PLAZAMEDIA deploys Nevion’s SDN IP solution for remote production of football
Nevion and its German solution partner LOGIC media solutions GmbH have teamed up with PLAZAMEDIA – a Germany-based content solution provider and one of the leading producers of sports TV in the German-speaking area – to migrate elements of its high profile football coverage to an IP production set-up using Nevion IP Media Core equipment and VideoIPath management system.
PLAZAMEDIA approached LOGIC and Nevion with the challenge to migrate one of its productions, Germany’s famous football talk show, Der Volkswagen Doppelpass, from traditional OB to remote production. IP technology was chosen as the most suitable solution due to the connectivity available between the production site and the broadcast facility and the significant amount of control requirements.
With Nevion’s IP solution, production sites can be treated as extensions of the main production facility. This enables PLAZAMEDIA to locate the production team in the most suitable location in terms of effectiveness and workflow requirements. For example, the director operates from a compact and lean control environment on location while the sound engineer, EVS operator, graphics and camera shading operators remain at the central broadcast facility.
The system works over standardised WAN (wide area network) connectivity and was designed to operate in mixed mode with uncompressed and J2K encoded signals. The transport, management and device control of this set-up have built-in redundancy, which makes the solution even more robust and scalable than traditional SDI solutions.
Jürgen Konrad, IP solution designer at PLAZAMEDIA said: “One of the main project drivers was reducing the logistics on location and to streamline the production workflow, but we also wanted to upgrade our facilities as we see a lot of benefits in having an IP based infrastructure. We went to air with the system for the first time in August and have broadcast the show successfully, without any issues since then.
“We wanted a totally robust solution, so it was essential to have two redundant wide area connections carrying the redundant stream transport as well as all the control traffic – and the solution does the job safely every Sunday. Nevion and LOGIC were most supportive, in particular in providing their IP network expertise. We can definitely say that we now have a very flexible, scalable, reliable and most efficient setup, that is the way forward for live TV production.”
Thomas Heinzer, Nevion founder and Head of Strategic Projects, said: “PLAZAMEDIA is showing how, with the right solution, IP technology can revolutionize both workflow and production. LOGIC and Nevion are very proud to have helped with this transformation”.
PLAZAMEDIA chose a mix of JPEG2000 and uncompressed (SMPTE2022-6) for video and MADI for audio. Nevion eMerge Media Routers and Media Gateways form the backbone for all real time production, control and management signals. The VideoIPath management and orchestration system provides software defined network (SDN) connection management and service monitoring, ensuring a simplified set-up for the production crew.