At our Grabyo Spotlight London event this year we decided to build our own end-to-end live multi-cam production, in our hired venue, in under half a day. We wanted to showcase the flexibility and power of cloud video production while giving our attendees the chance to be involved. (Watch the event wrap-up and hear industry predictions from The FA, TikTok and PDC).

Our live production studio was affectionately dubbed “CloudTruck”, highlighting our ambition to deliver all the functionality of a mobile OB truck in a cloud environment. 

The live event

Our production covered a live on-site darts tournament, played by all of our delegates and speakers. Each player had three darts, competing to hit the highest score (and win a bottle of champagne).

Scroll down to read more about how we built the live production – but first, watch our video explainer 👇

The cameras

We used two high-grade Sony cameras, two high-grade JVC cameras and two smartphones to capture the event. All feeds were sent to Grabyo via SRT and synced with frame accuracy in Grabyo Producer. 

Our cameras were plugged into a Haivision Makito encoder running on a wired connection, while our smartphones sent SRT via the Larix iOS app over Wi-Fi.  

The studio and live production crew

Not so much a studio, but a stage. Our live production team of five was situated front and center in our space, producing the show in Grabyo. 

Each of our crew collaborated in one Grabyo Producer instance. Their laptops were running on a Wi-Fi connection to serve their role in the production. 

The breakdown of our crew was:

· One director calling the shots, monitoring feeds using Grabyo’s multiviewer
· One TD using Grabyo Producer’s Control Room to switch cameras and scenes
· One graphics operator running score bugs, straps and branding using Singular.Live
· One replay operator delivering instant replays of every throw
· One replay operator creating highlight reels

Due to the nature of the show, our crew used Grabyo’s audio mixer to set audio levels at the beginning of the production. 

The result

The production was played to all attendees in the venue, who also had the chance to tour our multi-cam cloud production setup and watch our crew at work. 

The show format was as follows: After each player threw their darts, we switched to an instant replay of their throws. We then presented a dynamically updated leaderboard to show how their turn impacted the competition. Between throwers or in some downtime, we showed a highlight reel of previous players.

The broadcast was delivered without a hitch. Our crew was able to work collaboratively within the same Grabyo Producer instance, which is hosted in the cloud. This means they don’t need to be in the same room, or anywhere near each other, to achieve the same workflow.