REMOTE OPERATIONS CENTRES TECHNOLOGY
LIVE SPORT
a truck which is often a smallish space with a lot of external noise.”
E s s en t i a l c o n ne c t i o n s
Connectivity providers can offer a fully managed service. According to Steven Dargham, head of major events at one such provider, Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS), the key factors are capacity and diversity. “Scaling up the capacity will allow the highest quality content delivered from a ven- ue. An optical transport network is the best fit for remote production as it can scale up to 100G, which will provide the highest quality content, capability and connectivity needed. Removing complexity to connect point to point sites helps to scale up quickly. “In Australia, TBS built a permanent remote production
has put into a remote gallery facility designed to control spaces outside of its MediaCity HQ in Salford. Built on experience of remote working during the 2020 FA Cup, it has seen live action during the Euros. “We’re delighted to be hosting the BBC Sport team for
Euro 2020. Over the last year we have worked closely with the BBC and OB suppliers to ensure the smooth delivery of live events through our remote gallery solution,” says Andy Waters, head of studios at dock10. “It easily inter- faces with outside broadcast trucks and will provide a base for production teams to control live events happening anywhere the world,” Horse racing is another innovation area. Red Bee
Media’s multi-tenant playout and production facilities near Paris, the Mediadome, has played host to a proof of concept for GTHP (Equidia/PMU). “Cameras were installed around a racetrack and
Mediadome [acted as] a remote production centre,” says Nicolas Bruxer, head of production, Market Area Southern Europe for Red Bee Media. The benefits of remote production are well established.
“Long term, the key advantages for the industry are better sustainability with reduced travel and less trucks on the road as well as the ability for the same team to control multiple events from a single location giving a better consistency of output,” says Waters. “One big advantage that surprised us was how positive people were about being based at the television facility rather than on location.” “Remote production overall offers a much better work
life balance for our employees” says Mihalovic. “It has opened some of our biggest events to employees that may not have been able to participate [in an OB], due to home commitments, certain disabilities, just to name a few. “It is an adjustment for those who are used to being at
the venue - from the Director who would like to walk the grounds before the match to the producer who likes to be at arm’s length from the presenters,” she admits. “[However] our sound team feel they produce a better mix remotely. This is mainly because of the environmental conditions, our sound control rooms are well-equipped and acoustically treated and isolated, this is a very different environment to
network called the Distributed Production Network (DPN). It connects into major stadiums and delivers raw video, audio, and data files to remote operations centres. The network reach is diverse. When ITN produced the IAAF International World Relay Championships, held last May in Japan, TBS’s DPN transported 30 HD live camera signals from the Nissan Stadium in Yokohama to Tokyo; then onwards to a remote production hub [NEP’s Andrews Hub] in Sydney and ITN in London. The signals travelled from Japan via diverse and hitless 10GBps circuits on the Telstra DPN to Sydney, using ultra-low-latency compression technology. This is a remote production model, delivered without any additional infrastructure. To host major events, venues must be flexible with their connectivity to accommodate this kind of remote production.” Timeline works with a number of providers across its
projects, such as Tata Communications for fibre connectivity on SailGP . “If you’re on a production that’s able to have slightly higher latency and it’s not logistically viable to put in fibre connectivity, then we go for satellite,” says Harnett. “We also use cellular bonded backpacks that can work over a combination of internet and mobile phone towers. They will have slightly higher latency, but a significantly lower cost to deliver multi-camera shows. That still allows us to produce some really good broadcast quality shows that are not viable without them. “The biggest leap in technology that allowed us to
do that is H.265 encoding,” adds Harnett. “Now we can get significantly better quality, at lower latency, in a much-reduced bandwidth, compared to H.264. It’s been absolutely essential. Almost every encoder and decoder we use regardless of the model has H.265 or HEVC involved in some way.” “When we produce sport, low latency is important
to operate cameras remotely,” Bruxer says. “But high bandwidth cost [equals] high operations costs. We also need camera robotics that can withstand IP packet loss without breaking high-cost equipment such as broadcast cameras and 80x Zooms. “Compressed video is mandatory with low latency,”
he continues. “We used V-Nova’s experience to get a low latency transport and high-quality iso streams to [enable us] to produce remotely. We worked with Microfilms to set
Summer 2021
televisual.com 43
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
