BURBANK, Calif.—PSSI has announced that it demonstrated a significant expansion of its remote production capabilities last month with the production of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s "The Road to UFC 2" from Shanghai, China.
The live production in Las Vegas in May involved 24 camera feeds that were acquired from Shanghai via remote integration through transmission services provided by PSSI Global Services, a live event management, transmission, production and connectivity provider serving clients across the globe.
PSSI reported that the scale and distance of the event represented a significant expansion of the remote production model and that the successful event demonstrated that PSSI can help clients of any size expand globally without compromising production quality and reliability.
The REMI production model enabled UFC and its production partner, ConCom, to reduce its production footprint by providing an alternative to traveling overseas with an entire production team.
"A college football game as a 10-channel REMI is now part of the weekly repertoire in the US, but we are pushing the boundaries with scale and distance,” said Garrett Hunt, who leads PSSI’s project management team. “UFC is the perfect partner for this initial venture because their global reach is so expansive. Our work in Shanghai and Vegas shows there’s no corner of the world we can’t reach to produce a world-class show with fewer boots on the ground than ever before.”
PSSI sent its newly acquired Appear media processing and delivery equipment and two senior engineers to Shanghai to facilitate this broadcast. Appear's X Platform enabled high-density HEVC encoding/decoding for the event, converting 24 HD camera signals and 8 return feeds into high-quality HEVC, low-latency transport signals.
In addition, PSSI turned to Telstra to provide one gigabyte of data for the event via their Special Events Network, as well as an IT interface for remote engineering. PSSI also engaged Nextologies to design multiple payload data tunnels for comms, scoring, and camera tallies between the Shanghai Media Group facility and UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
“What we were able to accomplish in Shanghai could be tailored to any company with an interest in efficient international REMI productions,” said Tracy Michaels, director of project engineering, who architected this solution alongside PSSI’s partners at Appear, Telstra, and Nextologies. “What sets this REMI apart is the rapid-deploy set/shoot/strike model that can be scaled up or down for any event around the world.”
For more information about PSSI, visit http://www.pssiglobal.com.
