At a time when broadcasters are being challenged to produce more localized content for multiple languages, remotely produced live events are gaining traction with sports producers around the world. NEP Media Solutions is making multi-language production cost-effective with its Remote Commentary system.
Corporate event specialist Sardis Events often works in production environments with dynamic lighting and background conditions that can be challenging for video cameras. When the company expanded its video equipment roster to support rapid business growth, they purchased three Hitachi Kokusai Z-HD5500 studio and field production cameras to provide the image quality they were seeking.
Italy’s annual Ravenna Festival attracts classical music lovers from around the world. As in years past, festival producers chose Soundscape immersive live audio technology from d&b audiotechnik paired with mixing systems from Lawo.
Providing live coverage of his year’s 118th U.S. Open Championship golf tournament proved to be a daunting RF transmission challenge for Fox Sports. The network called in veteran sports production company CP Communications to manage the RF transmission infrastructure for the event at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, NY. The broadcasts included more than 40 hours of live 4K and HD content delivered to 140-plus countries each day (from June 12-17).
Although OTT delivery has created a mature market for on-demand scripted shows that leverages the public internet for distribution, the ever increasing and IP-enabled bandwidth available that uses public wireless networks and the public cloud, is opening a new market for live events.With their global reach, the OTTs have the budget to create polished shows, localised for global distribution. However, there is a huge, largely untapped market for minority events that could potentially use social media for distribution, as long as the production costs can be constrained. This is not the world of double-expando mobile units, but a director with a handful of camera operators. An announcement from Sony would seem to address this very market. The company has announced an on-demand cloud production service that provides a complete toolset for multi-platform content creation and delivery. Sony Virtual Production was used to cover Red Bull’s Alpenbrevet motorcycle race in Switzerland. Using only a number of camcorders and a single laptop to access the Virtual Switcher UI, Red Bull could stream the event live direct to social media.
NEP Sweden, a division of NEP Europe, has selected EVS XT4K ChannelMAX servers to drive the ingest, playout, slow motion replay and highlights production within its new UHD-1 OB truck. The mobile production unit was used for the first time for live coverage of the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship from the Royal Arena in Copenhagen.
