Deutsche Welle reporters turn to LU-Smart app for remote production from home offices
Foreign news channel Deutsche Welle is relying on LiveU’s mobile IP broadcasting technology to maintain and expand its global live coverage during the current coronavirus crisis. While the delivery of trustworthy news in real-time remains the first priority, Deutsche Welle’s worldwide reporters and correspondents are working under difficult conditions with many of them being locked down at home and unable to access a studio.
This is why Deutsche Welle draws on LiveU equipment these days for flexible, location-independent production solutions. As an early adopter of innovative broadcast technology, the station has been building a comprehensive LiveU infrastructure with the help of Netorium, LiveU’s local partner in Germany. For its mobile smartphone production kits, Deutsche Welle is taking advantage of LiveU’s LU-Smart app. The mobile application is currently used by more than 400 trained reporters within the worldwide Deutsche Welle network to broadcast live from any location.
Max Hofmann, head of News at Deutsche Welle, said: “A couple of years ago nobody would have imagined that we wouldn’t need to book an SNG truck anymore for broadcasts outside our studios. Being able to deliver high-quality live videos simply from the smartphone means much more freedom for us. Now we can always be in whatever location to inform our viewers in a fast, direct and accurate way.”
Using the LU-Smart app, reporters can deliver a live signal directly from their smartphones to the Deutsche Welle master control room, without the need for additional technical equipment or streaming skills.
The app combines the bandwidth of WiFi and cellular to transmit the smartphone’s camera signal in broadcast quality. Deutsche Welle also deploys the LU-Smart app for file transfer as well as automatic audio and video ingest into the station’s various production systems as the smartphone streams integrate into the existing workflows.
In addition to the LU-Smart app, Deutsche Welle has been deploying dozens of LiveU field units of various sizes and types such as the LU300 HEVC portable encoder or the LU610 fixed location encoder. The transmitted signals are received by one of the 20 LiveU servers worldwide that Deutsche Welle operates together with its partners and can be easily managed and controlled via LiveU Central. This centralised web platform is used by Deutsche Welle on a daily basis to manage all incoming live feeds delivered with LiveU technology.