required to be. |
| Confidentiality | Security features to ensure confidentiality for our clients based on API integration; control of stream specifications via API routes. More information about tools like webhooks and secure tokens can be found here. |
| High-quality guarantee to clients | Instant stream management and standby support for running events: nanocosmos cooperates closely with Twebcast to test streams and to do technical fine-tuning (player, encoding set-up, latency modes) and event standby support with immediate live assistance. |
Summary and Outcome
To enable interactive video experiences, Twebcast’s all-in-one event platform integrates real-time video streaming with nanoStream Cloud. The flexible combination of various features across the board in addition to ultra-low latency proved to be critical: Easy to use, API-based, white label integration as well as GDPR compliance made it a clear-cut decision to choose nanoStream Cloud.
