ATP Media, the Broadcast and Media arm of the ATP Tour, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and Gravity Media, the global provider of live broadcast facilities and production services, collaborated with leading manufacturers to undertake a large scale virtualized live production, based on AWS, as a Proof of Concept (PoC) during the first 4 days of the Rolex Paris Masters (an ATP Masters 1000 event).

We were very pleased to participate as a vendor to support the production with Grabyo Producer, working in close partnership with VizRT and Deltatre as our graphics partners.

Gaining experience in virtualized live production

The purpose of the PoC was to gain first-hand experience of the capabilities and benefits of AWS-based virtualized live production in a real-world application. Production facilities were established at Gravity Media’s offices in Farnborough, UK and were designed to be a ‘shadow’ of the main ATP Media production facilities on site in Bercy, Paris. A fully produced live main court feed was created, using an experienced freelance director, replay and graphics operators. 

The key aspects of broadcast production functionality that were evaluated in this PoC were:

• Live video mixing, including use of multiple ME’s, Transitions, DVE’s, Keyers and physical control surfaces
• Slow motion replay
• Scoring and other data driven graphics
• Multiviewer generation and distribution to remote users
• Audio mixing
• NLE Editing (fast turnaround) as well as clipping, creation of melts and archiving

For the purposes of the test, vendors were invited to demonstrate the full capabilities of their solutions across numerous tennis matches whilst being operated by impartial freelance talent in a live broadcast environment. As well as working in a stand-alone configuration, the testing included various combinations of different vendors products, so that interoperability could be assessed. 

How the production worked

From the main court in Paris, twelve live camera feeds, with audio, and two Hawk-Eye ball-tracking feeds, were contributed from Paris over fibre, via AWS Elemental Media Connect, into a dedicated Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in the eu-west region. The vendors deployed their solutions onto instances in this VPC. 

Deltatre, ATP Media’s match and world feed graphics partner provided live match graphics via a Vizrt instance, also running in the VPC, powered by live data feeds delivered from site. 

As well as directing live matches, with graphics and replays, an instance of Adobe Premiere Pro was running in the VPC, controlled via a NICE DCV desktop client. Editors were able to access content and edit in a fluid, real-time manner and share content back to the live production. 

The Gravity facilities in Farnborough provided an additional aspect of discovery as the industrial unit was not “on-net” in terms of being fibred to ATP Media’s global fibre network, so the two PCR’s that were built had to run on a standard business grade internet line. 

For more information on this PoC, or to see how we can help you to implement cloud production solutions, please get in touch!