With no office drinks, secret Santa’s, or Christmas jumpers, Team Grabyo turned to the cloud for Christmas Party inspiration.

The Challenge: A global team, 70 employees, and zoom-fatigue. The solution: a one-hour live Grabyo Christmas special.

Looking for a high-quality and low-latency solution, so that the production team could enjoy the reactions and real-time feedback of our global audience, Grabyo turned to its own Producer product. Requiring just a laptop and a web-browser, our 4 co-hosts could join the broadcast from their homes using a URL. No upfront cost or additional hardware was required, enabling a quick and agile live production. The show was broadcast to the whole company around the world, using Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS).

Using Grabyo Producer, the team created a one-hour live broadcast for all of Team Grabyo to enjoy from their homes. This included live segments, as well as VOD content played throughout the hour. Content featured talent shows, lip sync battles, and a poem from the CEO. All VOD content was created using Grabyo Editor. This was played alongside the live element of the show including a live raffle draw, a live DJ set, and guest commentary.

To set the festive scene, graphics and custom layouts were inserted into the broadcast whilst Christmas music was played in the background.

The broadcast was produced with the help of Grabyo Producer’s new multiviewer, allowing the director to view multiple inputs on a single screen. Simultaneously there was a watch party for all guests hosted on Google Hangouts.

The show was streamed using AWS IVS. The high-quality and low-latency service is simple to set up and manage. The team just needed to create an IVS channel, embed the HTML code to the microsite, then push the program out of Grabyo Producer directly to the IVS channel. The service is pay per use creating a low-cost and scalable broadcast.

As we move into 2021 with more virtual events on the horizon, this type of in-house testing will allow us to deploy these solutions for broadcasters, content owners and publishers across the globe.

Happy Holidays from Team Grabyo!