Five panelists, including a major sports broadcaster, a mobile facilities engineer, and three vendors, will discuss remote television production and its ongoing transition from business as usual to a future in which technologies like the cloud, internet transport and SMPTE ST 2110 play ever greater roles during a TV Tech Summit panel, March 29, to be presented online.
The panel, “New Developments in Remote Production for 2023 and Beyond,” brought together Kevin Callahan, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports; Peter Wehner, vice president of engineering at Mobile TV Group (MTVG); Geeter Kyrazis, business lead at swXtch.io; Dan Maloney, technical marketing manager at Matrox; and Mike Flathers, chief solutions officer at Signiant for a lively discussion on the evolution of field production. (Full disclosure, I moderated the session.)
One topic Callahan discussed was factors that go into deciding when and how to deploy Home Run Production, Fox Sports’ terminology for REMI, or remote integration model production. The Fox Sports vice president explained the various factors that go into deciding and offered examples.
Callahan also discussed Fox Sports’ creation of duplicate SMPTE ST 2110 flypacks that played the central role for signal distribution during the World Cup and other high-profile productions, such as the Daytona 500.
MTVG’s take on REMI is a bit different. It’s Cloud Control offering enables remote production workflows via the cloud centered solution. Rather than virtualizing REMI production functions, such as video switching, in the cloud, Cloud Control enables production staff to work remotely with facilities on site, said Wehner.
He also discussed how MTVG is enabling SMPTE ST 2110 in its mobile facilities and how the company is addressing signal routing with regards to 12G-SDI and 4K UHD.
Matrox’ Maloney discussed how the company’s MONARCH Edge encoder/decoder is helping broadcasters take advantage of the internet for contribution of camera signals from remote venues as well as supporting other critical REMI functions such as camera tally and IFB via connection to a centralized production studio or the cloud.
Signiant’s Flathers talked about the growing ecosystem for REMI, and how at this stage in its evolution all vendors involved in supporting remote coverage of a particular event need to work together and avoid finger pointing when issues arise, which he noted inevitably do.
The swXtch.io’s Kyrazis discussed the challenges facing broadcasters looking to mirror their on-prem workflows in the cloud. He noted that strategies exist to help, but that there are limitations.
The 40-minute panel is one of several panels and keynotes scheduled for the summit, which begins at noon (EDT) on March 29 and wraps up at 5:30 p.m. (EDT).
Registration is free. To attend register online.
