Fieldcraft Studios uses the Quicklink Mac Live for Marathon des Sables

The Marathon des Sables — a gruelling, 256km, six day race in the south-Moroccan desert — has recently been completed by the 71 year old British adventurer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Dubbed the ‘the toughest footrace on Earth’, Fiennes had to overcome 50 degree heat, miles of sand dunes, strong winds and back and heart problems in order to complete the challenge. This was all in aid of the charity Marie Curie, which provides care and support to people living with a terminal illness.

Fieldcraft Studios took up the task to film live media segments of the race to be broadcast back to the UK. With the blistering heat, sending live media back to base from the remote Sahara whilst maintaining a professional broadcast was always going to be difficult without the right equipment.

Quicklink donated the Mac Live software to Fieldcraft Studios to help send the live broadcasts back to base. Liz Scarff from Fieldcraft Studios reveals why they chose the Quicklink Live: “We needed a reliable, easy to use piece of software that would enable us to produce numerous high-quality live broadcasts for the BBC and other major broadcasters,” she said. “We took an SDI 1080 50i output from the Canon C300 into a Black Magic ultra-studio mini recorder via thunderbolt into the Mac Book Pro which was then encoded with the Quicklink Mac Live software.”

The Quicklink Software LNG Mac Live is capable of producing excellent picture quality from its Adaptive Mode, which automatically sets the bitrate depending on the bandwidth and Resilient Mode, which allows you to adjust the error correction before broadcast. Ideal for the journalist always on the move and needing the flexibility and ease of use, the Quicklink Mac Live delivers picture quality due to its H.264 codec enhancement when using Thunderbolt.

Fieldcraft Studios used the Mac Live over the six day period in the Sahara. Scarff said, “we were working in extreme conditions to produce the live broadcasts from the Sahara Desert with Sir Ranulph Fiennes and using QuickLink Live made the job easy. It really was a click and connect experience.”