"Broadcast television technology saved the Olympics," said Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former president of the International Olympic Committee, a phrase that has been widely circulated.

Global large-scale sports events like the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Asian Games are not only a feast of sports competitions but also a commercial feast, as well as a showcase of technology and humanities. With the advancement of technology, the role of technology in sports events has become increasingly important.

In the 1980s, when television was widely popularized, Peter Ueberroth, then the chairman of the Los Angeles Olympic Committee, initiated the "exclusive broadcasting rights" model. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was the first time in a century that the core systems were fully migrated to the cloud, a milestone event in Olympic technological innovation, with cloud computing becoming a key technology for Olympic innovation.

At the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, 105 million digital torchbearers from more than 130 countries around the world ignited the main torch in a digital-physical fusion manner, setting a new Guinness World Record, with cloud computing once again showcasing its technological charm to the world.

Large international events are a proving ground for cloud computing, demonstrating that data is the most important production factor in the digital era, computational power is the core productivity, and it contains immeasurable value.

Many advanced technologies in history have been widely popularized after the Asian Games or the Olympics, benefiting the general public.

Migration of Large Events to the Cloud

In 1896, the first modern Olympics in Athens lit the first sacred flame of the new era, witnessed by athletes from 13 countries and nearly 80,000 spectators. At that time, people could only participate in the Olympics through newspapers and pictures.

It was not until 1964 (the 18th Summer Olympic Games) that satellite broadcasting was first used in the Olympics, a significant turning point that significantly increased the audience for the Olympics.

At that time, the important infrastructure for television broadcasting was the television broadcasting truck, and the broadcasting model of "satellite + television broadcasting truck" was of great significance in the development of the Olympics.

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (the 32nd Summer Olympic Games), the Olympics used cloud broadcasting for the first time, reducing the number of television broadcasting trucks. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics further experimented with cloud-based 4K and even 8K broadcasting, elevating the picture quality to a new level.

The 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games became the first Asian Games in history to broadcast live events through cloud broadcasting. What advantages does cloud broadcasting have compared to satellite broadcasting?

For a long time, there have been three major issues with professional video live streaming events such as large-scale sports events: high technical thresholds, high network latency, and high input costs.

For large international events, it is often necessary to build a complete set of software and hardware systems from server procurement, including systems for event schedules, scores, athlete registration, transportation, and accommodation. After the event ends, these systems need to be dismantled.

In terms of broadcasting, satellite signals are usually relied upon, requiring the construction of satellite transmission and reception equipment, equipment rooms, physical dedicated lines, etc., based on the scale of the event. This not only consumes a significant amount of funds but may also lead to issues such as computational and network resource shortages due to increased traffic during the event broadcast. In particular, for staged events like the Olympics and the World Cup, there are also issues such as dismantling IT facilities after the event ends.

In the scenario of live event broadcasting, users have high requirements for playback delay and smoothness, and theoretically, the lower the delay, the better. If the server loads content too slowly and takes too long to open the video, users are prone to losing immersion in the live event, affecting the viewing experience.

The best way to address these issues is cloud computing. If the event system and broadcasting system can be migrated to the cloud, there is no need to build physical server rooms several years in advance. Instead, the size and structure of the "cloud server room" can be changed at any time based on data changes during the event.

After the event ends, the event systems are gradually taken offline, and the "cloud server room" becomes available for resource release.

However, moving data to the cloud is only part of the story. The cloud that hosts large international events faces thousands of hours of live content, billions of global viewers, and constantly changing viewing traffic.

This requires cloud technology to be sufficiently secure and stable, able to handle high concurrency, low latency, large-scale storage, cross-regional disaster recovery, and other requirements in global broadcasting scenarios.

Through cloud computing for video live streaming, the live streaming bandwidth can be increased from Mbps to Gbps or even TB-level. The cloud platform centered on the cloud data center can efficiently support the live streaming system, making it have stronger video processing capabilities, faster speeds, and massive videos can be stored on the cloud, thus providing viewers with high-definition, smooth, ultra-low-latency, and high-concurrency video live streaming services.

Small and medium-sized broadcasting media without satellite reception equipment can also access programs on the cloud, without the need to purchase additional hardware facilities. By adopting a cloud broadcasting solution and connecting to the cloud in advance, they can complete the broadcasting process, greatly improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Tech Companies Rush to the "Event Live Streaming" Track

This year is a big year for sports events, with the European Cup, Paris Olympics, and other global sports events being broadcasted one after another, and the popularity of event live streaming continues to rise. Addressing issues such as lag, delay, and audio-video desynchronization during live streaming, many vendors, including Mobile Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Agora, and others, have launched various technical solutions to provide viewers with a better viewing experience.

Mobile Cloud relies on China Mobile's global coverage of over 2,500 CDN nodes to accelerate video live streaming. Meanwhile, the cloud platform can provide basic functions from video editing, storage, transcoding, review, to product-level source code, interaction, styling, and editing capabilities, enabling one-stop construction of powerful video application capabilities, significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of video live streaming and broadcasting.

In addition, relying on the powerful computing and storage capabilities of the cloud data center, cloud live streaming and cloud broadcasting can also simultaneously edit, transcode, synthesize, and on-demand broadcast high-concurrency multi-channel HD videos, providing senior sports fans with more timely and accurate event scores, statistics, and allowing users to smoothly switch and select their favorite live broadcasts and instantly save replay videos for on-demand viewing, enhancing the event viewing experience.

Alibaba Cloud provided a "Broadcast-Grade Large Event Live Streaming Solution" for the 2022 World Cup live broadcast. This solution can bring a more real-time, stable, high-definition, and rich live viewing experience under high concurrency of ultra-large traffic based on comprehensive technical capabilities such as video edge streaming, narrowband HD transcoding, cloud directing, AI intelligent production, and global edge node distribution.

Alibaba Cloud has over 2,800 global nodes, 9 live streaming centers, 150TB of bandwidth reserves, and a global real-time streaming media transmission network (GRTN), which can ensure high-quality viewing experiences for tens of millions of users under high concurrency. Full-link disaster recovery and emergency plans, as well as years of best practices in live streaming, can ensure the high reliability of large-scale event live broadcasting. Cloud directing and interactive virtual studio technology bring cloud-based efficiency and real-time immersive interactive live broadcasting experiences. Meanwhile, on top of "narrowband HD" transcoding technology, combined with audio-video capabilities such as ultra-high-definition 4K/8K, Dolby sound effects, 50 frames, etc., the overall experience is visually and aurally excellent.

Recently, Agora, a global real-time interactive cloud service provider, released its Agora Event Live Streaming Solution in Beijing. The Agora Event Live Streaming Solution provides another solution to issues such as high offline studio rental costs and the temporary absence of commentary guests.

Li Zhijie, the head of Agora's live streaming product, said that the Agora Event Live Streaming Solution provides a cost-controllable cloud studio, allowing invited guests to commentate online without the need to rent offline venues.

For different network conditions of commentary guests, Agora can also provide multiple real-time streams with different bitrates and frame rates and can automatically switch based on the actual network conditions of the commentary guests, even achieving smooth commentary with 1M bandwidth.

The scenario of event live streaming often encounters the need for multiple guests to commentate simultaneously. How to allow multiple commentary guests to watch simultaneously and have their voices, images, and event streams precisely synchronized is a technical challenge that needs to be addressed urgently.

According to He Shengming, the head of Agora's live streaming technology, the Agora Event Live Streaming Solution guarantees alignment at each end of the commentary guests based on NTP, with a strict live video difference of less than 3 frames and synchronization between the commentary audio track and the event video.

In addition, based on Agora's Fengming AI engine's noise reduction function, it can effectively eliminate environmental noise and external sounds from the commentary guests, while avoiding the suppression of human voices, providing viewers with a more "pure" viewing experience. The Agora Event Live Streaming Solution also supports capabilities such as padding, directing, and flexible selection of multiple audio tracks.

Signal transmission determines broadcast quality, and some large international event broadcasts often require cross-country or cross-continental signal transmission. However, traditional satellite + dedicated line transmission forms are not only expensive but also inflexible, and there is uncertainty in obtaining high-quality platform signals.

Moreover, traditional transmission forms often use unencrypted standard protocols, making them vulnerable to piracy.

To address these issues, the Agora Event Live Streaming Solution provides media encrypted transmission capabilities based on SD-RTN, with a 200ms packet arrival rate of >99.9%, supporting signal input from any location and streaming from any location, equivalent to having an efficient network ready for use at any time.

In addition, through Agora's excellent self-developed cloud control algorithm, which comprehensively considers access selection, high scalability, availability, load balancing, etc., it can "navigate" an optimal path for real-time video data streams, ensuring stable ultra-low latency signal transmission.

At the same time, Agora has also conducted extensive optimization work on the audio-video SDK side, including optimization for weak networks and audio-video experiences.

Technologies such as ultra-low latency and stable transmission, as Agora's "core competencies," make the advantages of the Agora Event Live Streaming Solution more apparent.

It can ensure that the picture is transmitted to the viewer within 500ms, reducing up to 90% compared to traditional HLS, FLV channels. The first frame of the live broadcast picture on the viewer's end appears in less than 400ms, allowing exciting events to be accessed instantly. The audio-video packet loss boundary on the viewer's end is 80%, ensuring smooth playback even in extreme weak network conditions.

Nowadays, large-scale sports events have become a stage for showcasing a country's comprehensive strength. The exciting duels between athletes on the field demonstrate a country's level of sports training and technological application. The intelligent construction and operational support off the field are also concentrated arenas for displaying the technological strength and cultural charm of various countries.

Jensen Huang, the founder of NVIDIA, believes that "future computing will be provided in the form of the cloud," and cloud computing and large models are reshaping various industries.

With the continuous development of cloud computing and AI technology, digitization and intelligence will become the new norm for sports events in the future, reshaping the viewing experience of sports fans and opening up greater imagination for the commercialization of international events.

【Original Report by Tech Cloud】

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