In November 2023, the bright-sparks over at James Hype’s Official Discord Server decided they wanted to put on a global event to celebrate their continual and exponential growth and of course Christmas. And what better way to do it, than by hosting a 12 hour, back-to-back multi host livestream event featuring ONLY HYPEFAM Discord Members. But with over 10,000 members, there were several hurdles to consider, not to mention a successful way of linking multiple streamers spread across the Globe into a single stream!
Truth be told, it was this very event that created the seed for Ammedia Digital. The scale of the task at hand, with less than two months to complete, was enormous and the more we investigated the concept, the more obstacles appeared that needed to be overcome. Nevertheless, we’re never ones to shy away from a challenge – so we hit it head on, working with the HYPEFAM.global Community!
The Brief
The brief was multi-part for this one. Firstly, they needed a solution to receive and host 20 minutes DJ submission videos and provide a facility for their members to vote for there favourites (whilst limiting the number of votes). Then there was the receipt and collation of votes to provide a leaderboard and that was all before the actual streaming infrastructure. So what exactly did they need?
Event Preparation
- A facility for DJs to upload and submit 20 minute demo mix videos to a DJ contest.
- A method and location to publicly post DJ submissions.
- A method for Discord Members to vote for their favourite submission (Maximum of 12 votes per Member).
- A method for the collating and monitoring/management of votes.
- The provision of a leaderboard to monitor the DJ contest.
- A public-facing website/webpage to advertise and promote the event.
Streaming Solution
- The ability to stream multiple sources (A/V) from multiple locations into a single stream.
- Creation of a suitable streaming account for the output.
- Ability to communicate with Pre/Current/Post streamers.
- Ability to provide global and individual messages, warnings and alerts to Pre/Current/Post streamers.
- Ability to seamlessly switch from streamer to the next with no loss of audio/visual.
- Ability to pre-test multiple stream sources prior to the event.
- Ability to overlap dedicated graphics, stingers and audio tags at any point during the stream.
- Ability to locally record each stream for future Video-on-Demand (VoD).
Quite a brief all things considered, and with less than 8 weeks to complete it, we rose to the challenge and developed our GoSTREAM solution which is now available for all!
The Solution
We tackled this one in three parts.
The first was the creation of a bespoke website solution (which you can read more about here). The website and our Events and Voting modules would take care of the DJ submissions, member login and authentication and front-end voting.
The second was a bespoke Discord bot to monitor and maintain votes and provide a leaderboard view and final results. In the event, this was crucial to monitor and reject and fraudulent voting!
And finally, a BETA version of our GoSTREAM solution provided a dedicated RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) service running on a local device at one of our UK locations to facilitate the consolidated stream which was then pushed to their Twitch channel. The GoSTREAM solution includes a 'traffic-light' warning and notification system along with direct and global messaging to pre/current/post streamers allowing them to quickly see either via a web browser or OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) the status of their stream.
Boxes ticked and the guys absolutely SMASHED the event streaming for a combined total of just over 13 hours with the only technical issues coming from connectivity into the service from the streamers themselves.
Check out Go STREAM