LiveIP Studio Project lands IBC 2016 Innovation Award

The VRT-EBU LiveIP Studio Project has won the IBC2016 Innovation Award for Content Creation during a gala event at IBC2016 in Amsterdam. The LiveIP Studio was awarded top honors in a category that included BT Sport for its Augmented Reality for the UEFA Champions League project, and ESPN for the Pylon-Cam project.

Driven by the VRT Sandbox incubator program and the EBU, and powered by a long list of partners including Axon, Digital & Media Solutions (D&MS), Dwesam, EVS, Genelec, Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo, Nevion, Tektronix, Trilogy and Vizrt, the LiveIP project has developed a fully functional IP production studio. Using existing open standards SMPTE 2022-6, AES67/RAVENNA, PTP and OpenFlow, this venture demonstrates a high level of interoperability and leverages the unique benefits of IP to create efficiencies, such as remote production and automation.

This latest acknowledgement of the project’s success follows two other notable wins over the last year – the project received a special recognition award at the IABM Design & Innovation Awards and the award for Technology & Innovation at EBU2016.

The full VRT-EBU Live IP set-up is on display at IBC2016, and is being used daily by IBC TV to shoot, edit and produce programmes covering the IBC2016 conference and exhibition.

Karel De Bondt, project manager of the LiveIP project, says: “We are delighted with this award because it really highlights the tremendous benefits that IP is bringing to broadcast workflows, particularly in live production, and how far it has progressed.”

Felix Poulin, topic leader IP and live production at EBU, says:“This project shows how a wide collaboration between 14 partners moved Live IP production to the next level of open interoperability, working together in the interest of the industry as a whole.”

This sentiment is reflected by Dwesam’s Michel de Wolf, project leader for LiveIP: “Standards continue to play a critical role in the industry and the LiveIP Project is the ideal use case to demonstrate how we can all work together to make IP a success. This multi-vendor approach that focuses so strongly on innovation and collaboration is setting the stage for the future industry landscape.”

Leonid Adamopoulos, show director at VRT, says: “There are just so many creative possibilities with this kind of approach when it comes to content. We’ve already had great success with IP-only broadcasts, including remote production which provides us with fantastic opportunities. A case in point is the live broadcast of a concert in Brussels — I sat in a control room seven kilometres away from the venue but was able to work just as effectively and efficiently controlling the content as I would have been sitting in an OB truck just outside the concert hall.”

Arne Lievens, engineer in charge of production from VRT, says: “From a technical point of view, using IP and IT technology is an entirely new, efficient way of working for us. Apart from the inherent benefits of IP, there are definitely increased possibilities for the things we can do, a lot more flexibility and definitely an element of enhanced user-friendliness and productivity.”

Sue Robinson, producer at IBC TV, says: “The industry is making huge leaps forward when it comes to IP, especially around live production. The LiveIP Studio project has demonstrated this progress time and time again, as well as the importance of interoperability and collaboration. It will certainly be interesting to see just how much further the project can go.”