According to Make.tv its platform allows broadcasters to acquire content from live events or news scenes (whether its taken by a staff photographer or "Joe on the street" shooting video from his iPhone or GoPro) and plug it into a live broadcast within minutes. This has never been possible before as its too much of a drain on the broadcaster's own infrastructure. The secret is enabling it all to happen in the cloud.

With the Live Video Cloud, broadcasters can receive unlimited feeds from both amateurs and professionals, sent straight into their studio via a mobile app, and then curate and view all the feeds at once, select the content they want to use, and broadcast it out to their audience seamlessly and within minutes, it says.

"We wanted to give producers the most comprehensive view possible of all user-generated content coming in through our app so that they can choose the best footage possible for live segments," said Andreas Jacobi, CEO, Make.tv. “Whether our customers are broadcasting live TV news segments or capturing audience participation for a reality program, our Live Video Cloud platform enables broadcasters to acquire relevant content fast and more cost efficiently from anybody, anywhere.”

The Cologne, Germany tech provider explains that using the free #Streamtag app for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, news sources and user-groups from anywhere in the world can shoot footage from breaking news scenes, festivals, events or live TV programs, and stream it live to newsrooms and other production environments where it can be instantly edited and posted into a production segment in an efficient and manageable way. Producers can also choose to acquire feeds from different sources like Periscope or Facebook Live and stream them to Live Video Cloud using a specific hashtag.

The following are components of the Live Video Cloud platform:

Make.tv Acquire is a workflow plugin that enables communication between producer and contributor. It allows producers to monitor live or uploaded video streams, communicate via intercom or chat with the contributor, route streams to live outputs, browse by production, contributor or location and receive upload notifications.

Make.tv Selector is a video router within the cloud that also acts as a sub-switch, enabling broadcasters to ingest, curate and route large amounts of live footage through the system, “on a scale that's never been done before.” Broadcasters can browse through unlimited input/output streams, communicate via chat or intercom with contributors, route videos into newsrooms or live production environments and push outputs to video platforms or content delivery networks (CDN) directly.

#Streamtag mobile app converts any smartphone or tablet into a system camera and enables users to configure third party devices. The app features high quality live streaming, camera mode with tally light, chat & integrated intercom, file management and upload queue, external device configuration via ingest URLs and optional multi-angle in-app viewing of video contributions.