NASA counts on Teradek and RED to stream the solar eclipse

Five Cube encoders and the Core cloud encoding platform enabled five different NASA video sources to be distributed to 18 different online destinations, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Ustream, among others.

NASA has broadcast the solar eclipse of last August 21 to its web and to the main online platforms using Teradek encryption technology.

The US space agency reached the highest one-day audience on its site, reaching 53.3 million, with 33 million page views on its microsite. Eclipse Live. These figures represent seven times the audience of the last milestone in terms of traffic that was the flight of New Horizon to Pluto. Without a doubt, this was by far the most successful dissemination operation ever achieved by the space administration.

Teradek supplied all the material for the live Internet broadcast. NASA had five Cube encoders and one Core account for cloud encoding working with five different video sources that were distributed to a total of eighteen different online destinations, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Ustream.

NASA's goal was to publish five different eclipse programs for the world, including three telescope sources (H-Alpha, Calcium-K, White Light), a feed with processed images and, of course, regular NASA coverage. In this way, online viewers had different viewing options for the event.

RED Dragon

At NASA's mobile solar observatory (designed specifically for this event), SUNLab, the three telescope optics fed their images to three RED Dragon 6K cameras, which fed all HD-SDI video channels after color grading according to an LUT. Each of these channels was routed to Cube's stream encoders, which transported them to NASA's Core management platform.

The Dragon sensor offers a resolution of up to 6K, equivalent to 19 MP, which provides the sharpness of a DSLR camera in a cinematographic format 9 times greater than HD. In addition, it allows slow motion recording at 100fps even in 6K, reaching up to 300fps in 2K.

In addition to having a very wide dynamic range, it offers the possibility of recording HDR video in Raw, reaching up to 18 steps. With the advantage of being a modular camera, very small in its original size, it is customizable with a multitude of accessories.

The fourth source was a processed video image of the eclipse, which was corrected through a computer and launched from another Cube. This source was shipped to the same Core platform as well.

The main program was the fifth feed, which was edited and finalized through a production switcher before being sent to NASA's captioning system. From there, a distribution amplifier pushed power to the Cube, which carried the signal to the Core.

Using Core's cloud-based simulcasting functionality, the five streams were delivered to eighteen different destinations, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Periscope, and many others, with over 3 Petabytes of data transmitted.

On this occasion, NASA decided to forego traditional television broadcasts and instead distributed its special programming from the Great American Eclipse simultaneously on multiple platforms. The effect was twofold: online streaming helped NASA EDGE keep its streaming costs minimal while publishing on platforms that most people use. Additionally, streaming to these platforms meant that most people had access to the videos on Monday morning, when people at work or school have more access to mobile and OTT devices.