IBC 2017: NEP Australia adds EVS XT4K servers to power production hubs in country-wide network
In a deal that shows the growing adoption of IP infrastructures for the production of tomorrow’s major live events, XT4K live production servers from EVS will be implemented into two central production hubs by NEP Australia, which the facilities provider will operate for a new IP-driven remote production network.
The hubs – located in Sydney and Melbourne – will act as central production facilities. They will be used by Fox Sports Australia for the remote production of over 500 events each year taking place in nearly 30 venues around Australia. The XT4K servers will be implemented into the NEP production hubs to provide full replay solutions within this new decentralized IP-based production model.
The XT4K was chosen by NEP Australia because of the IP-focused nature of the overall project. The workflow inside the production hubs will quickly benefit from the server’s built-in native-IP connectivity which enables their implementation into any kind of live production infrastructure. This install means that Fox Sports Australia – when utilizing the production hubs – will have control of nearly 100 live channels being ingested into the hubs for a total of 36 dedicated replay channels. EVS’ live production servers will be put in place alongside Lawo’s VSM broadcast control and monitoring system, Sony video switcher and cameras and NEP’s Grand Central tool for real-time IP and device monitoring.
“We chose to implement EVS’ live production servers inside these unique, state of the art production hubs because of the flexibility they provide an IP-focused live workflow like this,” says Marc Segar, Director of Technology at NEP Australia. “This is a new kind of infrastructure – the scale of which we haven’t seen before – so to have technology from industry leaders like EVS is important to help us deliver the reliability we need in this workflow.”
The network and its two production hubs will be used by Fox Sports Australia to produce the live programming for the likes of the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) and will be fully operational as part of the live production network by March 2018.
“The deployment of this network for live production is a major milestone in the broadcast industry’s adoption of IP-driven infrastructures and EVS is proud to be included alongside the other highly-trusted technology partners becoming a part of it,” says Muriel De Lathouwer, EVS’ CEO. “The benefits of IP within live productions are clear and the inclusion of our latest XT4K servers in this project validates EVS’ IP4Live strategy, which we launched in 2015 to deliver a smart and cost-effective transition from SDI to IP for the industry. As a result of this pioneering approach, our IP-enabled solutions uniquely combine the heritage of our technologies’ industry-leading speed and reliability with the latest advancements in connectivity that give users better operational performance and extended creative capabilities.”
These IP-focused live production technologies – including the IP-connected XT4K and the brand new IP-flow orchestrator, S-CORE MASTER – will be demonstrated on EVS’ stand (8.B90) at IBC2017 between September 15-19 at the RAI Amsterdam.