From conferences, corporate events, award shows to concerts, COVID-19 has turned the events industry upside down. With live events being canceled overnight, event organizers are being forced to rethink their business models. This was certainly the case for Pixel Nation, a South African live events specialist whose business disappeared from under its feet in a matter of days when lockdown started.

Pixel Nation Directors, Mike Fynn and Bradley Hilton explain that the team had to act quickly to meet the needs of its clients by creating a new virtual offering. With most of the equipment already in place and the purchase of a green screen studio, Pixel Nation has already worked on over 40 events across six continents over the past three months providing corporate clients from the finance, auto, and enterprise sector with a unique way of delivering their messages through engaging, interactive virtual events.

A New Approach

Using their live compositing technologies in combination with SRT, Pixel Nation has created 3-dimensional, virtual conferencing studio experiences that make it appear as though its clients’ presenters are working from a customized and professional space. Pixel Nation’s solution allows for bi-directional communications, teleporting speakers from around the world to look like they’re together and interacting on the same stage, even though the reality is that they’re often in different countries.

Pixel Nation creates every graphic and visual element involved in an event or broadcast of any size and its content and graphic design department manages 3D animation, video shooting and editing, working together with its playback engineers to bring its clients’ show to life.

Bradley notes that the efficiencies realized through virtual events such as eliminating the cost of transporting equipment, set up time and costs of venues as well as the travel costs for presenters is enabling them to offer their clients a premium service at a more affordable price point with the potential to reach a far wider audience all whilst capturing digital analytics.

And what’s enabling all this? SRT.

SRT is Changing the Game

Before discovering SRT, Pixel Nation was relying on RTMP for live video transport but was experiencing issues with buffering and latency which did not match the premium solution it was offering its clients. After doing lots of research with its partner Streamworks, the team tested SRT and was amazed by the results.

“During the 40 events we’ve done using SRT, it has been extremely reliable, even across slow internet connections, we’ve not had a single complaint about the quality or latency of the streams we’re providing. SRT has literally saved our lives, the difference in quality, reliability, and latency from RTMP is night and day. When we’re running our shows, we’re no longer worried about connectivity issues, SRT gives us the peace of mind we need – it’s been a huge game-changer for us.”

Mike goes on to explain “In fact, our corporate clients are coming back for more and we really believe that SRT’s incredible technology has enabled the success and growth of our company during these challenging times. We’re so confident that the demand for this new service is set to continue we’re investing and moving to new premises to meet the needs of our clients.”