Incited Media was approached by the Democratic National Convention Committee to develop and execute streaming media programming for gavel-to-gavel coverage of the actual on-stage convention while at the same time produce an interactive off-the-podium "back-stage" chat with candidates and key speakers. We were put in charge of encoding and internet access. The goal was to provide www.dems2004.org with on-demand content, live streaming, and off-podium interactive chats so that viewers at home could actually send questions to speakers — all as it happened live.
On-site at the Fleet Center in Boston, Incited built a live and on-demand encoding center to handle 6 live streams with redundant backup, and processing power to handle all of the on-demand media compression that had to be done on the spot. From this location, Incited was able to stream the down-converted high definition Pool feed in 16:9 widescreen as well as produce the chat segments. Also, all video on-demand clips were captured and encoded as they happened by skilled Incited Media technicians.
Chris Gruin, Director of Technology for the Convention said that "Over the course of our four day event, we delivered over 12 terabytes of media to over 1 million streams. Viewers were able to go back and watch speeches they missed, and send interview questions to speakers as they left the podium. We were able to accomplish the most important webcast in the history of the Democratic party, and we couldn't have done it without Incited Media."
