The Business of Live Media

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Plaid Nation Indianapolis from Plaid Nation on Vimeo.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Follow USAC Racing Live

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:51:00 +0000

Centennial Era Reflections

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:04:00 +0000

New Indianapolis Motor Speedway Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:48:00 +0000

A look at the 61-year legacy of legendary Public Address announcer Tom Carnegie at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Testing Photosynth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:19:00 +0000

Doing some testing with Photosynth.

Follow IMS through Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Twitter is a great tool for passive conversation. For me, it has been a great way to keep track of friends and follow people in the industry.

IMS plans to provide regular information about events, tickets, promotions, IMS trivia and much more through its Twitter feed, with opportunities for interaction with fans.

Check it out and follow all of the excitement going on at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during it's Centennial Anniversary.

Online Racing Community Continues To Grow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:04:00 +0000

The Indy 500 Online Community continues to grow and is quickly becoming the Internets largest online racing community. As the Indianapolis Motor Speedway approaches it's Centennial Anniversary, participation continues to increase.

Look for a number of updates to the community section. As always, any ideas you have we want to hear them.

Live video streaming for USAC continues

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:27:00 +0000

The exciting action for USAC racing was streamed this year using Flash Media Server. USAC has a Live Pit Pass application http://www.usacracing.com/usac_live that lists how to follow all of the racing.

There will be a couple of enhancements to the player next year. FMS will still be the streaming application for next year. The quality will be upgraded to H264. Make sure you tune in and watch the races.

Centennial Era Around The Corner

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:20:00 +0000

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Centennial Era starts Jan 1. We are collecting everything from photos, videos, comments, Blogs, etc.. Please keep this information coming.

We are in the process of making this data easier to sort and access for everybody. This will be the largest collection of data for racing on the internet. A big thanks to everybody who is helping build this historical racing collection.

Go here to see where you can contribute to this collection.

Retail Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:08:00 +0000

Still in catch up mode for the Blog. The IMS Retail store front was updated the week before Thanksgiving to get everything ready for the Holiday sales.

We are in the process of adding additional integration with Search Marketing, Directory Listings and enhanced site integrations.

I am still looking at a associate programs. If there are any good ones out there drop me a line.

Our store is being upgraded to be open ended. This means that 3rd party suppliers will be able to sell their products through our store much like what Amazon.com has set up through there stores.

Investigating Wowza and the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:53:00 +0000

Next week I am going to investigate Wowza Media Server Pro Unlimited for Amazon EC2 (beta) and how it stacks up to Adobe's FMIS on the EC2 instances.

For 2008, FMIS did a good job streaming out our live T&S along with video. FMIS has a solid package that is easy to deploy in a small or large scale environment. The Origin/Edge configuration worked smoothly. There were a few odd instances on the edges from time to time but overall it did the job.

The reason we looking to move away from FMIS is because of price. FMIS is $4,500 per license. This is a good price if you use one server consistently. The price adds up quickly when you have to stream out tens of thousands of concurrent streams.

Adobe doesn't have an EC2 pay model. It makes no sense why not because most live events are large and don't happen daily. Using a per server license model isn't cost effective for scalable live events. One of the huge advantages of Cloud Computing is scalability and Adobe currently doesn't take advantage of this.

Wowza has a model for the EC2 (http://www.wowzamedia.com/ec2.php). The real question will be how easily it is to port our FMS setup to Wowza. If it is relatively easy, I can see a lot of businesses looking at Wowza.

If anybody else has had success using Wowza on EC2, I would like to hear your comments.

Head in the Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:58:00 +0000

Looking back at 2008, we made some huge changes on the technical side of our websites. The biggest change was the move to Cloud Computing. There are different types of cloud computing offered by various companies so I will only speak to Amazon's Web Services.

Our biggest challenge each year is to gear up for the month of May. Each year traffic increases 200% - 300%. Leasing hardware for one month is very expensive. The other issue we had was finding the right amount of hardware to handle the Indy Racing League events. ISP's and CDN's had partial solutions but nobody had the right combination to handle bursts of traffic for short durations of time during live events.

The complete solution for live events turned out to be Cloud Computing. Specifically, EC2 instances running Linux/Unix. Cloud allowed us to do 3 critical components for us. 1. Scalability, 2. Reliability 3. Massive Storage.

1. Scalability -- EC2 is broken down into instances ranging from small instances to xtra large instances. These instances are based on different configurations of memory, CPU and storage. These instances are rented by the hour which makes it very cost effective for our live events.

Scalability is nice but it is even more important to quickly scale up during events. A moving variable for us is not knowing how many users will watch events live. TV not showing an event causes a large increase in online viewer ship although that has leveled off with the adaptation of broadband over the past few years.

Our ingenious staff has been able to replicate and deploy these instances within 15 minutes. Down from 24 hours back in April. We monitor traffic levels during the events so we know when to start up new instances when we hit certain levels of traffic. This flexibility has allowed us to go to the next level of entertainment for our fans.

The EC2's have been used for our websites, Live T&S and Live video streaming.

2. Reliability -- CDN's do a great job handling large amounts of traffic. The biggest drawback is you have to estimate how much traffic you will have each year. This is difficult to do and if you underestimate then you are basically penalized by paying more for each Gig thereafter.

What Cloud Computing offers is basically an all in one package. You get the benefits of and ISP combined with a CDN. (Note: You don't get all the benefits you would normally get with a CDN). I am not sure what CDN Amazon uses or even if they use one. The bottom line is the experience didn't change enough to require a CDN.

Amazon's infrastructure has been reliable given the importance of delivering live data on a large scale.

3. Massive Storage -- A service called S3. S3 can be used as a stand alone service or tied into the EC2 services. We use it for both. S3 has been great for a backup large scale storage solution. Hopefully by the end of 2009, the entire Indianapolis Motor Speedway image library will be on the S3 service.

This is just a very brief overview of a technical shift we embraced for 2008 and have grown it throughout the year. The 2009 season will see a number of enhancements and new developments based on cloud computing that we could have never done before.

It has been awhile!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:49:00 +0000

I haven't blogged since last April but will be picking up again as we get ready for the new season.
For those interested in how we do Live Events, I will continue to discuss our progress and the technologies we use.
I am always interested in comments and ideas on how to improve the user experience so feel free to leave comments.

Indy 500 Media Tour Live

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:57:00 +0000

We are showing the Indy 500 Media Tour live April 07-08. For this event we have switched back to our old player which is using Windows Media Player and only works in IE. We have a single cam focused on the podium.
This event is being broadcasts using the VideoXpress capture card. I wasn't sure how well that would work but it seems to do a decent job. Below is the schedule of events.

Tuesday, April 8

9 a.m. “Breakfast With Tony George”

What: Opening Remarks and Q&A

Participant: Tony George, CEO, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

9:30 a.m. “Getting Ready For Indy”

What: Q&A Focused on IndyCar Series’ Preparations for the “500”

Participants: Brian Barnhart, IndyCar Series President, Competition & Operations Division

Terry Angstadt, IndyCar Series President, Commercial Division

10 a.m. “Previewing The 92^nd Running Of The Indianapolis 500”

What: Month of May Overview and Q&A

Participant: Joie Chitwood, President and COO, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

3 p.m. “Racing, Dancing And Winning!”

What: Q&A with Team Penske

Participants: Tim Cindric, President, Penske Performance, Inc.

Helio Castroneves, Driver and Two-Time Indianapolis 500 Winner

Ryan Briscoe, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Veteran

4 p.m. “Returning With Experience And Youth”

What: Q&A with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing

Participants: Graham Rahal, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

Justin Wilson, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

Brian Lisles, Team Manager

Wednesday, April 9

9 a.m. “A Champion Returns”

What: Q&A with Emerson Fittipaldi

Participant: Emerson Fittipaldi, Two-time Indianapolis 500 Champion and 2008 Indy 500 Pace Car Driver

10 a.m. “Chevy Pace Car Program”

Participants: Terry Dolan, Marketing Director, Chevrolet Racing

Emerson Fittipaldi, Two-Time Indianapolis 500 Winner and 2008 Pace Car Driver

Joie Chitwood, President and COO, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

12:45 p.m. “Indy – The Ultimate Conquest”

What: Q&A with Conquest Racing

Participants: Eric Bachelart, Team Owner

Franck Perera, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

Enrique Bernoldi, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

1:30 p.m. “Reporting For Duty, Sir!

What: Q&A with Panther Racing

Participants: John Barnes, Team Co-Owner

Vitor Meira, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Veteran

Major General Martin Umbarger, Adjutant General, Indiana National Guard

2 p.m. “What Time Is Tea In Texas?”

What: Q&A with A.J. Foyt Racing’s Darren Manning

Participant: Darren Manning, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Veteran

2:30 p.m. “Indy Is The Target”

What: Q&A with Target Chip Ganassi Racing

Participants: Chip Ganassi, Team Owner

Mike Hull, Managing Director

Dan Wheldon, Driver and 2005 Indianapolis 500 Winner, 2005 IndyCar Series Champion

Scott Dixon, Driver and 2003 IndyCar Series Champion

Alex Lloyd, Driver and 2007 Firestone Indy Lights Champion

3:15 p.m. “Welcome Aboard”

What: Q&A with KV Racing Technology

Participants: Oriol Servia, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

Will Power, Driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie

Mark Johnson, General Manager

IndyCar Testing Day 2 from Homestead

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Day two of the testing went well. A number of updates are being made right now. Tomorrow we will be putting connectivity into the production truck. Then we will be setting up the video encoders and sending a test feed back to WhiteBlox.

IndyCar Testing from Homestead

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:20:00 +0000

IndyCar testing continues for the Champ Car teams at Homestead. The new Live T&S application is running very well. Due to an issue with licenses, we may have the older HTML T&S system running on indycar.com. The new Live T&S system will run on indy500.com so take your pick.

Really wish I had video to shoot down here of the testing. Video testing won't start with the new HD equipment until Wed. That is too close for my comfort.

New Indy 500 Website Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:12:00 +0000

As you know, we have updated the Red Bull Indy GP website http://www.redbullindianapolisgp.com/. We are now updating the 500 site. It will have the same look and concept as the Red Bull site. All of the Indy sites will soon have this look.

As always, the underlying goal of the site is fan first. The community elements to the 500 will be part of the roll out. We have already started this process with the submit your 500 stories that will be in the program if selected. (Post your story here)

The backend admin will control all of the sites independently. This is a major undertaking as you can imagine but important. We will be able to cross promote these elements when needed. I hope to get it rolled out by the first race at Homestead but that may be wishful thinking.

Share your Indy 500 Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:06:00 +0000

The beginning of our evolving community is asking users to share their 500 memories.

The Indianapolis 500 has created countless memories for generations of race fans, whether it was side-by-side action among Indy legends, a family reunion in the grandstands or being awed by the pageantry of pre-race ceremonies.

The cool part is a selection of written submissions and photos from fans will be published in the 2008 Indianapolis 500 Official Program that will be sold at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the Month of May. This is a great way to give back to the fans that have supported the 500 over the years.

This is a small piece to what we will be working with fans to create as we evolve in the social media space.

Click here to post your story

Danica Fastest At Open Test. Online has a tough start.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:32:00 +0000

Danica topped the speed chart today at the Homestead Open Test just edging out Ryan Briscoe. It was a busy few days to say the least.

First, the video streaming of the Unification conference. We had just two days to put it together and get it ready. Even though I have done live events hundreds of times, testing is still critical because of all the variables. Connectivity, video lines, audio, etc... makes things complicated so testing the day before is important.

We went with the laptop encoding solution instead of the rack mounted equipment. We needed to be portable because this was a last minute deal. The feed we picked up in Indy was coming in from Homestead Florida over satellite.

The only issue we had was the audio came in hot and I didn't have a mixer to adjust it. Everything else went off with no problem. I am more impressed with the ease of use of the laptop.

We had over 128,547 total minutes viewed and the average time spent watching was 31 minutes. This again shows people will spend time watching content they are interested in.

After the press conference we had to turn to the live timing and scoring application. This is where things went down hill quickly. We maxed out our application license within an hour. We did not anticipate that much traffic. We spent the night dusting off the old application and bringing it out. We were still able to get the new version tested with the help of users at TrackForum. At the end of the second day, we had most of the issues worked out.

The next test will come next Monday at Sebring. There won't be any video streaming but the live T&S application will be tested again. This time it will be the full blown race mode version.

Indy Car Series Homestead Open Test

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:54:00 +0000

We are ready for the Indy Car Series Homestead Open Test. From a development standpoint, this will be our first time to test our new applications in a live environment. These include:

New Live T&S in Flash -- This will be our biggest test. It has been built from the ground up. Zach Crowe did a great job developing this piece. He will be using a wireless Spring Card to send the data. As you know, bandwidth is the challenge with any wireless card on a continuous basis. Sometimes you live or die by those cards.

Live Video -- There won't be live video of cars on track at the Open Test.

indy500.com -- We will be trying something new this year. The Indy 500 site will follow the Indy Car Series this year. Check out the site for updates.

Some of our staff will fly out on Wed and have only a few short hours to set up and get everything ready to go. It will be an interesting week.

Live T&S w/ Data

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:49:00 +0000

Here is a sample of the Live T&S with data. It is from the Miami 100 Pro Series race.

indycar.com Live T&S application

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:47:00 +0000

The new IndyCar Live T&S system has completed the last phase of updates. It will be rolled out next week for the Open Test at Homestead.

This version will be Flash driven. In the past, we used an HTML version that would refresh every 15 seconds or so. We did it this way so it would be compatible with most browsers. The obvious problem is the data was delayed and at times would appear odd.

The new Flash version will give real time data. You will also be able to choose Lap Times. This is a significant upgrade over previous version. We will continue to update it throughout the year.

The back end infrastructure will consist of using multiple Flash servers at a CDN. This will increase response time and allow us to expand when needed.

New Additons

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:20:00 +0000

We went live with a couple more additions to the MotoGP site. The biggest one is the User system. This will evolve into an important tool for users and we grow the number of applications on the site.

User management system – Fans can register to create an account. Right now a registered user has the ability to Edit Email & Password, Information, Options and Avatar. You also get to view your submitted Designs and Photos. This is also where you will Tag your submissions.

Tags and Tag Clouds – As I wrote about a few days ago, the tagging system is now live.

RSS Feeds – Along with News we now have Design It Latest Additions, Bikes and Helmets.

Design It Tag Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:50:00 +0000

Tomorrow we will be adding a Tag Cloud feature to the Design It section. I always find it interesting when we can pull information from the users and display it. Tag Clouds are a unique and interesting way to highlight user information.

In the Design It section http://www.redbullindianapolisgp.com/community/designit/ , the Cloud shows what users add to their designs. Honda, NKG, JRF, Motul, Yamaha and Red Bull are companies of interest for them. This starts to bring awareness to these brands and speaks volumes about these companies. Not only are users spending time with these brands (this has to be the dream of every brand) but these brands are being displayed to millions of onlookers. This comes at no cost to the companies.

We will be adding clouds to different sections of the website and it will be important to understand what the users are telling us.

Hopefully this cloud concept will grow and produce even more appealing information over the next few months.