NEP Group Team Works Hard to Develop New Services for Clients to Make Production Safer, Easier

NEP Group has responded to the current COVID-19 crisis with close collaboration among its employees and teams, resulting in a number of new and refined offerings that are designed to help clients across the spectrum continue to create content during COVID-19 with new, innovative solutions while implementing new health and safety measures to support broadcast and live events.

NEP’s Howard Rosenthal says the teams at NEP Group have been hard at work collaborating on the development of new services and tools for client to use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“COVID-19 has challenged our entire industry, and I’m proud of our teams not just rising to the occasion, but going above and beyond,” says Howard Rosenthal, President of NEP’s US Broadcast Services division. “They’ve worked hard to develop and implement these solutions quickly and safely for our clients, coming together across functional responsibilities, geographies and business units. Our teams are collaborating and sharing information more than ever before.”

Teams from across the company’s Broadcast Services, Media Solutions and Live Events operating segments worldwide have closely collaborated to develop several creative solutions for clients to continue productions during this time. Now actively in use by clients and built to scale and deploy globally the following services area available.

• The NEP DC Hub – During COVID-19, the hub is supporting several clients with virtual editing, remote commentary and at-home operations, as well as MCR and live ingest services. The hub now has two full control rooms and can offer full-service productions. Launched earlier this year, NEP’s DC hub became the U.S. data center housing Mediabank, NEP’s powerful media asset management platform that enables clients to quickly search, review, edit collaborate and share content.
• NEP Home Studio – Available in two easy formats, “studio-in-a-box” or “studio-in-app,” talent can now “go live” from their homes with the one-camera NEP Home Studio solution for any virtual event, live stream or traditional broadcast. Both formats/solutions can be used anywhere there is an internet connection and connect seamlessly to NEP on the back-end – be it a mobile unit, fly pack, or one of NEP’s hubs located around the world.
• Remote Commentary Solutions – In use worldwide and now supported in the U.S. via the DC hub, NEP says its award-winning remote commentary solutions simplify complex workflows to enable broadcasters to deliver high-quality audio feeds perfectly timed to video for broadcast. Whether broadcasters need to translate into multiple languages, or have multiple commentators working from home, NEP says its clients are covered. Solutions use proprietary audio and video fingerprint technology for syncing and built-in mechanisms to detect offsets, incorrect formats or incorrect mapping. And coupled with the NEP Home Studio mentioned above talent can also be on camera.
• Virtual Sets & Studios – Using the latest AR technology in combination with NEP’s Home Studio solutions, the company can build a virtual studio that incorporates talent live on-site and/or the client’s talent working remotely. Plus, with the talent and guests connected to an NEP facility and the virtual set, NEP can offer replay, audio mixing, video mixing, graphics and editing centrally. This seamless integration can continue the show’s branding, incorporate talent and guests from anywhere they need to be, and provide a polished final product of the highest quality.
• Virtual Audience Solutions – NEP has developed several solutions that allow client productions to include fans/audiences virtually using unique live interaction tools. NEP offers solutions tailored for large and small events, across multiple types of productions—sporting events, news interviews, corporate conferences and entertainment shows including interactive talk shows.
• Cloud Production Solutions – NEP’s Cloud Production solutions allow clients to create professional productions from anywhere, with the flexibility to add traditional elements to ensure a broadcast quality production. NEP says everything happens in the cloud and through a truly virtual production that can be done at home with very low latency. Very customizable, the productions can include live interaction from multiple social media outlets, virtual audiences, virtual sets and hosts from multiple locations.

During the month of June, NEP plans to showcase these solutions industrywide. To learn more about NEP’s solutions, please contact your account manager or reach out to [email protected].