Video: Remote Production

Remote production is changing. Gone are the days when it meant leaving some of your team at base instead of sending them with the football OB. Now it can mean centralised remote production where, as Eurosport has recently shown, TV stations around Europe can remotely use equipment hosted in two private cloud locations. With the pandemic, it’s also started to mean distributed remote production, where the people are now no longer together. This follows the remote production industry’s trend of moving the data all into one place and then moving the processing to the media. This means public or private clouds now hold your files or, in the case of live production like Eurosport, the media and the processing lives there too. It’s up to you whether you then monitor that in centralised MCR-style locations using multiviewers or with many people at home.

This webinar hosted by EVS in association with the Broadcast Academy which is an organisation started by HBS with the aim of creating cosntency of live production throughout the industry by helping people build their skillsets ensuring the inclusion of minorities. With moderator James Stellpflug from EVS is Gordon Castle from Eurosport, Mediapro’s Emili Planas, producer & director John Watts and Adobe’s Frederic Rolland.

Gordon Castle starts and talks with the background of Eurosport’s move to a centralised all-IP infrastructure where they have adopted SMPTE ST 2110 and associated technologies putting all their equipment in two data centres in Europe to create a private cloud. This allows producers in Germany, Finland, Italy and at least 10 other markets to go to their office as normal, but produce a program using the same equipment pool that everyone else uses. This allows Eurosport to maximise their use of the equipment and reduce time lying idle. It’s this centralised remote production model which feeds into Gordon’s comment about wanting to produce more material at a higher quality. This is something that he feels has been achievable by the move to centralisation along with giving more flexibility for people on their location.

Much of the conversation revolved around the pandemic which has been the number one forcing factor in the rise of decentralised remote production seen over the last two years where the workforce is decentralised, often with the equipment centralised in a private or public cloud. The consensus in the panel is that the move to home working is often beneficial, but splitting up the team is a problem in the long term. A team that has worked together for a long time can survive on this is previously gained knowledge of how people work, their benefits and relationships forged in the heat of broadcast and over the dinner table. Bringing together a new team without close interpersonal contact raises the risk of transactional behaviour, not working as a team or simply not understanding how other people work. A strong point made is that an OB is like a sports team on the pitch. The players know where they are supposed to be, their role and what they are not supposed to do. They look out for each other and can predict what their teammates will want or will do. We see this behaviour all the time in galleries around the world as people produce live events, but the knowledge that rests on as well as the verbal and visual cues needed to make that work can be absent if the team has always worked remotely.

Economics plays a role in promoting remote production within companies. For Gordon, there’s a cost benefit in not having OBs on site although he does acknowledge that depending on the country and size of the OB there are times when an on-site presence is still cheaper. When you don’t have all staff on site, people are more available for other work meaning they can do multiple events a day, though John Watts cautions that two football matches are enough for one director if they want to keep their ‘edge’. The panel share a couple of examples about how they are keeping engagement between presenters despite not being in the same place, for instance, Eurosport’s The Cube.

On technical matters, the panel discusses the difficulty of ensuring connectivity to the home but is largely positive about the ability to maintain a working-from-home model for those who want it. There are certainly people whose home physically doesn’t accommodate work or whose surroundings with young family members, for instance, don’t match with the need to concentrate for several hours on a live production. These problems affect individuals and can be managed and discussed in small teams. For large events, the panel considers remote working much more difficult. The overhead for pulling together multiple, large teams of people working at home is high and whether this is realistic for events needing one hundred or more staff is a question yet to be answered.

As the video comes to a close, the panel also covers how software, one monolithic, is moving towards a federated ecosystem which allows broadcasters more flexibility and a greater opportunity to build a ‘best of breed’ system. It’s software that is unlocking the ability to work in the cloud and remotely, so it will be central to how the industry moves forward. They also cover remote editing, the use of AI/ML in the cloud to reduce repetitive tasks and the increased adoption of proxy files to protect high-quality content in the cloud but allow easy access and editing at home. 5G comes under discussion with much positivity about its lower latency and higher bandwidth for both contribution and distribution. And finally, there’s a discussion about the different ways of working preferred by younger members of the workforce who prefer computer screens to hardware surfaces.

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Speakers

Emili Planas Emili Planas
CTO and Operations Manager,
Mediapro
John Watts John Watts
Executive Producer, Director & Broadcast Academy Expert
Fred Rolland Fréderic Rolland
International Manager, Strategic Development, Video Business,
Adobe
Gordon Castle Gordon Castle
SVP Technology,
Eurosport
James Stellpflug Moderator: James Stellpflug
SVP Markets,
EVS

Video: Football Production Technology: The Verdict


Football coverage of the main game is always advancing, but this year there have been big changes in production as well as the continued drive to bring second screens mainstream. This conversation covers the state of the art of football production bringing together Mark Dennis of Sunset+Vine, Emili Planas from Mediapro and Tim Achberger from Sportcast in a conversation moderated by Sky Germany’s Alessandro Reitano for the SVG Europ Football Summit 2021.

The first topic discussed is the use of automation to drive highlights packages. Mark from S+V feels that for the tier 1 shows they do, human curation is still better but recognises that the creation of secondary and tertiary video from the event could benefit from AI packages. In fact, Mediapro is doing just this providing a file-based clips package while the match is ongoing. This helps broadcasters use clips quicker and also avoids post-match linear playouts. Tim suggests that AI has a role to play when dealing with 26 cameras and orchestrating the inputs and outputs of social media clips as well as providing specialised feeds. Sportcast are also using file delivery to facilitate secondary video streams during the match.

 

 

Answering the question “What’s missing from the industry?”, Mark asks if they can get more data and then asks how can they show all data. His point is that there are still many opportunities to use data, like BT Sport’s current ability to show the speed of players. He feels this works best on the second screen, but also sees a place for increasing data available to fans in the stadium. Emili wants better data-driven content creation tools and ways to identify which data is relevant. Time agrees that data is important and, in common with Emili, says that the data feeds provide the basis of a lot of the AI workflows’ ability to classify and understand clips. He sees this as an important part of filtering through the 26 cameras to find the ones people actually want to see.

Alessandro explains he feels that focus is moving from the main 90 minutes to the surrounding storylines. Not in a way that detracts from the main game, but in a way that shows production is taking seriously the pre and post stories and harnessing technology to exploit the many avenues available to tell the stories and show footage that otherwise would have space to be seen.

The discussion turns to drones and other special camera systems asking how they fit in. Tim says that dromes have been seen as a good way to differentiate your product and without Covid restrictions, could be further exploited. Tim feels that special cameras should be used more in post and secondary footage wondering if there could be two world feeds, one which has a more traditional ‘Camera 1’ approach and another which much more progressively includes a lot of newer camera types. Emili follows on by talking bout Mediapro’s ‘Cinecam’ which uses a Sony Venice camera to switch between normal Steadicam footage during the match to a shallow depth-of-field DSLR style post-match which give the celebrations a different, more cinematic look with the focus leading the viewer to the action.

The panel finishes by discussing the role of 5G. Emili sees it as a benefit to production and a way to increase consumer viewing time. He sees opportunities for 5G to replace satellite and help move production into the cloud for tier 2 and 3 sports. Viewers at home may be able to watch matches in better quality and in stadiums the plans are to offer data-enriched services to fans so the can analyse what’s going on and have a better experience than at home. Mark at S+V sees network slicing as the key technology giving production the confidence that they will have the bandwidth they need on the day. 5G will reduce costs and he’s hoping he may be able to enhance remote production for staff at home whose internet isn’t great quality bringing more control and assuredness into their connectivity.

Watch now!
Speakers

Tim Achberger Tim Achberge
Sportcast,
Head of Innovation & Technology
Emili Planas Emili Planas
CTO and Operations Manager
Mediapro
Mark Dennis Mark Dennis
Director of Technical Operations
Sunset+Vine
Alessandro Reitano Moderator: Alessandro Reitano
SVP of Sports Production,
Sky Germany

Video Case Study: How BT Sport de-centralised its football production

We’ve all changed the way we work during the pandemic, some more than others. There’s nothing better than a real-life case study to learn from and to put your own experience into perspective. In this video, BT Sport and their technology provider Timeline TV take us through what they have and haven’t done to adapt.

Jamie Hindhaugh, COO of BT Sport explains that they didn’t see working at home as simply a decentralisation, but rather a centralisation of the technology to be used by a decentralised body of staff. This concept is similar to Discovery’s recent Eurosport IP transformation project which has all participating countries working from equipment in two datacentres. BT Sport managed to move from a model of two to three hundred people in the office daily to producing a live football talk show from presenters’ homes, broadcast staff also at home, in only 10 days. The workflow continued to be improved over the following 6 weeks at which point they felt they had migrated to an effective ‘at home’ workflow.

 

 

Speaking to the challenges, Dan McDonnell CEO of Timeline TV said that basic acquisition and distribution of equipment like laptops was tricky since everyone else was doing this, too. But once the equipment was in staff homes, they soon found out the problems moving out of a generator-backed broadcast facility. UPSes were distributed to those that needed them but Dan notes there was nothing they could do to help with the distraction of working with your children and/or pets.

Jamie comments that connectivity is very important and they are moving forward with a strategy called ‘working smart’ which is about giving the right tools to the right people. It’s about ensuring people are connected wherever they are and with BT Sport’s hubs around the country, they are actively looking to provide for a more diverse workforce.

BT Sport has a long history of using remote production, Dan points out which has driven BT Sport’s recent decision to move to IP in Stratford. Premiership games have changed from being a main and backup feed to needing 20 cameras coming into the building. This density of circuits in both HD and UHD has made SDI less and less practical. Jamie highlights the importance of their remote production heritage but adds that the pandemic meant remote production went way beyond normal remote productions now that scheduling and media workflows also has to be remote which would always have stayed in the building normally.

Dan says that the perspective has changed from seeing production as either a ‘studio’ or ‘remote OB’ production to allowing either type of production to pick and choose the best combination of on-site roles and remote roles. Dan quips that they’ve been forced to ‘try them all’ and so have a good sense of which work well and which benefit from on-site team working.

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Speakers

Dan McDonnell Dan McDonnell
CEO,
Timeline TV
Jamie Hindhaugh Jamie Hindhaugh
COO,
BT Sport
Heather McLean Moderator: Heather McLean
Editor,
SVG Europe

Video: How to Up Your Sports Streaming Game

As countries seek to wrest themselves from lockdowns, however long that takes, we see the name of the game will be come out big and make the most of the renewed freedoms. Streaming has certainly seen a boost over the last year despite the challenges, but in order to make the most of that, as we switch up a gear in public life, now’s the time up your game. Sports streaming is likely to see gradual improvement in the number of live fixtures to cover and employees should be able to find protuctivity gains in working more closely with their colleagues when the time is right the share space again.

In this panel from Streaming Media Connect, Jeff Jacobs from VENN talks to Magnus Svensson, from Eyevinn Technology, Ali Hodjat from Intertrust Technologies, Live Sports’ Jef Kethley and Darcy Lorincz from Engine Media. Magnus kicks off the discussion highlighting the state of the sports streaming industry and the trends he’s seeing. Magnus says that streaming providers are moving away from mimicing broadcast services and inovating in their own right. The younger audience are still more interested in highlights clips then older viewers and esports wiith its on-screen chat and interactivity represents a big departure from what we are used to from broadcasters. Low-latency streaming remains important but keeping feeds synchronised within the home is often seen as more important than the absolute latency.
 

 
Jef speaks about the complete cloud infrastructure he built for the Drone Racing League (DRL) which gave a computer to each player and ran the program and drone simulation in the cloud. Looking to the future, he sees streaming as now allowing monetisation of newer sports. Now that it’s easier and/or cheaper to produce lower-interest sports, they can be economoical to monetise and deliver even to a small audience.

Darcy represents workflows where AI is doing the work. AI’s understanding the goals, the numbers on shirts and much of the action within a game. Darcy’s trying to find as many things AI can do to reduce our reliance on humans. Visualisation of data is grown in demand making these stats easily digestable for viewers by overlaying information in new ways on to the screen.

Ali’s view is from the security angle. He’s been focussed on protecting live sports. Weith the push to lower and lower latencies, the value of the streams has increased as they’re more useful to use for betting. At the same time, lower latency makes it harder to add encryption. On top of encryption watermarking individual feeds and quickly identifying them online is a major focus. Protection, though, needs to extend from the media back to the web site itself, the payment gateway, the applications and much else.

The panel session finishes after discussing low-latency, the pros and cons of remote working, co-streaming, low-latency for backhaul/contribution and finishes with a round of advice to use with your service.

Watch now!
Speakers

Magnus Svensson Magnus Svensson
VP Sales and Business Development,
Eyevinn Technology
Ali Hodjat Ali Hodjat
Director Product Marketing,
Intertrust
Jef Kethley Jef Kethley
Executive Director / President
LiveSports, LLC
Darcy Lorincz Darcy Lorincz
Global head of Esports & Business Development,
Engine Media Inc.
Jeff Jacobs Moderator: Jeff Jacobs
General Manager,
VENN