Producing From Home – Virtual Control Room Edition: Technologies Being Deployed for At-Home Production Today

New and existing tools allow sports content to be broadcast and streamed

As the coronavirus lockdown has forced nearly every major sports broadcaster to work from home in recent weeks, content creators are discovering new tools that allow crews to produce, edit, manage, and deliver content reliably from the comfort of their own homes. Whether bleeding-edge technologies new to the broadcast community or well-established tools from traditional broadcast vendors, these tools are serving as a lifeline for sports-content creators to continue to serve fans during these unprecedented and challenging times.

With that in mind, SVG is publishing a series of articles detailing popular at-home–production solutions being used for sports broadcasts, esports events, and live studio productions today. This list is by no means comprehensive, so, if you are a content creator using an at-home–production solution that you would like to share with the SVG community, please email details to [email protected] for potential inclusion in a future edition of SVG’s Producing From Home series. Check out the Audio Edition and Comms Edition and stay tuned for future editions focused on editing/postproduction, graphics, and more.

Today, we take a look at how tools currently being used by sports-content creators lacking physical production-control rooms. Although a TD can’t operate a physical switcher from home and a director doesn’t have a full multiviewer wall at hand in a living room or kitchen, several organizations have discovered valuable remote-production tools that allow sports production to continue. These cloud-, SaaS-, software-, and browser-based tools are allowing live production of sports talk shows, esports tournaments, and original commentary of archival content during a period devoid of live sports events.

Grass Valley’s GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform)
The Technology:
Last week, Grass Valley launched its cloud-based SaaS GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform), the core technology powering the company’s GV Media Universe ecosystem of cloud-based SaaS tools and services. AMPP allows a series of virtualized applications — multiviewers, router panels, test-signal generators, switchers, graphics renderers, clip players, recorders — to be quickly deployed within a single cloud-based browser interface to support a wide range of workflows.

The GV AMPP feature set can be fully customized on a show-to-show basis.

AMPP is built on a microservices architecture based on five core technologies: fabric, timing, connectivity, identity, and streaming. In terms of cost structure, AMPP essentially functions as a series of metered microservices, and each tool (switcher, audio mixer, multiviewer, clip player) has a different metered rate associated with it. Therefore, the user is charged only for the features activated and the amount of time each feature is active. More on GV AMPP here.

The Use Case: The first application available for the platform, AMPP Master Control, has been on-air with Blizzard since the opening of the Overwatch League 2020 season in early February. Last month, when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Blizzard began using AMPP as the core of a new distributed-remote-production model to produce live Overwatch League (OWL) and Call of Duty League (CDL) matches with all operators and talent working from their respective homes.

Grabyo Browser-Based Live-Video–Production Suite in the Cloud
The Technology: Grabyo is a SaaS-, cloud-, and browser-based video-production, -editing, and -distribution platform. In addition to being well-known as a clipping tool for quick-turnaround highlights on social media, Grabyo’s collaborative browser-based live-production suite is increasingly being adopted in the age of coronavirus, when sports outlets are looking to leverage cloud-based tools deployed by crewmembers at home.

With new remote-production workflow, EA Esports broadcast team live-streamed Apex Legends Global Series online tournaments from their own homes.

The Use Case: Grabyo’s cloud-based live-video-production platform has allowed EA to produce multi-feed live esports productions with its entire crew located at their respective homes. EA nested three layers of Grabyo: one for the observers (in-game camera operators) to cut the game, a quad-split virtual multiviewer for a producer to monitor the observer feeds, and another instance for the main program feed streamed online. The Grabyo Editor tool also allows EA to iso-record all observer feeds, so that tape-room editors can pull content, clip highlights, and edit packages and then push that content to the producer in the virtual control room for playback.

Other sports outlets leveraging Grabyo for live broadcasts during the lockdown include several NFL teams’ Draft coverage, The Rich Eisen Show, and The English Football Association (FA).

Simplylive’s ViBox: The All-in-One Multi-cam System for Remote Production
The Technology: Simplylive’s ViBox is an intuitive, ultra-efficient multi-camera production system that allows a single user to produce an entire live telecast. The ViBox touchscreen production system provides the user with the ability to cut/dissolve/wipe between cameras, video and animation sources. It also allows for store and playback video and insert graphics. ViBox was natively designed for remote production workflows – and with the recent release of SimplyLive’s UI Gateway – the bandwidth requirements for remote operation have been reduced dramatically, thus enabling at-home production using standard internet connections.

The Use Case: Simplylive ViBox is at the core of ESPN’s “Live at Home” remote workflow being used to produce studio shows like the The Jump. The VixBox system is based at ESPN’s Seaport Studios in Manhattan, but controlled from a staffer’s home in Los Angeles. The entire crew for The Jump is working from their homes – marking the first time ESPN is deploying a fully at-home workflow for one of its studio shows. This marks just the latest in several shows in which ESPN has utlized viBox to streamline its productions, including most notably at the U.S. Open, as well as for its coverage of Little League baseball/softball, studio shows at its Seaport Studios, and high school basketball.

vMix Software for Live Video Streaming
The Technology: The vMix Software video mixer and switcher is live-video-production software that allows content creators to produce, record, and live-stream in SD, HD, and 4K. vMix allows users to input cameras, graphics, replay/video clips, music, external streams, and other elements in order to produce a live show remotely.

Riot Games was able to connect all its casters and production crew remotely for the new LoL cloud-based workflow.

The Use Case: Riot Games has launched a cloud-based virtualized live-production model for its esports broadcasts built around a pair of central vMix virtual video switchers running in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). AWS vMix 1 serves as the primary video switcher (for recording, host cams, observer feeds, and graphics), and AWS vMix 2 handles audio, record, and playout (including master-audio mix, video packages, and recording). In addition, Riot is running vMix virtual switchers on its casters’ home computers as they call the action.

In addition, the NFL Digital team has built out a production workflow using the vMix virtual-production system and StreamYard live-streaming studio software to handle their primary shows, including Around the NFL and Move the Sticks.

Kiswe CloudCast for Remote Commentary
The Technology:
Kiswe’s CloudCast remote-production platform is being used by several broadcasters to integrate remote commentators into live broadcasts. The cloud-based tool allows users to create a virtual sports desk with remote casters who can speak to audiences in different languages or give a different narrative. The web-based platform allows both producers and commentators to easily control workflows within a simple interface.

NBA TV is keeping hoops fans engaged with tools like Kiswe airing in the production process.

The Use Case: NBA TV (co-managed by Turner Sports and the NBA) has been relying on Kiswe to produce a wide range of content: its NBA GameTime studio show, podcasts to roundtable discussion show Open Court, and even classic games complete with commentary by those involved. Kiswe is “the production glue” that also allows the talent to interact and connects them with a producer via IFB with relatively low latency. For historical games, former and current players can record commentary by watching together remotely and reacting in real time. Once the segments are recorded, the editors and producers pull them down from the cloud and edit, finish, and send them to a server in Atlanta and then to master control for playout.

In addition, the USL and its production partner Vista Worldlink deployed Kiswe for match commentary during the USL eCup: Rocket League Edition tournament last month.

Additional User-Friendly Options: OBS, TVU Producer, WireCast
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) Studio is open-source streaming software widely used by the gaming/esports and live-streaming communities. In addition to being popular among celebrity streamers and Twitch gamers, the free, user-friendly software is being used for a variety of sports and esports live broadcasts — either as the primary streaming tool or as a smaller piece of the larger production ecosystem.

Telestream’s Wirecast allowed FreeSports’ Rugby League Back Chat studio show to be remotely produced during the pandemic.

TVU Producer allows users without extensive training to take one or more TVU Anywhere live streams and do professional live video production. The cloud- and browser-based TVU Producer supports live video sharing to multiple locations, including social-media platforms Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Yahoo Live, CDNs, and websites. During the pandemic, religious organizations are using TVU Producer to reach their communities.

Although Telestream’s Wirecast has been well-known in the industry for years, the software-based video-mixing tool has come in handy for several sports-media organizations during the lockdown. Wirecast allows switching between multiple live video cameras, as well as graphics, music, and other elements. When the lockdown and social-distancing rules went into effect in the UK in March, the Rugby League Back Chat team began producing the show from their homes. The workflow deployed for the postproduced show enabled mobile-phone video calls to be fed into a Telestream Wirecast on an Apple iMac via the Rendezvous plugin.

SVG’s Ken Kerschbaumer, Brandon Costa, and Kristian Hernandez contributed to this report. Please email [email protected] to submit products/workflows for future editions of SVG’s Producing From Home series.

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