TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS
LIVE SPORT
says Peer Seitz, head of Infront Productions. “There are certain projects within Infront where we are testing remote setups for certain parts of the project in order to learn and establish the pros and cons of different solutions and technical approaches. Certain OB providers already have solutions in place, but apart from the technical feasibility we also have to consider the economics. For one-off productions the economics are unlikely to be as attractive as seasonal productions of an entire league with bi-weekly re-occurring venues for example.” BT Sport has been covering all live matches using
F o r m u la 1 Go e s R e m o te
Spurred by the huge travel requirements of the organisation, but accelerated by COVID, a UHD Remote Operation, able to be deployed globally, has been devised by Formula One. With acquisition at the track, and production and distribution from its Media and Technology Centre (M&TC) in the UK, it provides the World Feed, additional content channels, on board cameras, timing and data systems. As Deane Locke, F1 director of broadcast and media explains, going remote was already on the cards: “This plan was always in our roadmap, as we’ve looked to find ways across the whole organisation of operating more sustainably, but was dramatically brought it forward due to the pandemic,” he says. “As we looked to adapt, we undertook the daunting task of building our remote operations system within seven weeks, under lockdown working restrictions, at our Media & Technical Centre (M&TC) base in Biggin Hill. “We successfully rolled out the first wave of the plan in Austria at the season opener, having our acquisition operation on-site and our curation of data and content back at the M&TC,” he continues. “We temporarily used a local outside broadcast truck, and then
brought in our own equipment and own at-event operation centre at the Belgian Grand Prix.” F1 deploys dual and diverse Ethernet circuits connecting the Event Technical Centre (ETC) at the track to the Remote Technical Centre (RTC) at the M&TC. There are over 80 broadcast contribution feeds between the RTC and ETC, encoded across multiple, low latency broadcast standards, while overlay transport virtualisation (OTV) is used to connect the two sites as if they were geographically together. The ETC also employs tertiary connectivity to ensure mission critical services are maintained for example, the International Feed, Telemetry link and FIA feeds will continue uninterrupted should there be a failure on the main link back to the RTC. A virtualisation system comprising of 10 nodes hosts disaster recovery and monitoring systems, while 100 network switches are deployed at the ETC with a 40 Gbps backbone. “The remote operations setup has been working well, with the crew having quickly adjusted to being based in a central location,” says Locke. “We’re already finding benefits to this, not just linked to safety and travel, but also sustainably and logistically by not moving large amounts of kit around the world.”
remote production this season. “We’re doing all Premier League and Champions League games, and all the rugby, and we’ve already been doing WSL and national league all remote,” says Jamie Hindhaugh, COO of BT Sport. Premier League productions have been produced from a remote operations centre (ROC) in High Wycombe, built and operated by Euro Media Group UK (EMG UK), also utilised by BBC Sport. “The remote operating centre was a four-year plan,
introduced in five weeks,” says Hindhaugh. “COVID has made it essential around social distancing and keeping people safe, but for us it was always that longer term thing. Key was sustainability. We know our emissions are virtually halved by being remote rather than being on site. It also starts enhancing the creative opportunities and [our] agility. This is absolutely the way we will work moving forward.” Hindhaugh says another ROC is being built in Stratford,
London, where BT Sport is based. “Then I am looking at north of the border and across the UK,” he says. “We’re taking Stratford and we’re decentralising it across the UK. I think the key challenge with remote production is there a risk you end up having one central operating centre, and you’re limiting yourself to the people who work for you because they’re all based near where your studios are. If you’ve got operating centres in different cities across the UK, [local] freelancers are able to drive a shorter distance and be able to be part of that production team, part of that virtual gallery.” Arena Television and dock10 delivered the FA Cup
Semi Finals and the Cup Final for BBC Sport in July and August with a jointly developed remote gallery solution at MediaCityUK in Salford. For the Final, the remote gallery enabled BBC Sport’s
production team to be based in a gallery at dock10, and a reduced amount of crew and kit sent on location to the match that took place at a socially distanced Wembley Stadium. The facility also produced the rugby league Challenge Cup Semi Finals remotely. According to Andy Waters, head of studios at dock10,
BBC Sport sees a ‘proven value’ in remote production, calling it a game-changer for the broadcaster. “There was always an appetite to have people on the ground before. But this has very much proven the case that when the scenario is right you can do production from a centralised base at MediaCity and there are many advantages. Before COVID was even the word we knew, the BBC already had significant plans for using remote production on the Euros.
Winter 2020
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