France 2, France 3 and RFO – French public service broadcasting channels – joined forces to broadcast a live show on the day of the European elections Sunday June 7th.
They chose the TriCaster Broadcast™ to stream this news programme online.

France Televisions is a pioneer when it comes to the IT business and new media: a France Televisions working group has been set for a year or so to try to figure out how new things could be implemented in that area: “We were the first medium to resort to the webcam community for our TV reports. First we recorded what they said, then we broadcast it live,” explains Frédérique-Marie Lamouret, a managing director at France 3. “The first time we did it was during the French presidential elections in 2007. Since then, we’ve kept going and developing way of doing.”

The deadline was very short: they had to set up everything within a few weeks. No doubt the TriCaster could meet the expectations! Visualdis, a NewTek authorized distributor in France provided France Televisions with a TriCaster™, and taught them the basics about NewTek live production studio.

How did things go?

The two-hour live show was a real success!
Beside an OB Van located in Brussels, people could voice their opinion on Skype...

... from Moscow (Russia), Warsaw (Poland), Craiova (Romania), Uppsala (Sweden), Stuttgart (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Nantes (France), Strasbourg (France) and Martinique (French overseas region): a much innovative approach! In the TV studios set in Lyon, the use of the portable live solution helped the TV producers save time and cut expenses – when compared to the use of traditional equipment.

What about the strategy?

Polls enhance the fact that generally speaking younger voters are fierce proponents of the European Union. But they are also the ones who go to the poll the least often: “this live program was aimed at motivating them to go vote,” adds Frédérique-Marie Lamouret, all the more since streaming live on the internet was quite innovative, and Internet has become an extremely trendy medium.

What about LiveSet™ and TriCaster™ virtual studios?

"No need to say our tight schedule made it obvious to resort to virtual studios; we didn’t have enough time to design our own virtual studio,” points out Philippe Didier, a video specialist at France3. “TriCaster is actually the only portable solution on the market that includes virtual studios and is quite affordable at the same time. Therefore it wasn’t long before we decided to pick that one, preferably to any other. ”

Using LiveSet™ virtual studios was very easy: “What you do is you choose the virtual set you want for each part of the program, and then you can shoot.”

The journalists and technical staff were very enthusiastic about the TriCaster: broadcasting live during more than two hours, they insisted on the fact that the programme went off without a hitch!

“It’s absolutely perfect! You can shoot, edit the videos, digitize them and do everything with one single piece of equipment,” concludes Philippe Didier. "The TriCaster is like a mini OB Van that would fit in a box! And the quality-price ratio is great!”

About NewTek & 3D Storm - NewTek Europe

The TriCaster family of products include: TriCaster, TriCaster VM, TriCaster PRO, TriCaster STUDIO and TriCaster BROADCAST which are trademarks of NewTek, Inc.
LightWave CORE, DataLink, TriCaster VM, TimeWarp, LiveControl, SpeedEDIT, VT[5], iVGA, LiveSet, LiveMatte, LiveText, 3D Arsenal and LightWave Rendition are trademarks of NewTek Inc.
LightWave and LightWave 3D are registered trademarks of NewTek.
All other products or brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.