Development of Connected Dome Library

［Keywords］
#AWS #Copyright protection (DRM)

01

Background

Revitalizing planetarium facilities and creating “gathering places” through coupling high-presence video projection with ICT technology

In 2020, Konica Minolta, Inc. (“Konica Minolta”) and Konica Minolta Planetarium Co., Ltd. started the Connected Dome business. This is a new business offering diverse cinematic experiences in a dome space through building Connected Dome Library, a next-generation video projection service platform for dome theaters. It is a groundbreaking initiative to promote the revitalization of planetariums and other facilities and the creation of “gathering places” based on the distribution of high-presence video content.
The Connected Dome Library assumes a key role as the “base for the transmission of planetarium information” in this business. It was the first commercial service using cloud computing for Konica Minolta’s planetarium business. “Vast knowledge of commercial service development” as well as “flexible responses” was needed to launch the service in a short period of time.

02

What we did

Realizing architecture that supports 4k × 4k high-definition video data and a mechanism to protect content tailored for individual cases of usage

NTT DATA MSE (“MSE”) took charge of the development of the content distribution cloud service, Connected Dome Library, which was the first for the Connected Dome business.
In the system development, architecture that can support the content of 10 GB or more is necessary as it has to deal with high-definition data at the planetarium. During development, there were few similar cases, and the cloud platform (AWS) experienced multiple issues intrinsic to such a data size. However, we found solutions to all the issues and realized the quality required for such a service.
Also, by utilizing a third-party DRM* service and AWS functions in combination, we built a system that automatically protects uploaded content with DRM, thereby realizing a content protection mechanism to meet individual applications such as streaming and download playbacks.

*DRM: technology that manages the copyright of digital content

03

Result

Man-hours reductions and audience repeat rate improvement at theaters realized at the same time by building an efficient video distribution system

When a planetarium put new content on screen, it was necessary to set the automatic projection program at each theater, which required many man-hours to prepare. The development of Connected Dome Library has enabled easy content distribution, thereby drastically improving operational efficiency. Thanks to this cost-reduction effect, theaters are now able to better organize program content, which in turn has led to improved audience repeat rates.
In addition, content preview, which could only be played back on a computer, can now be previewed in a theater in advance, enabling program selections by watching videos on the dome. This filled the gap of videos between the preview and a projection on the dome, resulting in the evaluation that the theater can now proceed with its content selection process more smoothly than before.

Testimonial

Dr. Mirai Kurita
Video Solution Business Division

On the maintenance stage following the system release, we entrust our system to MSE with a sense of security for their steady and sincere support

When the development project for this system was launched, we didn’t have any internal knowledge of video distribution. Also, cloud platform itself had just supported high resolution required for large-screen dome theaters without any field records in the industry. Though we had worked with NTT DATA MSE in another business, this was the first collaboration in the field of video distribution. In spite of this, MSE worked and sincerely supported us, starting from the stage to work on technological investigations and examinations together. While technological innovations take place on a daily basis, including higher video resolutions and functional extensions of cloud computing,they flexibly responded to new technologies that emerged in the development process as much as possible, thereby greatly contributing to the progress of the project.
In relation to business bases, as we are located in Tokyo while the development team of NTT DATA MSE is in Hokkaido, meaning we are geographically far away, we mainly focused on remote meetings from the beginning of the project. Under circumstances where an urgent shift to remote-work-based workstyle was required due to COVID-19, this turned out to be an advantage, and we smoothly achieved the release in this development project.
On the maintenance stage following the system release, we entrust our system to MSE with a sense of security for their steady and sincere support, as exemplified by their improvement proposals that completely considered our quality standards and development costs while giving first priority to any impacts on our customers.
We place complete trust in MSE and look forward to establishing a long and prosperous partnership.




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