Singular.live has become the first cloud-based graphics platform to be used by ITV, powering the graphics for ITV Wales’ coverage of the Welsh Assembly elections in May.

For the broadcast, ITV Wales used Data Streams, a new Singular feature purpose-built for high frequency, high volume and low latency data. Data Streams with JS Data Nodes, created by the ITV team in Singular, enabled live election data to be delivered in JSON format for immediate display as graphics. As a consequence, the majority of the overlays were automatically updated.

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Singular was used for ITV Wales’ coverage of the Welsh Assembly elections

The ITV team used SVG maps of the region to display how the electorate voted - a key visualisation in any election coverage. ITV Wales was able to manipulate these maps using composition scripts within Singular. This allowed ITV Wales to isolate any area within the map with the latest relevant data. This data was constantly and automatically updated through the Data Stream workflow, made possible with Singular’s Composition Scripts. These enable the addition of fully customisable control through JavaScript layers from directly within the Singular Composition without using the Graphics SDK or any external hosting.

ITV Wales was introduced to Singular through a previous IBC Innovation Accelerator collaboration.

“The building, linking and updating of the custom overlays worked with ease, allowing for a more time-efficient and stress-free production,” commented Keith Jones, technical support engineer, ITV Wales. “Overlay composition build and data delivery was much easier than using traditional systems. Being an HTML5, cloud-based solution, Singular provided easy access to the graphics wherever they needed to be seen.”

“Three of the main benefits Singular drives are its ease of use, efficiency and flexibility,” said Andrew Heimbold, CEO of Singular.live. “These have shone through in the exciting results of this project. It is fantastic to see Singular used for the very first time by ITV, amid a very high-profile event. This is a great vote of confidence by a major broadcaster and we are very happy the platform was able to deliver peace of mind for this election broadcast to the ITV Wales team.”