SVG Europe
Formula 1 and NASCAR targeted in bold
standardisation drive.
As Griiip’s start-up motorsport series G1 prepares to race its first full season, LiveU has revealed ambitious plans to outfit not just G1 series vehicles with its video transmission units but the race cars of every motorsport.
“We’d like to have
every G1 series car manufactured by Griiip to have a LiveU installed at the
factory,” reveals Ronen Artman., vice president of marketing at LiveU.
“So, it won’t
matter whether you compete in a G1 series or whether you buy that car to
compete elsewhere, there will be a LiveU unit installed. Customers can then
reach out to us and request to operate that unit. We can set them up with
access to our cloud service so that drivers stream live online.”
This could open up
a new market in user-generated live streaming motorsport action.
But beyond even
that, LiveU has the ambition to pre-install a LiveU on board every motor-racing
car, period.
“As we move
forward, we hope that every race car in every motorsport from F3, F2 and
Formula One and NASCAR will come pre-installed with a LiveU. We envision this
will become a standard for every car.
“We’re doing tests
with 5G and we think that with the progression of cellular infrastructure and
the particular way we handle high-speed transmission we think this will offer a
solution for delivery of a high-quality reliable motorsport experience all over
the world.”
Great pairing
LiveU units are
currently paired with GoPros on each of the ten cars set to compete in this
year’s G1 Series starting in Italy in April. The Isreal-based car manufacturer
Griiip approached LiveU just two years ago.
“They reached out
to us via our website not knowing that we were based in Tel Aviv,” explains
Artman. “They approached us with the vision the G1 is all about innovation and
wanted to transmit races live without any hardware.
“We came up with
the idea to install a LU200 video field unit in each car competing in the
Italian series with and to transmit video over cellular internet.”
This happened
during the pilot debut season of the G1 Series last year and included a remote
production of the race, switching of feeds from each car overlaid with graphics
and stats, streamed live to the Griiip website and to Facebook.
“That was the first
step. For this season we’ve moved to the next stage and developed with them a
Stream Selector. This is the capability to allow the viewer to download an app
and view feeds from all race cars on the circuit as well as a main director’s
cut of the race. The viewer will have the option to select the view they want.”
This Stream Select
interface was the second step and after some beta testing, LiveU are hopeful of
launching this in time for the start of the new G1 series in April.
Same delay
Each LU200 unit is
set to the same delay with contribution links encoded in H.264 and sent over
cellular internet to the remote production hub which has taken place trackside
in Italy, at Griiip’s base which is also in Italy and in Israel.
A delay of 5
seconds is incorporated as a buffer to capture and sync streams from all cars
which can travel at speeds up to 250 mph. Glass to glass – to Facebook Live,
for example – the delay is around 10 seconds.
“We did a lot of
tests around tracks in Italy to make sure we could do this. Two modems weren’t
quite working but with four modems in every unit it was amazing.”
LiveU is in process
of upgrading all G1 cars with its LU300 transmitter which uses the more
efficient HEVC compression.
“It is quite
amazing to see how the encoder is providing very steady and reliable feeds even
at those high speeds and even around crowded circuits in Italy.”
Besides the LiveU
units on each of the ten race cars, two of the larger and full-featured LU600
portable transmission packs are in operation. These can deliver up to 20Mbps,
file transfer speeds of 60Mbps and a 100Mbps high-speed internet connection
compressed using H.265 HEVC. These are used to transmit aerial pictures from a
drone and of pre-and post-race interviews and pit lane action from a roaming
camera-operator.
AWS is used for
cloud hosting so there’s no need for a hardware server and streams can be
switched by a NewTek Tricaster, Blackmagic Design ATEM or any other live
switcher.
“There are plans to
increase the G1 race cars competing in next season’s series to 15 or 16. Adding
more LiveU units is very easy. Because each has a battery life of two hours you
just need to charge them ahead of time power for the whole race.”
Along the route
While LiveU tech is
currently used in other motorsports it is mostly on the periphery. These
include the Silk Way off-road rally in Russia last year where LU600 HEVC units
were used for the start and finish points, along the route a team truck and overhead
on a helicopter.
With rights holder
and promoter WRC, the tech was pushed further in coverage of last October’s FIA
World Rally Championship’s from Germany. LU600’s transmitted live footage from
different stages of the rally, interviews in the service park, and file
transfer from the field all controlled and monitored remotely by WRC TV.
Until now,
motorsport events like WRC have mainly relied on satellite and RF to cover
events where stages spread up to 250km. The WRC use motorbikes to deliver material
from the field to the studio.
LiveU isn’t alone
in being used increasingly by rallying, cycling and marathon-style sports for
live or store-and-forward coverage. Rival Dejero has scored some success here
too.
The key
requirements are mobility along with signal robustness both of which are
improving all the time and providing producers with access to footage they’ve
not had previously and at considerably reduced workflow cost.
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