Live production expert Actua Sport has again turned to LiveU’s innovative IP-video EcoSystem to enhance its live sports coverage, this time at the European Athletics Championships, which took place in Rome, June 7-12. Mandated by the European Broadcast Union (EBU), Actua Sport acted as the host broadcaster for this six-day event with record-breaking viewing figures, which saw 15 championship records set during those six competition days with almost 200 hours of sustainably produced live streamed coverage made available for television and streaming platforms.
Actua Sport was responsible for producing all the live coverage of the many track and field events as well as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, for 35 European broadcasters. Its remit included selecting the highest-quality solutions to meet fast-paced production demands and budget, whilst fulfilling important sustainability considerations. LiveU was implemented as part of an efficient hybrid remote and on-site Lightweight Production, encompassing live contribution, production and distribution.
LiveU helped Actua Sport to innovatively connect live cameras on fully electric monowheels to provide fresh angles and bring fans even closer to the action during outside broadcasts. This is the first time monowheels have been used at a major Athletics event and proved to be a successful addition. Actua Sport used a mix of LiveU field units, including the multi-camera LU800, to bring signals back to the three OB production units from cameras positioned on the monowheels and hand-held gimbals – placed at the start, finish and other points along the courses for the external races (race walk & half-marathon). An additional pair of LU800s were used to capture behind-the-scenes footage from around the stadium.
Franck Choquard, Director of Actua Sport said, “We’ve been using LiveU for several years and know we can trust the reliability of the solution. The nature of the technology offers greater value for money than traditional RF workflows, and enables greater agility, especially for dynamic events such as these. As an example of the seamless integration, we also used LiveU‘s IP Pipe tool with our Color Matching Unit technology to match the cameras to ensure we had the right colour grading and to make sure we were bringing the frame-synced signals back to the OB vans.“
On the distribution side, Actua Sport used LiveU Matrix for cloud IP distribution to the 35 takers, complementing traditional satellite or fiber connectivity. Choquard added, “We had to produce field events with multiple galleries. We had a total of 12 feeds available on-site and remotely through LiveU Matrix distributing the production feeds in LRT™ or SRT to takers and a couple of cloud-based platforms. Takers could access the feeds and record them as a standalone, use for post-production purposes, live stream or feed to other platforms. A couple of takers were using those feeds to recreate their own main feed.”
LiveU Studio, LiveU‘s cloud-native video production solution was also used within an end-to-end cloud based workflow. Leveraging Studio’s flexibility and agility, standalone feeds were connected in Matrix to a remote gallery as part of the live production. Actua Sport repeated this workflow again at the subsequent European Athletics U18 Championships in Slovakia (July 18-21).
Highlighting the important sustainability aspects of the project Choquard said, “We build sustainability into all areas of the production and the LiveU technology helps to reduce the number of people on-site as well as costs. If we’d had the same setup for the two external races using RF we’d have needed another aerial solution, either a helicopter or a plane.”
Choquard summed up, “From the beginning the LiveU team always comes with an open mind and flexible approach, bringing innovative ways into the business relationship. Their customer support is second to none, which is a major plus factor for us.”
Roy Hasson, VP Global SaaS and Solution Sales, LiveU said, “We have a strong relationship with Actua Sport and we’re delighted to highlight the success of this project, which has broken records on and off the track. Our LiveU EcoSystem is the beating heart of many major sports events, elevating production values whilst captivating and growing audiences. It’s a great example of how incorporating cloud-based workflows with hardware encoders, LiveU acts as an enabler for sustainable live productions.”
