BBackground: Bringing Live Music to the Big Screen
The Ateneika Festival, one of Italy’s most vibrant live music and cultural events, brought together performers, audiences, and large-scale stage productions in an energetic open-air environment. To ensure that live performances could be delivered smoothly to on-site big screens and supporting systems, the festival required a reliable video transmission solution capable of handling real-time signals in a dynamic live event setting.
Challenge: Reliable Real-Time Video Transmission in a Live Festival Environment
Live music festivals present unique technical challenges. Video signals from the stage must be transmitted in real time with minimal latency, while maintaining stable image quality across large screens. At the same time, outdoor environments and temporary setups demand equipment that is easy to deploy, flexible, and dependable, without relying on complex PC-based systems.
For Ateneika Festival, the production team needed a solution that could efficiently encode and distribute live video signals, support different signal formats, and operate reliably throughout continuous performances—all while keeping the overall system simple and manageable for the on-site technical crew.
Solution: ZowieBox as a Professional IP Encoder & Decoder
ZowieBox was deployed as the central IP video encoder and decoder within the festival’s live streaming system. By encoding live video signals from the stage into high-quality IP streams, ZowieBox enabled smooth real-time transmission to the large on-site display screens, ensuring that audiences could enjoy every performance clearly and without interruption.
Designed as an all-in-one hardware solution, ZowieBox operates without the need for a PC, allowing the production team to start encoding and decoding with simple, intuitive control. Its support for a wide range of professional protocols—including NDI, NDI|HX, RTMP, RTMPS, SRT, and RTSP—provided the flexibility required to adapt to the festival’s live production workflow.
ZowieBox’s high-performance encoder and decoder architecture ensured stable, low-latency transmission throughout the event, even during long performance sessions. The device also supports seamless pass-through, allowing the original signal to be monitored locally while simultaneously being encoded for IP distribution. This made it easier for the technical team to manage live feeds on site without additional hardware.
Thanks to its compact and portable design, ZowieBox could be quickly deployed within the temporary festival setup, reducing installation time and simplifying cable management. The browser-based control interface allowed operators to monitor and adjust streaming parameters from a computer or mobile device, further improving on-site efficiency.
Outcome: Smooth, Professional Live Streaming Throughout the Festival
With ZowieBox integrated into the live production system, the Ateneika Festival achieved stable, smooth, and professional-grade video streaming across its on-stage displays. The solution helped deliver the energy and atmosphere of each performance directly to the audience, enhancing the overall festival experience.
By simplifying the encoding and decoding workflow while maintaining high reliability, ZowieBox proved to be a practical and effective solution for live music events. The success of its deployment at the Ateneika Festival highlights how IP-based video technology can support modern live productions with greater flexibility and efficiency.
