Whether dialing into a video conference, binge-watching your favorite show at home, or scrolling through TikTok, exposure to video streaming happens almost daily; it’s become a powerful tool for entertainment, education, government, and more. Behind every stream is a dedicated person or team, all with different budgetary, video quality, and bandwidth requirements. Naturally, the production pipelines that make streaming possible take many forms. For example, a university might live stream a rare plant bloom using a simple camera to CDN setup, whereas a major live sports production pipeline may deploy a multi-camera setup with sophisticated color management and conversion capabilities.

Whatever the streaming scenario, AJA has developed an extensive range of equipment engineered to support production needs, from video encoding, decoding, and transcoding, through to backhaul, conversion, recording, monitoring, and beyond. Its solutions are trusted by broadcast, production, streaming, and AV professionals worldwide. Let’s take a closer look at a few real-world applications.

Low-latency Video Processing, Conversion & Transmission For Live Sports Production

In 2024, live sports consumption on streaming platforms surpassed that of pay TV, with eMarketer projecting 114 million people will watch live sports via digital streaming platforms. However, 82 million are expected to tune in via traditional TV, so broadcasters and production teams must be equipped to manage distribution to both.

Recognizing this demand, broadcast production and equipment rental company Kaleidoscope Production & Services (KPS Studios) prepared accordingly when it facilitated the first remote production of the Durand Cup, one of India’s biggest annual football tournaments, last summer. It had to prepare match coverage for transmission to its broadcast partner, Sony TV, streaming apps Sony LIV and SSEN, and social media platforms.

To ensure low-latency viewer experiences in multiple languages across these end points, the company built AJA’s BRIDGE LIVE IP video streaming solution and 16-channel openGear audio embedder/disembedder OG-12G-AMA into its workflow. Leveraging multiple cameras in each venue, KPS Studios transmitted HD feeds to a centralized Master Control Room, where its team processed the footage and added slow-motion replays, graphics, and commentary. Then, it distributed the feeds over the internet. By using BRIDGE LIVE, the KPS team was able to easily move between SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) and H.265 and support low latency streaming demands.

The KPS team was able to transmit live footage from each venue to the Production Control Room in milliseconds using less bandwidth, given the efficiency of H.265. At the same time, they could transcode high quality signals for television broadcasts and streaming. The team used the 16-channel AJA OG-12G-AMA openGear analog audio embedder/disembedder card to embed more languages into their SDI feed.

Signal Conversion, Routing & Recording For Live Concert Streams

Live streaming has also become central to performing arts centers in recent years, with many performances now live streamed, broadcast, and post produced for on-demand streaming. Many of these venues are now upgrading their workflows to support higher resolution, HDR production to ensure the highest quality content delivery possible.

Prague’s Czech Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, for example, transformed the Rudolfinum concert hall, where it performs, into an international stage. The venue’s production workflow supports concert broadcasts and streams to European television channels, such as Czech TV, MEZZO TV, ARTE, and European Classical TV; social streaming platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Meta; and many other distribution points. To ensure the highest quality experience across viewing platforms and device types, the venue produces concerts in UltraHD HDR end-to-end.

When carrying out production, the AV team uses four manned and six robotic cameras controlled from the director’s room on-site. Ahead of each concert, they compose a shot list that describes the angle, timing, and length of shots per camera, as well as areas of interest. From the director’s room, the technical supervisor and his team then execute the production, leaning on a collection of displays to monitor the feeds and make color and exposure adjustment calls. Signal conversion supported by AJA FS-HDR is crucial to each transmission. The HDR/WCG converter/frame synchronizer lets the team convert the output to match each delivery partner’s requirements (4K HDR, HD HDR, or HD SDR).

In addition to FS-HDR, the crew leverages an AJA KUMO 1616 12G-SDI router, which is integrated into the robotic camera head system to support automatic camera switching. An AJA HELO Plus H.264 video streamer and recorder provides reliable recording to USB drives that can be handed off to the crew and director after the production wraps, while an AJA Ki Pro Ultra 12G 4K/UltraHD/HD recorder /player powers Apple ProRes backup recording.

Video Monitoring For Multilingual Government Live Streaming Needs

Today’s constituents expect real-time access to live government proceedings, so legislative bodies worldwide have implemented dedicated production facilities to accommodate the demand. At the same time, many of these organizations are integrating IP (Internet Protocol) into their existing SDI pipelines for enhanced scalability, flexibility, and long-term efficiencies. 

The Parliament of the Republic of Fiji (the Fijian Parliament) recently collaborated with New Zealand-based systems integrator Gencom Technology to transition a legacy audio distribution system from analog to digital and baseband to IP, opting for the Dante AV-over-IP platform. The overhaul also included the development of a new campus-wide video monitoring distribution system supported by AJA Dante AV 4K products.

Within the Parliament Chamber and two committee rooms on site, several pan, tilt, and zoom (PTZ) cameras capture the legislative activities live. These camera feeds are then transmitted to separate control rooms, including a production control center. There, the feeds are cut into one main program feed, featuring graphics overlays and sign language insertion, and fed through to AJA Dante AV 4K- for distribution across the campus-wide network.

AJA Dante AV 4K-Rs are located in spaces where operators, translators, sign language professionals, captioners, or other professionals who need access, receive those feeds. Each translation or captioning booth houses two people who watch and listen to what’s being said on the floor in Vosa Vakaviti (native Fijian), Fijian Hindi, and English and complete the translations. Translated feeds are streamed to displays on the parliament floor and via a public broadcast.

Bridging Between Baseband & IP Video In Educational Environments

With the audiovisual (AV) industry evolving rapidly, educational institutions are preparing the next generation of live event production professionals for the future. 

An example, Singapore Polytechnic (SP), a leading Institute of Higher Learning in Southeast Asia, recently collaborated with broadcast and AV systems integrator IDEAL Systems to build a new state-of-the-art, NDI-based video production studio and remote production pipeline to support events and hands-on student training.

The vision for the new studio was inspired by SP’s Diploma in Integrated Events and Project Management (DEPM) program syllabus. Offered as part of a module that focuses on live and hybrid events, the program aims to train students via real-world projects, providing them with opportunities to create, plan, and execute live events. To this end, Ideal Systems’ studio design ensured student access to a broad range of equipment that live event production professionals use in the field today. At the same time, it needed to support school-related production demands for symposiums, launches, and other public events.  

IDEAL Systems built both a studio and pipeline with portable rack units equipped with professional HD/UltraHD camcorders and NDI PTZ cameras for NDI low latency streaming and remote control. The units include mixers with Dante audio networking, wireless microphone systems to capture audio in dynamic environments without interference, and NDI-enabled network switches for fast, reliable data transfer to multiple video sources. SRT 4G/5G wireless routers for secure data transmission are also integrated.

Each rack is configured to transmit live SRT audio and video signals from remote locations via the public internet to a control room on the SP campus. From the remote site, SRT protocols are configured in “caller” mode to initiate connections through the internet, sending live signals to the control room, where an AJA BRIDGE LIVE connected to an internet router serves as the receiver in “listener” mode.

BRIDGE LIVE then converts the SRT streams into NDI signals for input to SP’s video production system, which processes the feeds for live production and streaming. The video production system supports everything from switching to broadcast graphics, virtual sets, special effects, audio mixing, recording, social media publishing, and web streaming. With BRIDGE LIVE streamlining pure IP transcodes for the new studio and its bi-directional capabilities enabling simultaneous encoding/decoding, SP has simplified its remote production infrastructure while reducing costs.

From live sports to concerts, government proceedings, education, and beyond, streaming demands vary, which means versatile, reliable gear is a must. Explore production-proven AJA solutions that provide unparalleled flexibility and deliver results every time.