InBroadcast
Adoption of remote production over the past two years may
have been born out of necessity, but as we return to a sense of greater
normality, many workflows that have been driven by innovation are here to stay.
Remote production is growing fast, and more and more events
are starting to utilize it. However, traditional workflows are likely to
persist because people still need cameras and monitors locally, even if the
processing is in the cloud. Productions are also looking to limit their carbon
footprint on-site therefore the industry is leaning toward a more sustainable
hybrid model of half remote, half on-site.
“While remote production has gained serious
momentum over the last two years, calling it the new norm would be a bit
premature,” says Lawo’s Christian Scheck. “Similarly, SDI and OB trucks are going
nowhere anytime soon. Nor do they have to, for almost all remote production
setups still involve SDI-based devices which can be controlled in the same way
as open-standards IP natives. And new OB trucks are still being built.”
Nonetheless, as one of the companies that
pioneered IP-based remote production, Lawo is confident that remote production
will one day become the norm.
“An IP network usually involves edge devices
that take care of signal ingress and egress (gateways),” he says. “They allow
users to mix and match SDI solutions with IP-native devices, the only
difference being that SDI signals are converted to IP at one edge, and back at
the other. The decision to base operators at the production hub, who then
control edge devices stationed on-site cuts travel costs and allows talented
operators to produce more shows.”
Lawo is still proud of its Mix Kitchen and
decentralized audio production approach, but its most groundbreaking
development so far has been the release of HOME, which is designed to make IP
operation both intuitive and secure.
“Many live event productions have
requirements to capture the camera feeds into replay and highlight package,
creation workflows,” explains Alan Repech, Director of Marketing, Telestream. “If cameras do not have
wireless connections back to the home studio or broadcast centre, capturing
content requires systems on site. However, the editing and processing can occur
remotely even to the point of being able to edit growing files only a few
seconds delayed from the action. This means creating highlight packages and
other derivative content can be done while the live event is in progress.
In other words, what is often done today with many creatives
and a large technical staff on site is now more practical than ever from
offsite locations. Some of the remote processing steps may include creating
proxies and archive files, frame rate conversion, and HDR-SDR conversion. All
of that can be, and is being, done today. In addition, as test, measurement,
monitoring, and synchronization solutions increasingly offer fully functional
remote user interfaces, the quality assessment of these workflows becomes
increasingly practical.
Telestream offers both a flexible waveform monitor/network
analyzer called PRISM and product called Inspect 2110 designed for monitoring
by exception of ST 2110 video and audio streams. These can be integrated into a
complete solution.
“Imagine monitoring all of the
most critical contribution and distribution feeds in a live, distributed
production environment with the only human effort being to observe a single
computer screen,” says Steven Bilow, Product Marketing Manager, Telestream.
“Imagine being automatically notified of a PTP timing issue with a distribution
stream, being able to explore the issue immediately, and with a single mouse
click being able to dive as deeply as you need into every aspect of the ST 2110
streams until you have found and fixed the problem. The result is an
environment with lower stress, in the already stressful world of live event and
sports production. It is that kind of solution-oriented innovation, that
thinking about how to make life easier for users, that we have now; more of
which will be continually forthcoming.”
NDI, the group developing
the Network Device Interface protocol and part of Vizrt, is bringing new
enhancements that will allow even better usability and integration.
“We are working on refining the latest version NDI 5 to
enhance the use of audio, NDI Bridge, switching and routing while
simultaneously addressing the need for flexibility in determining bandwidth,
quality, and latency to enable limitless content creation for all markets,”
says Michael Namatinia, company president.
NDI points to the use that ATP Media with AWS and Gravity
Media made of the signal protocol to complete a large-scale proof of concept
virtualised live production for the Rolex Paris Masters. The project saw
multiple freelance broadcast experts test various AWS-hosted live production
solutions. David Sabine at AWS reported that freelance experts didn’t notice
any difference between using cloud-based live production tools and conventional
ones.
“To have the time to be able to experiment with combinations
of vendors interoperating with each other and to understand the benefits and
limitations of the single vendor solutions was invaluable,” said ATP Media CTO,
Shane Warden.
Net Insight concurs that cloud-based remote live
production and distributed architectures are steadily gaining traction “as a
cost-effective alternate to hardware-based on-premise projects,” according to
Kenth Andersson, Head of Strategic Alliances.
“Our customers are taking advantages of solutions like our
cloud-based media delivery and routing technology Nimbra Edge to use cloud as
the means to deliver live feeds to remote distributed locations. They can
connect talent sitting at home doing the production on low resolution feeds.”
Nimbra Edge is a cloud agnostic, multi-cloud and
multi-tenant solution that supports the major industry standards such as RIST,
Zixi, SRT for ARQ transmission. “In short, our solutions offer openness for
technology vendors to integrate their solutions, which is extended as a strong
overall solution and media ecosystem for contribution and distribution of media
services for customers.”
Adoption of remote production over the past two years may
have been born out of necessity, but as we return to a sense of greater
normality, many workflows that have been driven by innovation are here to stay.
“We’ve seen the evangelisation of remote production over the
past year, and we’ll continue to see media companies break new boundaries with
proven cloud-based workflows in 2022,” says Larissa Görner, director of cloud
product management, Grass Valley. “Despite traditional workflows such as
OBs still having a core role in live content creation, the skyrocketing global
demand for content in our market means media organisations are turning to new
and pioneering production methods to achieve greater scale and agility.”
GV AMPP, the firm’s cloud-native Agile Media Processing
Platform, is in constant evolution. On top of core media production workflows
within the platform, recent additions include our AMPP Audio Mixer and AMPP
Asset Management solutions.
“GV AMPP is at the heart of our GV Media Universe (GVMU)
vision,” says Görner, “a digital ecosystem that allows customers to seamlessly
combine on-premise, hybrid and cloud technologies from Grass Valley and
verified partners to design live production environments to fit their needs.
“While no company can truly claim to be an ‘end-to-end’
partner, GVMU allows us to be as close to that as possible, providing our
customers across the media landscape with seamless access to software and
hardware technologies.”
“Remote production is not yet the norm, but it is the
direction that most of our live event production customers are heading,”
says John Schur, President, Solutions Group, Telos Alliance. “Some of
the largest sporting events are being produced almost entirely remote today,
but it's taking time for others to change over to new platforms and new
workflows.”
The Telos Infinity VIP - Virtual Intercom
Platform is a fully virtual and cloud deployable professional intercom system.
One of its unique features is the ability to easily integrate with on-prem and
remote sites that are using Telos and third-party systems. Infinity VIP is also
available as part of the Grass Valley AMPP platform.
French sports broadcaster L’Equipe TV recently launched its
OTT platform using a remote production workflow including cloud-hosted remote
voice-over solution from Broadcasting
Center Europe (BCE).
Jérome
Aubin, production director at L’Equipe explains, “For us, it is obvious that sports production must
reinvent itself. Voice-over is one of them. However, we will only move to full
remote production when the economic interest is beneficial. To date, however,
we cannot really say that this is the case, especially since we mainly produce
small sports events.”
Going forward,
2500 hours of live will be commented with BCE’s remote voice-over solution. “The BCE solution is easy to use. All it takes is
an internet connection and a computer. However, to ensure the best sound
quality, we decided to add an external sound card. All our commentators have been using the
system since the launch of our ‘Live’ platform. Pandemic or not, it was necessary for a
channel like ours to find solutions to produce more content while better
controlling costs. The remote voice-over is one of chosen means.”
In addition to sound administration, the cloud remote
controller grants access to graphics and titles management. In addition, you
can also trigger text titles, write the texts during the event or pre-configure
the titles in templates. Sign language video feeds can be integrated and since
the solution connects to a webcam or connected camera, users can decide whether
to add this view as a picture in picture in the live feed.
“In my opinion, remote live TV production is not a
replacement for traditional production workflow, but a good complement and
opportunity to cover events and activities with limited budgets,” says Igor
Vitiorets, CTO at Slomo.tv. “For serious events, the traditional OB and SDI
based workflow is more reliable and preferable.”
He makes a pretty convincing argument that for fairly simple
broadcasts with low levels of responsibility and quality requirements remote
production and broadcast automation are suitable at reasonable cost.
“The situation is different with large-scale and important
events, because "acceptable" is not enough. Premier League broadcasts
need a large number of cameras with high-magnification zoom lenses, SuperMotion
cameras, SpyderCam and cameras on motorized rail systems. This expensive
equipment is not permanently installed in the arena and requires on-site set
up.
“They require experienced camera personnel who are able to
quickly react to any changes in the game. Any delays in controlling the cameras
and receiving the director's commands are simply unacceptable.”
As a rule, he says, video engineers should also be in the
arena to adjust camera settings in real time, e.g. Iris settings.
Therefore, a fairly large number of personnel should be on the
site while, in theory, the Remote Production centre can accommodate an audio
engineer, broadcast director and replay operators.
“Despite the well-established procedures and ‘standardised’
broadcasts, directors often have to give direct commands to the members of the
TV crew. There is a rule of thumb: to comfortably control live processes, the
delay should not exceed 300 milliseconds.
“There are also unplanned events that may occur: ‘impossible’
goals, force majeure or conflicts that are of great interest to viewers,”
Vitiorets says. “The procedures and algorithm for broadcasting such moments are
difficult to formalize and require an instant reaction from the broadcast
director.”
It seems hybrid at the venue and decentralized live will be
the modus operandi for major events for some time.
While remote video production is
still not considered the norm, we’ve seen a huge increase since the beginning
of the pandemic.
“Previously considered out of reach,
remote production has become an achievable deliverable in a short amount of
time,” says EVS’ CTO Alex Redfern. “The pandemic has led to an
irreversible change in the way broadcasters and media companies create live
content, opening the doors to new work practices. A large percentage of
organizations are currently undergoing a transition from SDI sources and
systems to IP core infrastructures. This transformation, which is driven by the
need for greater agility and scalability, also applies to OB trucks.”
Leveraging cloud processing and
machine learning, XtraMotion is EVS’ software application that enables the
transformation of footage from any camera angle on a production into high-speed
video using frame interpolation. As a result, says Redfern, productions can
easily increase their super slow-motion coverage without any extra cost and
without the need for additional hardware on site. XtraMotion was first deployed
as a Proof of Concept (POC) at Super Bowl LIV, in February 2020, after which
FOX Sports decided to make XtraMotion integral to its productions.
“It was at Daytona 500 that
XtraMotion truly demonstrated the extent of its storytelling capabilities by
allowing viewers to watch super slow-motion replays from the in-car cameras – a
first in the history of live sports broadcasting,” says Redfern.
Impact of 5G
Of all the technologies likely to transform live remote
production it is 5G which holds most promise. Telestream’s Bilow points to
mmWave 5G as having the capacity to provide bandwidth up to about 2 Gbps. This
makes it possible to support bandwidth-intensive video up to 4K and potentially
8K. It appears that this bandwidth can
even support volumetric video streaming on mobile devices.
He adds, “5G currently performs inconsistently in these
applications because, as one moves their devices around, there are frequent
handoffs between 5G and much lower performance 4G towers, among other things.
Furthermore, 5G is very directional so achieving the theoretical bandwidth is
difficult because there are rarely line-of-sight connections. This means that
there are challenges to overcome. That said, these challenges are the perfect
ones for a company with expertise in streaming media and monitoring to address.
They are not insurmountable, and we view mobile and remote production over 5G
as a realistic path forward.”
NDI and Vizrt have completed
several proofs of concept in 5G. Sky Germany leveraged Vizrt and NDI to deliver
real-time 5G for a recent Bundesliga Handball Final. It was the first time a
broadcaster made an end-to-end 5G live production with NDI Bridge and Vizrt
graphics, analysis, and production tools – all in the cloud.
“5G simplifies and streamlines these benefits significantly
with the provision of network slicing and related QoS functionalities,” says
Namatinia. “For live production, it brings guaranteed low latency and
corresponding bandwidth.
“However, low latency and corresponding bandwidth must not
only be ensured in the 5G network; this also plays a role in the further
processing of the signals. Corresponding connections to the hyperscalers such
as AWS, Azure, or Google must also be ensured.
“Another approach is to use edge computing to reduce the
number of hops between the source and the production backend, thus decreasing
latency accordingly. Achieving this is something we are currently working on at
NDI, to reduce latency, not only for 5G but for other applications using LAN
and WAN.”
Net Insight’s Andersson says 5G will unlock smart stadiums
by providing an additional means to collect feeds within a venue that is
operating a private 5G standalone network.
“It will provide the ability to use more cameras within a
stadium such as spot cameras, tracking favourite players or different angles of
the field. These feeds can be distributed to production remotely, for example
to create a fan zone viewing experience complementary to the main produced
broadcast feed.”
Another trend that is starting to have a significant impact
on how live events are produced and distributed is the proliferation of
cloud-based production platforms. Schur reports that these platforms enable
even small venues and specialized events to be produced with professional tools
at affordable prices.
“I expect that we'll see many more of these platforms come
online, targeting specific types of productions and markets,” he says.
No comments:
Post a Comment