About Rai NetRai Net is the Internet company of RAI, the Italian public broadcaster. Rai Net manages over 800 websites, including http://www.rai.it, http://www.raisport.rai.it and the video portal of RAI, http://www.rai.tv. Rai.tv has the most important multimedia offering in Italy, with 14 TV channels streaming live, 17 Web TV channels, eight radio channels, the catch-up of the three main TV channels for seven days, a VOD offering of the TV and radio programs, original Web content, and more. In the first half of 2010, Rai.it (the institutional website) and Rai.tv reached an average of more than 100

“Microsoft was the logical partner to help us handle the heavy demand during live streaming of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which peaked at more than 1 million unique users and 560,000 concurrent users. Through the use of Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming, fans could watch content on demand immediately at the end of each live event, including highlights created during the event.”

Piero Gaffuri, CEO of Rai Net and Head of New Media Department, RAI

Contact InfoMicrosoft Corp.One Microsoft WayRedmond, WA 98052USAhttp://www.microsoft.com

© 2010 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. This document is for information purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Rai Net Utilizes Microsoft Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming for FIFA World Cup and New Replay TV Service

Recently Rai Net launched two new important services:

- 2010 FIFA World Cup: Live streaming and video-on-demand (VOD) content from 2010 FIFA World Cup on Rai Sport and Rai.tv portal

- RAI REPLAY: Last seven days of catch-up TV from three main Rai TV channels

During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Rai Net utilized Microsoft Silverlight and Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming to deliver live and on-demand HD streaming from this event on its Rai Sport and Rai.tv portals.

Below are some pictures from the Rai Sport website dedicated to this event:

During the events, live streaming reached a peak of more than 1 million unique users and up to 560,000 concurrent users. Over 30 days, the Rai portal reached an average of more than 20 million page views and 250,000 unique users per day.

The Rai.tv player is based on the Silverlight Media Framework and permits users to select different camera views of the match during live events. The player also offers a highlights menu where the editors from Rai Net can immediately publish highlight video clips during the match, utilizing the Silverlight Rough Cut Editor and Composite Manifest and using an architecture similar to the one implemented for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

Utilizing the digital video recorder (DVR) capabilities of Smooth Streaming, Rai Net republished the content as video on demand (VOD) immediately at the end of the live event, together with the highlights created during the event.

Users could replay the whole event in VOD streaming and navigate immediately to the most important parts of the match.

The Silverlight Rough Cut Editor (RCE) enabled rapid, light-touch editing of IIS Smooth Streaming video content without the need for re-encoding. By using the RCE during live streaming, within seconds an editor could mark in and mark out the clips needed. Once marked, the clips were available for publishing immediately during or after the event. RCE permits an operator to use the “mark in/mark out” edits acquired from an editor to produce a Composite Manifest. The Composite Manifest combines clips coming from one or more client manifests into a single edited video.

Below is an image of the application that the operator uses to mark in and mark out edits.

When the Smooth Streaming Media Element, part of the IIS Smooth Streaming Client used in the Silverlight Media Framework, uses a composite manifest as its source, it plays the video/audio content as a single stream. The user can fast-forward or rewind across all the segments and navigate to any points in the stream. Timeline markers can be added to include other information in the stream.

During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Rai Net also utilized IIS Media Services 4.0 Beta 1 integrated media platform features to stream the live event to iPad users. The forthcoming version of IIS Media Services will permit use of a single back-end infrastructure to stream to PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone 7 devices. In fact, starting with the H.264 video content received from encoders in the fragmented MP4 format used for Smooth Streaming, IIS Media Services 4.0 is able to transmux (repackage from one file format to another) on the fly to the Apple HTTP Live Adaptive Streaming (m3u8) format compatible with iPhone and iPad. To distribute the content, Rai Net used an HTTP edge content delivery network that pulled from IIS Media Services 4.0 origin servers and distributed the content to both Silverlight and iPad users:

Another important service was recently released from Rai Net: Replay TV service. Replay TV on the Rai.tv website repurposes the past seven days of the three main Rai channels as VOD content delivered with Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming. In addition, 24x7 live streaming is simulcast from the same three channels and also delivered using Silverlight and Smooth Streaming. Below is an image from the Replay TV website on the Rai.tv portal:

This service utilizes the same architecture and technology as was used for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, uses content ingested and archived in IIS Media Services during the 24x7 simulcast streaming being delivered with IIS Smooth Streaming, and permits repurposing the content in VOD.

Below is a picture of customized RCE with Replay TV Content used to edit ingested content and republish a portion of it for the catch-up TV service:

This diagram illustrates the high-level architecture used for both services: