Signal Transport: IP, 5G, RF, and Bonded Cellular

There are more options than ever for getting a signal from point A to point B (and even C, D, and E) and transport technologies continue to evolve rapidly. Signal transport service and technology providers discuss some of the latest developments that can make a difference to your production.

Speakers:

Janel Fleming, LiveU, Director of Sales and Sales Group Manager, Sports

Jim Jachetta, VidOvation, CTO and Co-Founder

Peter Larsson, BSI, President

Moderator:

Ken Kerschbaumer, SVG, Co-Executive Director, Editorial Services

Video Recording:

Learn more about At-Home Production (REMI) using Cellular & the Public Internet

Transcript:

Ken Kerschbaumer (00:00):

Peter, Jim, Janel, good to see you all. How are you all doing? How are you holding up?

Janel Fleming (00:04):

Good.

Peter Larsson (00:05): We're good.

Ken Kerschbaumer (00:05):

Okay. I think it's day 654 of the COVID pandemic. It says we laugh now until comes that way, the three months, five months. Anyway, good to see you all. Our goal here is to talk about some of the trends in transport technologies. Peter, I'm going to start with you because you are a hall of fame when it comes to transport technologies with the work you've done with wireless cameras over the years. And I want to kind of start with you as far as an overview of RF and then what you see some of the challenges, because obviously the spectrum situation, not getting any better out there. So kind of give us an update on where things stand right now.

Peter Larsson (00:43):

Well, the way I've always looked at the RF environment that we work in that there are effectively three different levels. There is a single RF camera that can be used for a new story or a sporting event. Then there could be two or three cameras. And then you get to some of the bigger car races or golf where you have 40 systems. And they both take different technologies. A lot of the LiveU or the bonded cellular systems are incredible for the single-camera situations specifically for news and somehow the sporting events. It's when we start getting up into those 40 plus cameras for the golf and car racing, and then we start running into issues. And unfortunately, although we think our marketplace is the most important one, and the world and the biggest one in the world is actually the cell phone systems that dwarf us.

Peter Larsson (01:40):

They have all the money in and they're coming in and buying up all the spectrum. So, as we try to find more spectrum to do what we need to do, we're finding that we have to go higher and higher and higher in spectrum. And one of the issues with that is that now, where you might've gotten away with one or two receive sites if you're down in the lower spectrum, as you get high, you have to put more and more receive sites out there. So, the available money is going down, but the cost of operating is going up. And that is about the biggest issue we face at the moment. One of the bigger ones also is for wireless microphones. With the repacking of the TV stations, a lot of the UHF spectrum is going away. I know the SVG is working with the FCC as well to try and come up with solutions. But again, we are a small little player in that marketplace as opposed to the cell phone companies.

Ken Kerschbaumer (02:41):

Yeah. Yeah, I know that there have been some recent filings from Shure and Sennheiser on the wireless microphone funds and we will be getting involved with those to helping support that as best we can.

Peter Larsson (02:51):

It's all good.

Ken Kerschbaumer (02:53):

So then what's the long-term implication? It is going to just get more complicated and more difficult? Is there a bigger threat here at all, potentially longterm?

Peter Larsson (03:03):

There are ways out of it but they all cost money, which is the problem. So, yeah, as the technology is becoming more important or as digital technology is maturing, everyone is going after minimal cell systems, multiple outputs, which allows the signal to be two way. The encoders are becoming more efficient with better quality and creditors. And that's reducing the bandwidth of the video that you require. So there are ways out, but as you've heard it described, nothing happens all of a sudden. So, it's just a very slow transition. And then we fall off the cliff and there's a brand new technology comes out there which will help everything move along.

Ken Kerschbaumer (03:51):

Right, right. Excellent. So, Janel, I wanted to bring you in here to discuss the Super Bowl. And Peter mentioned some of the smaller systems and the role for these smaller demands. And obviously I think the LU800 is stepping in there, right? With multi input needs. So, can you talk through some of the workloads we saw at the Super Bowl and then maybe sending in some other events in the spring in Florida potentially?

Janel Fleming (04:15):

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. So, we're seeing obviously a large demand for REMI production because having the need to have reduced people on staff is increasing the need to do more stuff from a central location. So, we've deployed the LU800 late last year. We had this in development before COVID hit. So we were sort of thinking about that in terms of customers are going into venues that are camera wired into an IO panel. And this is sort of a easy solution to just roll up with a few encoders and be able to produce a game remotely. So, the Super Bowl, we had a ton of use cases, obviously not the game itself, but all of the stuff leading up to the game and throughout the weekend, where they couldn't roll their traditional production truck. They had limited personnel that were allowed to travel because they had to quarantine two weeks prior to that.

Janel Fleming (05:05):

And that displaced a lot of key people who do other things in their network. So between Fox Sports, Fox Deportes, they did REMI productions of shows on site. CBS Sports interactive exclusively used LiveU for all of their digital programming throughout the weekend. And we saw the LU800 used in one location more than we've seen it anywhere else. So, it was a great sort of us a rewarding thing to see that. We knew these this need would be huge and a multi input single device unit, especially having bonded cellular because connectivity was very much questionable. Where are you going to get located? Where do you do your studio show? So sort of the confidence that the network is there when they rolled up. So, it was very exciting. And then, of course, we've got some big news come spring training. As many people know, we have done a lot for baseball throughout the season, but spring training is going to be really exciting for us this year, because we're going to be used more than we've ever been used in the past. So-

Ken Kerschbaumer (06:07):

Excellent.

Janel Fleming (06:08):

... more to come.

Ken Kerschbaumer (06:09):

Great. That's great. So, Jim, I want to bring you in here as far as at home productions obviously, they've grown in popularity, no doubt over the last year or two. And there are issues when it comes to things like free [inaudible 00:06:23] or gen lock, lip-sync, especially because these productions are getting more complex. So, can you discuss that for a little bit? And then also for Peter and Janel, if you want to chime in as well, but Jim, from your perspective.

At-home Production Multi-Venue

Jim Jachetta (06:33):

Yeah, I mean to Peter's point that bonded cellular, and I'm sure Janel would agree, in the early days, the technology was really meant for news, a single camera, either news talent, and a cameraman, or sometimes the talent was the camera operator. We've come a long way from that. And to Janel's point, bonded cellular now is really working really well for multi-camera at-home production, REMI production. We do have devices that have multiple inputs, up to four cameras in one appliance. But where our customers are using our technology is  camera mounted units that is all over the field. They could be all over the golf course, the PGA, the golf channel, NBC are using our tech. And the cameras are not tethered to a single box. The field encoder mounts on the camera.

Jim Jachetta (07:33):

And we're able to maintain frame-accurate genlock on mobile, portable cameras similar to an RF workflow that BSI would employ. Or some of our customers are using a hybrid approach. They might use BSI for the RF to the truck, switch the show in the truck and then use bonded cellular out of the truck. But we've been promoting for more than five years even before COVID the idea of fully portable, fully autonomous portable cameras. We're able to do frame accurate gen lock. So, the PGA will deploy on some events up to 12 cameras and we can keep them all in perfect gen lock. They could have 30 microphones open at the same time. And if they were out of sync with each other, the show would be horrible. In a live event, as we all know, you can't fix timing issues in post production because there is no post-production. So, VidOvation and our partner, Haivision, it's the safe streams transport protocol that we do a form of precision timing protocol over an unmanaged network to keep all the field encoders in sync, to keep all that camera's in sync.

Eliminate or reduce the need for Multiple Production Trucks

Jim Jachetta (08:53):

And, Peter said 40 cameras, we have one customer that deploys 50 cameras. Now, they're not all in the same location. So, frame accuracy becomes less important if you're in different venues, different cities. But within a given venue, there could be dozens of cameras all shooting the same scene and dozens of 30 or 40, 60, 100 microphones all on the same event. And they all have to be imperfect genlock. And we help our customers achieve that.

Ken Kerschbaumer (09:26):

That's so great. Peter, Janel,...

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Ken Kerschbaumer (00:05):

Hi everyone. And welcome to our first panel discussion of the day. Obviously our goal with this event is

talking about remote production. But we want to take a little bit of a different angle to talk more about

what life is like for people at home. And then recommendations for people who are working in new

ways the last seven months. So it's great to be joined by Jim Jachetta, who is VidOvation CTO and cofounder.

Jim, how are you?

Jim Jachetta (00:24):

Good. How are you, Ken? Thanks for having us.

Ken Kerschbaumer (00:27):

Glad to have you. And James Japhet from Hawk-Eye North America, managing director. How are you,

James?

James Japhet (00:32):

I'm pretty well, Ken. Yourself?

Ken Kerschbaumer (00:33):

I'm doing all right. So we must start with James, you are in the Appalachians, I believe. Which I'm

amazed you have even a wifi and connectivity down there. It's great.

James Japhet (00:43):

Yeah, it's a plus. Yeah, no, it's a welcome change from the city. So yeah, no complaints from my end.

Ken Kerschbaumer (00:51):

Yeah, sure. And I guess that gets to one of the key challenges we want to talk about today, which is,

people are working from new places, right? And places where you maybe wouldn't think you would be

able to do a video production. So from your standpoint, because I know Hawk-Eye, Josh was on the

previous panel discussion discussing his working from home. So give us a sense of what the last seven

months meant for Hawk-Eye. Because I know you guys have been key for a lot of the PGA golf events.

What's it been like for you and your team as far as this new normal, if you will?

James Japhet (01:20):

Yeah. I mean, the first half it was very quiet and the second half has been pretty busy. It's been an

interesting time. I mean, it actually threatened to tip just before COVID hit with the work we were doing

with the PGA players, with their every shot live project. But it's been interesting. We've taken a very

different approach to most with regards to remote production and the replay side of it, choosing to

leave all of the high res actually on site and simply almost creating a portal into that. So yeah, we're very

low bandwidth. As a solution which, as you say, even in the Appalachians I've got half a chance.

Ken Kerschbaumer (02:04):

Right, right, right. Well actually, I do want to start with the players. Because that was, without a doubt, I

got to watch about what five hours, six hours of the cool every shot, every whole live. Give me a walk

through it real quick, because your operators were based in the UK. So maybe that's a perfect example

of this new workflow in terms of, how was that accomplished? How many people, is it 20, 18, 22

operators? How many were in UK? I'm quizzing you now.

James Japhet (02:32):

Yeah. Close. We had 28 actually. But yeah, effectively we had all our servers onsite in Florida capturing

every single angle on the course. So 120 plus angles coming into the system. And effectively we are

producing 25 concurrent streams, one for every group that was on the course. It actually crept up to 27

or 28 at one point, just because of a bit of slow play. But yeah, effectively we were curating a stream for

[inaudible 00:03:04] groups. So cutting graphics, TrackMan integration for the PGA's nonlinear

broadcasters around the globe.

Ken Kerschbaumer (03:14):

Yeah. It was amazing. It was really good. I wish we had the whole tournament obviously, because-

James Japhet (03:19):

So do we. We learned to model lessons on day one.

Ken Kerschbaumer (03:22):

Don't say anything, right?

James Japhet (03:23):

Well, I mean, we were very much looking forward to day two, come the end of day one. But yeah, we

thought we were going to sneak in when the PGA hadn't called it off at the end of the day.But-

Ken Kerschbaumer (03:36):

I was gutted, at you like to say. Gutted, is that the expression?

James Japhet (03:39):

Yep, gutted. This is indeed the phrase. Yeah, very good.

Ken Kerschbaumer (03:42):

Right. So Jim, from your standpoint, what's the last seven months... You guys had some interesting golf

also. I guess when golf [crosstalk 00:03:47]-

Jim Jachetta (03:47):

Yeah. Yeah. We thank God every day that we've been busy pretty consistently since COVID started. We

are working maybe with different clients in different ways. We had done a couple of tournaments with

the PGA, a tournament in the Caribbean, some other tournament's with them experimenting. Can we do

at home production or a REMI production over an unmanaged network like cellular? And one of the big

challenges in doing any kind of a REMI production at home. I'm sure James, it's important to him as well.

Is maintaining Gen-Lock and audio lip sync. Bonded cellular was really meant for a single camera going

to the courthouse steps to interview someone. Sometimes there was a camera operator, sometimes

not. They'd put a tripod. The operator is their own camera person.

Jim Jachetta (04:53):

So really wasn't meant for multi-camera. So VidOvation, with our partner Haivision, we've fallen at this

sweet spot now going on the better part of five years. Doing as many as 50 cameras, all maintaining a

synchronous frame accurate Gen-Lock, audio lip sync. And it started with this crazy live TV show with Big

Fish Entertainment. And even though it's a reality TV show, a lot of the workflow, a lot of the tech is like

live sports. They dump all the raw video into an EVS. They play it back to the director. The director picks

their shots. So there is up to a 15 minute delay in that production. And then with the PGA, they tried it

out, had a couple of early events that were successful. And then in April, May, there was the first golf

event that came back, the Skins event.

Jim Jachetta (05:58):

They did it at a private club where there was no fiber, the switch level three, no one had a connection

into that venue. Only alternative maybe would have been satellite. So the PGA trusted us, we came in,

we provided them the eight modem pro 380 bonded cellular. They mount on the camera, so the

operators can move around. There are some systems that will do multi-channel, but they have to be

tethered, there's cables. So they had two photogs in the T box, two photogs on the fairway, and then

two on the green. And they kind of rotate as groups come through.

Jim Jachetta (06:47):

And then a big requirement is handling analog audio. Now some cameras have analog audio inputs on

the camera, but if you're using a smaller camera, that's not necessarily the case. You're stuck with the

internal microphones of the camera. I think of myself more of a video guy than an audio guy, but there is

anywhere from four times to eight times more audio for every video. There's never enough audio

channels. So each of our field encoders does four today, it's on the roadmap to do eight. I think

customers would like 32 channels of audio. But we have a way around that. I learned about the top

trace, to draw the red line. This may compete with you, James. But-

James Japhet (07:48):

No, no, no. You go right ahead.

Jim Jachetta (07:49):

We all know how Hawk-Eye has revolutionized tennis. If we only had it when McEnroe was around,

there would have been less tantrums. But the top trace, tracing the ball. I didn't know this, that

telemetry is actually sent to the graphical equipment back in master control via an audio channel. So

having analog audio available on the camera made the top trace very viable. And then PGA, they have

operators with parabolic mics getting distance shots, following the crowd. They had lapel microphones

on the talent. There were commentators walking in the course with the players. And for audio only, they

used the small pro 320. It has two modems. We just put them on their internal video test signal, ran it at

a lower bit rate, and then use the analog audio inputs. So the commentator following the talent, his

microphone will go into analog audio one.

Jim Jachetta (09:04):

Then he'd have a LOV receiver to one of the players he's near going into audio two. And then for

diversity, there might be another LOV receiver on another camera, just in case cameras drift away. So

you can have redundancy in your audio paths. And so in the case of PGA, there were seven or eight. No,

there were nine camera feeds simultaneous, some tight, some wide. And then dozens of microphones

open all at the same time. You can imagine the audio guy would go crazy. They tee off a bit, whoosh,

whoosh, whoosh, you get all this echo. And with a live show, you can't fix this in post. So you really have

to have it frame accurate, perfect Gen-Lock. So that's really a piece that you need, is that frame accurate

Gen-Lock.

Ken Kerschbaumer (09:59):

Right. Right, right. Yeah. So James, is that an issue? I mean, lip sync, as far as you're still, let's take the

PGA, because you guys have been a part of almost every tournament, right? I think that happens.

James Japhet (10:09):

We have. Yep. So far yeah.

Ken Kerschbaumer (10:11):

Walk us through where you fit into those regular productions, if you will. And also, well the

championships too, right? The Master. Sorry, not the Masters [crosstalk 00:10:20] Championship, the US

Open.

James Japhet (10:22):

Masters is coming up next month. Yeah, we'll be a part of that as well. But yeah, I mean, just going back

to the lip sync. We saw that as an issue, or a potential issue for us. So we actually, again, by leaving

everything we had onsite and only offering a portal for the operator into those machines, we actually

avoided that being a problem for us on the golf. But yeah, I mean the migration from every shot live to

...

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Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to our first discussion for the At-Home series, three week event, here at SVG that'll cover various aspects of the whole move towards at-home production. As we know, the last two months to three months have really seen a big uptick in at-home production, some of it planned. Actually, almost none of it planned. But it's been a great learning experience and we have some experts involved in the industry, to kind of share their thoughts with us. We have Kyle Arrowsmith, who is the MLB Network engineer. One of, I'm assuming, Kyle, correct?

Welcome to today's At-Home Tech Focus. You know we're focusing on this episode on live events, and we have four grade experts from four grade companies to discuss what's going on. Obviously the last eight weeks to 10 weeks, I've seen a massive change in the definition of what exactly is At-Home because literally everybody is at home. Let me introduce our panelists real quickly. We have Matthew Goldman from MediaKind, Jim Jachetta from VidOvation, Josh Liemer from VISTA WorldLink and Dan Maloney from Matrox Video. Josh, you are in the production spotlight with your facilities down in Miami.