Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud Interactive Virtual Technology Creates the Best Immersive Experience of Virtual Live Streaming

2022 is the "Super Year of Sports", with the Winter Olympics, Asian Games, Universiade, World Cup and other large-scale sports events throughout the year. Due to the epidemic control and physical space constraints, the live broadcast of the event is very important, and the audience experience demand is constantly escalating.

In this regard, enterprises have higher and higher requirements for live broadcast services, and the innovation of video live broadcast technology is particularly critical. Subsequently, how to use live broadcast technology to reduce the cost of offline deployment of broadcasters, how to provide flexible and scenario-based capabilities, and how to ensure the safety and stability of online content transmission have become the focus of many live broadcast enterprise customers.

In order to bring a better live broadcast experience, Alibaba Cloud has made major upgrades to video live broadcast products to create a one-stop immersive experience on the cloud virtual live broadcast room service.

Based on technical capabilities such as edge streaming, narrowband HD transcoding, cloud broadcasting, and global edge node distribution, through full-link disaster recovery and emergency plans and other safeguards, it provides highly reliable, high-quality, and low-latency live broadcast services. Large-scale events and activities provide the ability to escort. On this basis, it will focus on building cloud-integrated virtual studio capabilities to create an immersive live broadcast experience for the audience.

1 computer + 2 mobile phones: open the virtual live room

Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud's cloud-based interactive virtual studio provides the industry's first full-link cloud-based real-time keying and virtual background synthesis capabilities, and realizes a complete solution of real-time interaction + directing. It can be easily started through the mobile APP, which greatly reduces the threshold for use. Reduce, create an immersive, broadcast-level studio experience for remote interviews, remote interaction, virtual real-time production and other scenarios.

New algorithm engine, interactive broadcast anytime, anywhere

At present, most of the matting techniques commonly used in studios are related to green screen matting. However, there are several drawbacks in green screen matting: first, a green screen studio or green screen equipment must be specially built, and the application scenarios are limited; at the same time, in order to ensure the best effect of green screen matting, it is necessary to install lighting equipment for debugging , and even requires an operator with shooting experience to set up in advance.

Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud uses AI technology innovation to comprehensively upgrade the technical solution of the virtual studio. For the first time, it adopts the real scene preset background keying, multi-cam switching + real-time keying, and up to 6 keying sources + keying synthesis. processing and other technical solutions. Therefore, through the multi-channel real-time real scene keying, virtual background generation and real-time dynamic rendering technology in the cloud, the pain point of the host and the guests not being in the same space and the limited on-site environment cannot be performed professionally. People can be combined into any studio, even if they are thousands of miles away, they can experience the interactive feeling of being immersed in the same space through virtual studio technology.

Fine, stable and professional at the radio and television level

In order to benchmark the program specifications of the radio and television level, the Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud technical team has tried a variety of algorithms and engineering models to solve the problems of rough edges and jitters in the real scene button, and the keying effect is fine to the real and delicate effect of the characters, which greatly improves the real scene. The effect of keying also promotes the applicability of products and breaks the barriers of real-life keying in the industry.

At the same time, it also improves the stability of ultra-long live broadcast, including the stability of ultra-long microphone connection, image keying stability, audio and video interaction, APP performance, all-round satisfaction of multi-person and multi-scenarios in different places, and ultra-long time Lianmai and live broadcast requirements. Under the uncontrollable and cluttered background of various interview environments, Alibaba Cloud virtual studio technology can handle and achieve the best imaging effect, and the keying effect is as fine as a hairline.

Not only that, for complex multi-scenarios, such as single-player switching, double-vision switching, and inserting TV commercials in close-up live broadcasts, wireless seamless switching has been achieved, and it has truly reached the broadcast and television-level program production level and industry-leading. level.

Get through RTC and GRTN, truly realize real-time interactive studio

In addition, Alibaba Cloud has also opened up the audio and video communication RTC and the global audio and video real-time transmission network GRTN, combining the technical capabilities of multi-camera and multi-view synchronous live broadcast with the RTC real-time microphone connection and remote broadcasting capabilities to provide users Provides a simple and stable connection function, and truly realizes the ability of interactive virtual studio.

At present, Alibaba Cloud Director supports up to 12 input sources, 6-channel keying synthesis at the same time, supports custom background images, supports drag-and-drop settings for the position and size of keying objects, and supports audio-only monitoring mode , supports the adjustment of the layout layer order, and only needs to complete the fast broadcast through a simple two or three-step configuration.

The first directing platform with "Seamless Connectivity between Device and Cloud"

The virtual studio also provides a variety of product usage scenarios. Log in to the live broadcast console on Alibaba Cloud, and you can configure and start the broadcast visually out of the box. You can monitor the live broadcast in real time and adjust the live broadcast content.

One-click synchronization between local and online, without development intervention, suitable for use by various operations and business teams. In addition, based on the complete API service, you can call and encapsulate your own live broadcast business system on demand. Cloud Director also provides a complete WebSDK with a console front-end page, which can be nested and integrated directly, saving development costs and helping to provide a complete set of live broadcast solutions.

Through the interview task in the interactive virtual studio, only two mobile phones and a computer are needed, and the live broadcast and broadcast can be carried out anytime, anywhere, and at the same time, the audience can experience a more immersive broadcast visual sense at the first time.

Professional live broadcast reassurance: make live broadcast service more stable

With the growth of live broadcast users, all platforms have begun to operate in a refined manner, and ensuring the high reliability and high quality of more than one million concurrent live broadcast events is an urgent problem for all live broadcast platforms to solve.

Alibaba Cloud has 2800+ CDN nodes all over the world, 150+T bandwidth, 9 major live broadcast centers, and supports seamless overseas business layout. Through the Global Real-time Audio and Video Communication Network (GRTN) built by Alibaba Cloud, live streaming around the world can be realized. Access nearby, and quickly transmit to designated live broadcast centers through high-speed channels for content distribution.

Alibaba Cloud's live broadcast reassurance solution includes a full-link stabilization solution, a full-link anti-leech solution, a tens of millions of concurrent scheduling solutions, a full-link monitoring solution, and a full-link monitoring solution.

For an important live event, in order to ensure the high availability and stability of the streaming or source site, it is recommended to use two streaming terminals, which are pushed to the live streaming center in two ways and synthesized once. The single-point risk of the streaming end and the single-point risk of the streaming network.

Video live broadcast supports access control, such as Refer UA black and white list, IP black and white list, etc. Although basic protection can be achieved, forgery is also relatively easy, and this encryption method has an independent encryption key to avoid large-scale security caused by leakage of a single key It supports encryption transcoding + decryption playback, and dynamic key management to protect video resources more securely, which can effectively prevent video leakage and hotlink problems, and realize evidence collection, traceability and accountability for copyright infringement of large-scale event live broadcast content.

For tens of millions of concurrent live broadcast bandwidth jitter is very large. In the previous year’s World Cup live broadcast as an example, there was a half-time break between the first and second half, and the screen was relatively simple. Through Alibaba Cloud’s narrow-band high-definition technology, the bandwidth during transmission was only one-third or one-fourth of the peak value. At the beginning of the second half , a large number of users quickly flooded into the live broadcast room, and the bandwidth instantly returned to its peak value. In just one minute, the bandwidth grows by a few terabytes or a dozen terabytes.

The scheduling risk in such a scenario is very large. How to avoid this risk? There are three scheduling methods: DNS scheduling, 302 scheduling, and HTTPDNS scheduling. In summary, the best one is HTTPDNS scheduling, which responds very quickly, and does not have the influence of the first screen, and requires some access from the client. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud will intelligently predict the trend of bandwidth needs in advance, allocate resources in advance, and ensure the priority of large-scale events and events, which can effectively prevent the risk of T-level bandwidth bursts.

During the live broadcast escort process, special personnel provide full service guarantee and full link service monitoring in the background, including the frame rate, bit rate and bandwidth pressure of the entire network from the start of streaming to the final playback. For special major events, Alibaba Cloud will also customize a large screen similar to the right side. For each live stream, the on-off status will be displayed in the form of traffic lights, so that it is easy to quickly find out which stream has a problem. Bit rate and number of users online.

In order to see the live video data information, Alibaba Cloud provides the Guangmu system, which combines several live streams of the customer's live broadcast, whether it is the original stream or the transcoded stream, into one monitoring stream for monitoring. The whole monitoring can be divided into four screens, eight screens or twelve screens to realize a staring screen. If the frame rate is jittery, the bit rate is abnormal, the audio and video synchronization is abnormal, or the situation is stuck, a real-time alarm will be issued.

Alibaba Cloud's live broadcast re-assurance solution provides full-link security and stability guarantees, and provides high-quality live broadcast services, making live broadcasts smoother, events more exciting, and events safer.

Re-upgrading of live broadcast services: verification of the strength of large-scale events

Alibaba Cloud live video service, relying on more than 2,800 CDN nodes around the world and 150+TB commercial bandwidth capability, low latency and high concurrency, ensures the stable distribution of event images from the source to the terminal; based on the self-developed narrowband high-definition transcoding technology, reducing The transmission bit rate saves bandwidth, and enables higher-definition and smoother live broadcasts. At the same time, the end-to-end and scenario-based advantages can meet the needs of different scenarios, greatly reduce the threshold for enterprise development, and help businesses go online quickly.

The recent product upgrade conference showcased the two major capabilities of Alibaba Cloud's video live broadcast: virtual live room service and live broadcast reassurance service, which not only provided the industry's first full-link cloud real scene keying and virtual background synthesis capabilities, It also provides highly reliable, high-quality, low-latency live broadcast services for large-scale online live broadcast scenarios such as important events, sports events, and concerts through full-link disaster recovery and emergency plans.

Since last year, Alibaba Cloud's interactive virtual studio solution has been widely used in the live broadcast of various domestic events. At the Olympic Village of the Tokyo Olympics, the representative of Alibaba Cloud International Sports Division in Tokyo once passed the Alibaba Cloud Video Cloud. The virtual studio, real-time subtitles and other capabilities have completed the live broadcast connection and cloud signing ceremony with partners in Malaysia, the United States, China and other places.

In the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the "virtual studio" was fully applied in CGTN's online reporting of reporters in the Beijing Winter Olympics, helping the media to realize full-link production and broadcasting to the cloud throughout the process, and for the production of traditional news programs Created a new scene and created an immersive experience of Olympic event reporting.

https://www.youku.com/video/XNTE5NDI1OTAxNg==
Tokyo Olympics Virtual Studio

The one-stop virtual live broadcast with upgraded capabilities has more forward-looking technology, more refined effects, more immersive interaction, and richer scenes. Based on the live broadcast business verification of various top events and major events, Alibaba Cloud has accumulated profound experience in live event re-insurance. With flexible and easy-to-use virtual live broadcast rooms and stable and reliable in-depth guarantees, Alibaba Cloud continues to innovate industry application scenarios and create new products for customers. new value space.

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