Event Scheduling

M2A Connect will scale infrastructure up and down based on active Events, which may be scheduled or created immediately in the console. This schedule of content is also used in order to control which time slots subscribers can access.

While no content is live and being distributed, M2A Connect will keep running costs to an absolute minimum.

The M2A Connect schedule is made up of Events, with each Event targetting one or more sources. Each event has a start and end time which identifies the content’s time slot. It’s perfectly acceptable for multiple events to overlap.

Remember: an Event is active between its start and end time. When any Events are active for a Source, the Source will also be activated and media will be able to flow. Similarly, when any Event which matches the subscription’s selector is active, the subscriber will be able to receive content from the sources associated with the event.

How to schedule linear content?

Not all content necessarily fits into discrete time-bound events. M2A Connect fully supports linear broadcasting configurations. There are no limits on the length of an Event. Scheduling an Event that runs continuously will mean that it is always active.

You can combine these linear continuous Events with individual time slot Events as well. This might be desirable in cases where you want to keep the Source active 24/7 but only grant Subscribers access to specific time slots. For example, to support round-the-clock monitoring.

For such continuous Events (a 24/7/365 channel), the flexibility of Cloud may initially appear to be lost, but consider that resilience may be added or removed within different Event definitions (for example, prime time, game time, or a certain programme).

How to integrate with existing scheduling systems?

M2A Connect has a public, open API which you can use to integrate with your existing scheduling systems.

Although confident in the simplicity of our open APIs, M2A also offers professional development services and has extensive experience in integrating with both off-the-shelf and bespoke scheduling and metadata systems.

For more information contact sales@m2amedia.tv.

Identifying content using labels

M2A Connect has a powerful metadata system to aid in defining, classifying and identifying events in your schedule. Label metadata can be used by Subscriptions to enable comprehensive rights management.

When creating or editing Sources and adding events to the schedule you have the option to add any number of new or pre-existing labels.

Through their extensibility, Labels are designed to allow you to express your own business rules and content identification schemes. The type and content of Labels you use depend largely on the nature of the content distributed and how your schedules are arranged.

Consider an example of a tennis tournament schedule, with many competitors and multiple rounds, with one Event per match.

Label name	Description	Example label value(s)
player	Each event has two of these labels; one for each player in a match.	djokovic nadal
stage	Identifies the match with the tournament stage.	semi-final final

Given a schedule full of Events with these Labels set, it is easy to see how you can use them to gain tight control over what access is granted to Subscribers. For example, by issuing a subscription which only includes matches featuring Djokovic. Or issuing a Subscription for just the tournament’s final match. Or a combination of both. Through Labels, modelling complex rights agreements across vast schedules is easy. However, even for simplified use cases, labels provide a valuable tool to help keep track of groups of related Events within your content schedule.

Reliable Distribution

M2A Connect uses AWS MediaConnect to provide reliable and flexible global distribution of media without the need for complex agreements, lengthy set-up times or the need to build and operate the solution according to its peak capacity. The high performance technologies which underpin the transport of Source mean that your content reaches your broadcast partners or operations teams securely and with minimal latency and loss of fidelity.

Schedule Events for your Sources and create a subscription to begin distributing a Source.