Grass Valley’s Lopez talks new technology for spring 2020

Grass Valley’s new LDX 100

Grass Valley’s Marco Lopez, senior vice president of live production, talks to SVG Europe about new technology being released by the company this spring.

What sports broadcasting-focused technology has Grass Valley released?

Grass Valley has introduced the new LDX 100 camera platform. This high speed, native UHD camera takes a revolutionary approach to camera design, freeing production teams from the physical constraints of traditional live production environments.  Built from the ground up with native IP connectivity, the camera delivers signals directly into the network, enabling access to them wherever they are needed.

The camera features Grass Valley’s latest Titan imager that answers specific demands of live sports production and provides superior UHD resolution and HDR/WCG colour reproduction at up to 3X high speed. Production teams can now create rich breathtaking images in full raster native UHD without compromising on the detailed storytelling that viewers demand.

In addition to the LDX 100, we have also launched the Grass Valley Agile Media Processing Platform (GV AMPP), the first cloud-based SaaS platform that leverages modern elastic computing technologies. This solution unlocks the power of elastic compute for live sports – as well as news, and playout workflows – to help customers make a smooth transition to public or private cloud-based workflows or hybrid infrastructures.

The GV AMPP platform is cloud native and cloud-agnostic and supports the processing of video and audio, both in the public cloud, in a private, on-premise data centre, or hybrid topologies. This solution also addresses the most critical concerns that complicate many IP and cloud deployments, from network connectivity and latency to timing management.

What is the benefit of these technologies for those in sports video content production?

The LDX 100 camera solution leverages the full power and agility of IP to deliver fast and easy set-up and configuration. The unique integrated design also frees up multiple rack units per camera that were previously dedicated to camera base stations; this delivers significant space savings and hugely simplifies the logistics for mobile productions removing the need to pair the right number of cameras to CCUs at each event. We are very proud of the endorsement and purchase of the first LDX 100 cameras from All Mobile Video as they complete their all IP truck with Grass Valley.

The combination of flexibility and power that GV AMPP delivers is significant in live content production, allowing fully distributed workflows as teams can work on the same programme without having to be co-located.

GV AMPP is already being deployed by Blizzard Entertainment’s eSports production teams to support cloud-based remote production, ensuring they are one of the few sports networks on air during the coronavirus crisis. Using GV AMPP as its virtual control room and master control solution, Blizzard can deliver live Overwatch League (OWL) and Call of Duty League (CDL) events to fans across the globe with the entire crew located safely at their respective homes.

How will this be developed further?

GV AMPP has been designed to empower production teams to rapidly and easily add, remove, change or redistribute media production and delivery, in the cloud. Furthermore, they only pay for computing power as it’s used. Workflow functions run on the platform as modular solutions built from a wide range of micro-services; the first of these is AMPP Master Control and we will see additional services, such as live production, asset management, playout automation and signal processing, added in the months ahead.

What else are we likely to see coming out from your company over the next six months, and why is it of interest to the sports video production community?

Grass Valley is committed to leading the industry’s transition to a cloud-based future. At the heart of this strategy is the GV Media Universe, which is our vision for the future of content creation. This concept is designed around a comprehensive ecosystem of cloud-based tools and services that will revolutionise how TV happens. These tools and services will integrate with our existing solution set as well as services from selected partner offerings.

Through GV Media Universe, which is powered by GV AMPP, we provide broadcasters access to the power, flexibility and elasticity of the cloud, opening doors to new pay-as-you-go models and helping customers make the leap forward to cloud-based environments.

We’ve also introduced the AMPP Connected initiative, a range of existing Grass Valley solutions that integrate with GV AMPP. AMPP Connected also extends to pre-certified partner solutions, expanding the reach of GV Media Universe beyond the Grass Valley portfolio.

Today, GV AMPP is being used for Cloud-based Master Control and we’ll soon be introducing elastic remote production and playout capabilities.