Artika, “il Polo delle Arti”, brings theatre to streaming: on-demand and live drama, musicals, operetta and opera, for people who cannot be in the theatre, for students who use the archive for teaching and for companies, who gain a new revenue channel.
We designed and built it with a fully managed video pipeline: upload, conversion, subtitles, moderation and delivery to viewers.
What we did
Design
Web development
Cloud architecture
Client
ITDM
Sector
Performing arts
Timeline
2021-2022
Cloud
AWS Ireland
Funding
Cultura Crea
4Pipelines
video, subtitles, moderation, copyright
7AWS services
built into the platform
3Plans
subscription plans
6Sources
video sources per live event
Features
What Artika does
Catalogue by theatre genre
Search and featured titles
Artika Originals productions
HLS player with subtitles
Live shows, up to six cameras
Free preview, then subscribe
Upload of videos and librettos
Statistics for their shows
PDF statements
Payout requests
Automatic video moderation
Tailor-made moderation model
Publish, reject or block
Email alerts on pending videos
Managing users and companies
Managing live shows and payments
Free, with a 15-day trial
Monthly and yearly, locked price
PayPal payments, PDF receipts
Change or cancel anytime
Architecture on AWS
From upload to streaming
We built the platform on Amazon Web Services managed services, in the Ireland region: this is the journey of every show.
UploadVideos and librettos go to Amazon S3 from the browser, with signed links valid for two minutes.
ConversionAWS Elemental MediaConvert creates the HLS stream and the thumbnails.
SubtitlesAmazon Transcribe detects the language and writes the subtitles.
ModerationAmazon Rekognition checks the footage before publication.
StreamingAmazon CloudFront delivers videos and thumbnails to viewers.
In detail
The AWS services
Amazon S3
The archive for all media: source videos, librettos, HLS streams, thumbnails and subtitles. Uploads go straight from the browser through short-lived signed URLs, without going through the server.
AWS Elemental MediaConvert
Conversion to HLS with the CMAF container: variable-quality H.264 video up to 5 Mbps, stereo AAC audio, 10-second segments, encryption of the stored files and up to 10 thumbnails at 1280×720.
Amazon CloudFront
The content delivery network that brings video streams and thumbnails to viewers, close to where they are.
Amazon Transcribe
Automatic audio transcription with detection of the spoken language: subtitles come out in VTT format, ready for the player.
Amazon Rekognition
Asynchronous video moderation: labels with a confidence of at least 80% block publication and alert the administrator. For Artika we also trained a tailor-made Custom Labels model.
Amazon SES
Eight transactional emails: account activation, password recovery, alerts on content and payments.
Amazon RDS (MySQL)
The managed database with users, companies, content, live events and payments. The NestJS API collects subtitle and moderation results every minute.
Technologies
The technology stack
Layer 01
Frontend
The viewers’ site and the video player
PHP
Laminas
hls.js
Plyr
HTML5
CSS3
Layer 02
Backend
The APIs for content, users and payments
NestJS
TypeScript
TypeORM
Swagger
JWT
Layer 03
Cloud AWS
The video pipeline and managed services
S3
MediaConvert
CloudFront
Transcribe
Rekognition
SES
RDS
Layer 04
Data and payments
Database, subscriptions and receipts
MySQL
PayPal
PDF
Results
Theatre reaches where there is no theatre
Theatre anywhere, on any screen
New revenue for companies
An archive for teaching
Automatic video moderation
Images
The subscriptions
From the home page viewers choose their plan: free with a 15-day trial, monthly or yearly.
Contact us
Have a project in mind? Let’s talk about it.
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