HCTV webTV

At the beginning of 2008, we had the first version of our Web TV Platform in our hands. We heard that the Hospital das Clínicas was interested in creating a WebTV. It was not difficult to persuade the HC staff to hire us: at that time, we were the only ones with this technology in Brazil. Besides that, we had partnered with an experienced video producer: Luz Criação.

Project Background

Hospital das Clínicas is the largest public hospital in Latin America. To optimize the relationship with their customers, it was proposed the HCTV project. The online TV created a space to discuss, educate and inform on various medical topics, based on cutting-edge research, academic studies, disease prevention, and health promotion.

My role

As full-stack developer my role consisted in maintain the Amazon Web Services servers, the videos encoding, storage and distribution, as well the front-end development.

The biggest challenge in this project was the video processing pipeline. One of the demands we had was to create an easy flow for the content producers to publish the videos. We came up with a solution based in WordPress where the journalists and video editors could work independently ans the system could create the bridges.

A short description:  The journalist could write the text and save it, later when the video editor finished the video, the rendering file could be pointed to the appropriate post, and then after the rendering and the upload of the high definition video file, the servers performed the encoding for different resolutions, and the appropriate storage in CDN servers, as well providing the final urls to the data base. And only then the content was available for the audience.

That short process involved a lot of C++, PHP, Shell Script, AppleScript, libmpeg2, XML.

How big it was?

Over 2 million subscribers in the first two years, making the project a commercial success.

The Team

  • Dino Tudor (Web Developer)
  • Fabian Rossetti (Web Developer)
  • Fabio Ferraz (Reporter)
  • Felipe Gushiken (Lawyer)
  • Fernando Jacinto (Web Developer)
  • Frederico Morbach (Motion Designer)
  • Gustavo Pimentel (Producer)
  • Hanne Giacini (Web Designer)
  • Humberto Ribeiro (Web Developer)
  • Ingrid dos Santos (Producer)
  • Joás Ferreira (Social Media)
  • Jean Dias (Motion Designer)
  • Mariana Armentano (Copywriter)
  • Mazinha Silva (Marketing)
  • Marcelo Blanc (Sound Designer)
  • Renato Schutz (TV Editor)
  • Roberto Barbeiro (Business Developer)
  • Roberto Perfeito (Media Planner)
  • Rose Castilho (Marketing)
  • Sérgio Kuwahara (TV Editor)
  • Thays Scavacini (Reporter)
  • Walace Nascimento (Camera)