This series is based on a set of interviews with six individuals who are senior system architects within three of the most respected organizations in broadcast: Broadcast Solutions, Diversified and NEP. We cannot thank these individuals enough for giving us their time and sharing their immense wisdom and experience in the delicate art of designing and deploying broadcast production infrastructure. These interviews spanned many aspects of live sports production and their comments will be serialized across this whole series.

One of the most fascinating aspects of discussing where the industry is in its technological and workflow evolution is that there is no one single answer to most of the key talking points – each of the organizations supports a diverse portfolio of clients across a range of geographical locations – and the approach taken is always carefully tailored to specific rights holder and broadcaster requirements.

As we get into our conversation, it is important to understand that we have three quite different businesses represented; Broadcast Solutions build OB Vehicles and do Systems Integration primarily in Europe and the Middle East, NEP are a global production Service Provider, Diversified Systems is a Systems Integrator with the representative taking part here based in the USA.

Bear in mind the obvious differences between designing and building individual systems for others to use and NEP’s capacity to build systems at scale for their own teams to use.

Part 1 - New Sports Production Workflows

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Article 1 : The Rise Of Remote Hybrid Workflows
A discussion of the rise of remote production, why OB workflows remain first choice in tier one production and the emergence of new hybrid workflows.

Article 2 : Production Control Room Teams & Workflow
Why the composition and workflow of the gallery creative team have remained largely unchanged for many years... and the effort taken by engineering to support creative teams.

Article 3 : Revolutionizing UFC Broadcasts
Our partner Appear discuss how high-density FPGA processing helped transform PSSI Global Services remote production with live 24 camera backhaul from Shanghai to Las Vegas.

Article 4 : Sports Production Infrastructure – Where’s The Compute?
The evolution of IP based production and increased computer processing power have enabled new workflows, so how is compute resource being deployed to create new remote and hybrid approaches?

Part 2. Network Infrastructure

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Article 5 - Sports Production Network Infrastructure
A discussion of production network infrastructure and where the industry is in the evolutionary journey from SDI to IP.

Article 6 - VX - The Software Gateway To Compute Infrastructure
Why Appear’s new VX software is the vital next evolutionary step for remote contribution and content distribution in software first, private or public ‘cloud’ infrastructure.

Article 7 - Broadcast Controllers & Orchestration In Live Sports Systems
As production infrastructure, processing resources and the underlying networks required become ever more complex, powerful tools are required to plan, deploy and monitor.

Article 8 - Everything In Its Place: How Scotiabank Arena Elevated Its Games With Riedel’s Mediornet
Discover how Riedel’s TDM-based mesh network delivers the benefits of a distributed IP architecture with the operational simplicity of SDI in this in-depth case study.

Article 9 - Backhaul In Live Sports Production
Getting content reliably and securely from venue to studio remains key to live sports production so here we discuss the technology and services required.

Part 3. Evolving OB Infrastructure

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Article 10 : Exploring The Evolving OB
Comparing what technology is required in OBs and other venue systems to support the various approaches to live sports production.

Article 11 : Backhaul Solutions Engineering
Here we introduce a vendor perspective with an interview with David Walker, VP Solutions Engineering EMEA at Appear, whose team have supported some of the largest global sports productions in recent years.

Article 12 : Camera To Truck
Much of the OB production infrastructure has moved to IP, but has the connectivity between the cameras and the OB or backhaul also migrated to IP?

Article 13 : Simple Scalable Live Sports Production With SimplyLive
Meeting the requirements for simple, scalable and rapidly deployable live sports production systems is a challenge that Riedel’s Simply Live Production Suite is ready to beat.

Article 14 : Latency, Monitoring & The Future
Latency has always been a fact of life in broadcast infrastructure. It is something for operators to learn to adjust to and for engineering to effectively manage… but is it more of a challenge in remote production models?

Part 4. Cameras & Audio Systems

COMING SOON

Article 15 - On-Site Camera Systems
A discussion of typical camera deployments for various types of sporting event and requirements for SDR/HDR, HD/UHD, Slow Motion, and Robotics.

Article 16 - Sports Audio Production Systems
The audio control room. Why we have one. What is in it and the sports specific audio tools used to drive the audio mix.

Article 17 – Sports Audio Acquisition
Typical audio capture deployments for various types of sporting event, different audio sources, mic types & locations, and how connectivity and control is achieved.