Globo and Grass Valley Elevate Big Brother Brasil Production with New Technology

Grass Valley announces its collaboration with Globo, Latin America’s premier media entity, to modernize Globo production facilities in Rio de Janeiro. This enhancement features a state-of-the-art Grass Valley IP video production setup, significantly upgrading the studio that hosts Big Brother Brasil (BBB). 

Entering its 24th season, Big Brother Brasil, a reality TV phenomenon, assembles a diverse group of individuals to live in isolation from the world in the Big Brother House under constant surveillance for 100 days. The show thrives on audience participation, with the final contestant avoiding eviction to win a substantial cash prize.

This comprehensive upgrade migrates from traditional SDI infrastructure to Grass Valley’s native-IP production tools, including Grass Valley AMPP, providing a microservices based production deployment on-premises, hosted on AMPP Edge COTS compute. The overhaul incorporates 2 Grass Valley switchers and 3 control panels, GV Orbit orchestration, GV IP multiviewer’s, and UCP IP gateways alongside third-party network switches. The system was installed across two technical centers using a spine and leaf topology.

A feature of this deployment comes from Globo’s integration of AI technology into AMPP control, enabling dynamic, automated tracking and production switching of both video and audio following the house “leader” to enhance the viewing experience, incorporating time-shift delay, audio mixing, production switching, and more, seamlessly into the workflow.

Mauricio Felix, Globo’s Technology Executive Director of Media Solutions, emphasizes the critical need for reliability, given BBB’s significance as a major revenue source. “The exhaustive testing phase confirmed the Grass Valley setup’s versatility, agility, and reliability, crucial for our non-stop 100-day production cycle”, he states.

Grass Valley and Globo embarked on a strategic partnership in 2022, focusing on transitioning Globo’s live TV and media operations to IP and software-based solutions. Globo’s enhancement prioritizes an on-premises solution enhanced with AMPP. The platforms unique hybrid on-premises and cloud architecture, combining both hardware and software offerings as a single solution, has enabled Globo to benefit from unmatched flexibility and scalability compared to traditional offerings, supporting Globo both for their requirements today and their future needs.

Fernando David, Grass Valley’s Sales Director for Latin America reflects on the partnership: “We are thrilled to support Globo’s transformative journey from legacy systems to a future-ready infrastructure embracing IP and migration to a software-centric architecture. This modernization positions Globo to excel in live, VoD, and streaming content distribution, maintaining its status as a global media powerhouse.”