MONTREAL—Grass Valley got in the game with Electronic Arts Competitive Gaming Entertainment (CGE), the esports division of EA, by supplying its GV AMPP cloud-based platform for fully distributed, remote production for competitive gaming events of EA Sports FIFA 21 and Apex Legends.
GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) is an end-to-end cloud workflow that let the EA production team work from home while still delivering broadcast quality content of the events, regardless of their location. GV AMPP uses Grass Valley’s GV Korona switcher control panel connected over the public internet to a K-Frame production center engine running on GV AMPP.
CGE tried the GV AMPP system for an Apex Legends live tournament in December 2020, then went live with the workflow for the FIFA 21 Global Series European Qualifier 1 Event later that month. More than 20 camera feeds from Europe and additional live contribution feeds were sent to an AWS datacenter in Northern Virginia. EA’s technical director used the GV K-Frame on AMPP from his base in Sacramento, Calif. EA said the production went smooth.
In addition to the K-Frame, CGE’s AMPP set-up includes master control, flow monitors, clip players, master control switcher, I/O, test signal generators, AV mux, Delay module, HTML graphics render, multiview, recorders and streamers. It helps everyone from the technical team to talent work remotely.
“Grass Valley’s GV AMPP was a helpful solution, bringing all of our needs together within one harmonized ecosystem,” said Joe Lynch, EA CGE’s head of Broadcast. “AMPP gives us a professional broadcast quality platform—in the cloud—with the production values and the reliability that we need to give our fans the best experience. For our operators, using K-Frame in the cloud was seamless, with no perceivable difference to working in a studio environment.”
CGE says that it plans to use GV AMPP on an ongoing basis for the 2020-2021 FIFA World Cup qualifying tournaments.
