First off, why is the bank an ISP?

Saxo Bank is an online Trading bank. Since 1998, we've developed a trading platform called the SaxoTrader that is one of the first internet-based online trading platforms.

Today we are having great success white labelling the SaxoTrader.

Our white labelling partners (banks, investment institutions) simply brand and customise their own version of the SaxoTrader - we don't sell the software, we sell the backend infrastructure.

Our revenue stream comes from sharing the spread (a small fraction of each trade) with our white labelling partners. This business model gives us access to a lot of customers, which of course can help generate more traffic. To host this amount of traffic we have had to become an ISP. You can say that Saxo Bank is part IT and part capital markets firm.

How did the idea of doing the broadcasts come about?

In the summer of 2002, when the project was started, it was primarily aimed at TV-Broadcasting, but it was also the plan to use our camera to film our morning calls and make it available as VOD (video on demand).

The idea was to record the morning call, import it into our AVID Express, edit it and convert it to Real and WMF and finally place it on our web page. When I started working on the web cast project in January 03 I began to look at video codecs: encoders, players etc. However I quickly realised that the process was way too slow for a morning call.

We needed to encode the video in real-time. I came up with a handful of encoders that could do the job. At the same time I started to play with the idea of broadcasting the Market Call (as Morning Call was then called) as a live event, with titles, idents and other supporting material. Basically a small TV production.

Finally we decided to use Osprey. This was mainly because our IT department wanted a system that they for security reasons could have full control over. This can be difficult with black boxes, that are either Linux or NT-based.

I also had to find a solution for the graphics. Most of the encoders can display some kind of static watermark, but it would not be enough for shifting titles and watermarks. This would require a video mixer that could handle chroma or alpha keying. I looked at a few hardware mixer boxes. But I didn't really like the idea of trying to build a small TV studio in this old-fashioned way.

I only needed to mix two or three alpha layers. Something that any PC can do today, but it was really difficult to find a turnkey solution that could do this at under $15,000.

Then somebody told me about this weird Amiga product that he had heard about. I think I was a little bit sceptical. Having said that I know that a lot of today's animation and video software originated on the Amiga.

So I checked out the Video Toaster on NewTek's web page. And when I started to look at the Video Toaster features it was easy to see that it could do the job and actually much more.

When did you actually see the Video Toaster for the first time?

February/March 2003. A guy from a Danish company called Arkena told me about the Video Toaster, when I was looking for an encoder that could handle titles and or idents.

He told me about this other person that was using the Toaster and I gave him a call and had a chat with him about it. At that time I knew that I might have to buy a mixer and use a PC for the titles, but after talking to him I realized that the Toaster might be the product that I was looking for. After studying the requirement specs on your web page I decided to go for the Video Toaster.

When did you first start using it?

May 19 2003, and we made the first broadcast the same day. I think I had almost two hours experience with the toaster before that. So I have to say that the Video Toaster is pretty straightforward to use.

What do you like about the package?

I think it has an interesting array of modules and software packages. The Video Toaster offers a lot of opportunities, from live to postproduction and content creation.

What could be improved for you?

I could use scripting and an SDK. It would be nice if I could integrate my encoder farm admin interface to the Video Toaster, so I wouldn't have to jump between my laptop and the Video Toaster all the time.