With Dejero, Salt + Light Catholic Media Foundation Provides Exclusive Live Coverage of World Youth Day From Brazil
KITCHENER, Ontario(24 Sep 2013)
Dejero, award-winning creator of the industry's most powerful and versatile platform of cellular newsgathering products, today announced that its technology enabled the Salt + Light Catholic Media Foundation to broadcast almost 60 hours of live coverage for World Youth Day (WYD) 2013. Held July 23-28 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, WYD drew more than three million people, many of them from around the world, for six days of festivities with the participation of Pope Francis in many activities, including the welcome celebration, the Way of the Cross, the Saturday Vigil, and final closing Mass of WYD Rio on Sunday.
"The stable and reliable cellular bonding capabilities of the Dejero systems were the vital link in our ability to provide exclusive live coverage of World Youth Day, an event that has great significance for young Catholics everywhere," said Javier Capella, technical operations manager, Salt + Light Media Foundation. "The alternative was to use satellite links, but the high costs of daily truck rental plus uplinking from South America would have severely limited our broadcast. Instead, we were able to offer at least 12 hours of high-quality HD video every day. It was tremendously inspiring to see so many young people gathered together for this event, and because we were able to offer so much coverage, we were able to capture the excitement and bring home the experience to many more people around the world."
For the first four days of WYD, Salt + Light broadcast from its studio in the Vivo Rio, a conference center for English-speaking attendees. The rest of the week's coverage originated from the WYD Media Center as the event geared up for the visit from the pontiff. In both locations, Capella explained, the Internet and cell coverage was not always optimal -- but Dejero's adaptive bitrate encoding and ability to bond cell and Wi-Fi signals ensured adequate bandwidth for transmission.
Dejero LIVE+ 20/20 transmitters in both locations captured live signals from studio shows interspersed with recorded video from two mobile Salt + Light news teams that were conducting on-the-street interviews and covering remote events. From there, the Dejero equipment transmitted the signal to master control at Salt + Light's headquarters in Toronto, where a Dejero LIVE+ broadcast server supplied the main feed to Canadian cable operators and Internet service providers in other countries. "With cellular bonding capabilities that are consistently reliable, stable, and deliver high-quality results, the Dejero transmitters met our requirements perfectly," Capella said. "The systems worked flawlessly and gave us a strong comfort level, which is so critical for live broadcasting."
In addition to the LIVE+ 20/20 transmitters, Capella had Dejero's LIVE+ mobile app installed on his iPhone(R). This enabled him to record video to be used in promos for upcoming programs on the WYD schedule from key locations in Rio, such as the landmark Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain. "We could use the app to send the files to Toronto before lunch, and by afternoon the network was distributing promos that I had recorded that morning," Capella said. "Our Toronto teams were quite impressed with the immediacy of the technology."
"Since its inception, World Youth Day has attracted many millions around the globe -- and this year marked Pope Francis' first trip abroad since being elected. Therefore, we were very excited when Salt + Light approached us with the opportunity to provide transmission capabilities for the event," said Brian Cram, CEO, Dejero. "World Youth Day provided a very unique and highly visible opportunity for us to demonstrate the versatility and reliability of our technologies for delivering broadcast-quality signals from remote locations."
For more information about Dejero and the Dejero LIVE+ Platform, visit www.dejero.com.
About Salt + Light
Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation is a not-for-profit, charitable organization whose goal is to use modern media in its many forms as a tool to connect Catholics to their faith. The organization's first initiative was to establish a new digital television channel, Canada's first national Catholic television Network, Salt + Light Television in July 2003. Today, Salt + Light's award-winning digital network offers a variety of programs, event coverage, series, documentaries, and other hope-filled content on a range of cable and satellite carriers in Canada, and throughout the world via online streaming and on-demand videos.
Salt + Light is under the direction of his Chief Executive Officer Father Thomas M. Rosica, CSB. Fr. Rosica was invited by the Vatican to join the staff of the Holy See Press Office and serve as one of the official spokespersons for the transition in the papacy. Appearing at daily news briefings and giving over 160 interviews in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German to news networks and media outlets from around the world, Fr. Rosica also assisted the Vatican in the daily English briefing during WYD Rio. For more information, visit www.saltandlighttv.org.
About Dejero
Dejero offers the most extensive and versatile range of bonded wireless uplink solutions for mobile newsgathering. Winner of numerous industry awards, the Dejero LIVE+ Platform and its patent-pending Intelligent Connection Management combine adaptive bitrate encoding with the latest advancements in 3G and 4G LTE mobile technologies -- making electronic newsgathering as immediate, portable, reliable, and cost-effective as possible. From any location around the world, the LIVE+ Platform enables both traditional and online broadcasters to transmit high-quality HD or SD live video using a variety of mobile devices, including professional-grade rugged transmitters, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Dejero LIVE+ products can be set up anywhere in seconds to broadcast live to television viewers, stream to the Web, transmit recorded video for later use, share video content with other organizations, or send files remotely. Innovative engineering from wireless experts combined with input from many of the world's top broadcasters has produced the Dejero LIVE+ Platform. Dejero is based in Kitchener, Ontario.