IBC 2016: EVS displays an IP-connected live-production environment
EVS’s Nicolas Bourdon (left) and Sebastien Verlaine on the booth at IBC 2016
On its booth at IBC, EVS is showcasing an IP-connected live environment with media flows that connect sports venues, broadcast-centre control rooms, and consumers. By connecting the live environment, according to EVS, its technology enables better storytelling and an enriched viewing experience. Introduced this summer, C-Next is the new live connected tool that reflects EVS’s IP4Live strategic initiative.
EVS Marketing Manager Sebastien Verlaine told SVG Europe, “What we mean by ‘live connected’ is, as you can see here on our stand, we have a basketball hoop where the action is taking place; that action is being captured by 12 cameras and recorded on our servers; and what we’re trying to show is that, once it’s captured and recorded, how we make it available to different stakeholders.
“This could be officials on the scorer table next to the court who need to review some of the action,” he continued. “It could be operators in the OB truck that’s behind you, who need to do some replays and add effects. It might be the broadcast centre over there, which can start preparing highlight packages. Or other stakeholders, such as medical or teams who need to review and analyse the action. Or even federations and their affiliates via C-Cast, where they can have access to this content, repurpose it, and use it through their own channels.
“Live connected is all these different elements,” Verlaine added, “connected through our technology, with the help of certain partners, through to the consumer who wants to be able to review the action from different angles on a mobile device. This is done with our C-Cast platform but also with the deltatre media player. All of these elements are present at our booth.
“This was something you already saw at UEFA EURO 2016 in France, where there was an exchange of media between the different venues and the broadcast centre, with the purpose of enriching the content and reaching out to more people through the syndication feature of the C-Cast. We allow rightsholders to share content with partners, so that they can have their own business models and can exploit that content in a different way.”
Said Nicolas Bourdon, SVP, marketing, EVS, added, “With ‘live connected’, we provide all the different stakeholders in a production environment access to any clips or content that is being created in one place and [enable them to] share this with other places. This could be data, or it could be video. The approach of ‘live connected’ is to bring people together, wherever they are located and allow them to work more efficiently. This is a concept we have already implemented for big events, that we are now deploying for normal regular league productions or sport-production events throughout the year.
“We have developed a platform called C-Next,” he continued. “This is a platform of connectivity based on a LAN1 platform, that enables different existing tools to connect together. For instance, every clip created in a truck will be backed up on the XFile3, and the XFile3 will push those clips automatically into the broadcast-centre environment. The teams will automatically see different clips arriving in their folder, and they can simultaneously start working on their key highlights.”
At the show, EVS is also demonstrating its new-generation IPWeb, which is a remote-access application that lets users browse and select content no matter where they are, and the IT/software-based, scalable architecture of its DYVI production switcher. Enabling more-creative programme assembly based on a pooled-resources model, DYVI is being demonstrated in full 4K/UHD mode on the EVS stand.
EVS’s newsroom-production solutions, including the latest features of its IPDirector live–content-management system for multiformat and multisource ingest, is being demonstrated at 8.B90 and is powering IBC TV’s ingest, playout, and multimedia delivery. The EVS booth also hosts a data centre connected through fibre to the IBC TV studio in Hall 13 and the VRT-EBU LiveIP studio located on 8.D10.