Pac-12 Networks' New Production Headquarters Is a Significant Step Forward in SMPTE ST 2110

Pac-12 Networks' New Production Headquarters Is a Significant Step Forward in SMPTE ST 2110 The facility in San Ramon, CA, is a REMI workhorse featuring nine control rooms By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, January 25, 2024 - 11:43 am

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Flexibility. Investing in the future. The ability to quickly pivot in an always evolving media landscape.

These are the bullet points regularly cited to justify investment in broadcast-technology that may be generally seen to be on the bleeding - or, at least, cutting - edge. Betting on yourself in a time of uncertainty. But, really, when is anything ever certain?

Nowhere is that fact truer in sports today than at Pac-12 Networks. Consistently one of the more innovative media organizations in terms of broadcast technology, the collegiate-conference-owned broadcaster recently opened a brand-new production facility in San Ramon, CA (about 15 miles west of Oakland).

Boasting nine control rooms, large bullpen areas for graphics and replay, a full studio, and much more, the facility is the new home of a broadcaster that produces well north of 800 live game broadcasts per year. It also happens to be significant in the maturation of IP and the SMPTE ST 2110 IP standard.

In August, Pac-12 Networks opened a brand-new production facility San Ramon, CA. Its facility in downtown San Francisco had served as its headquarters for its first 11 years. (Photo: Pac-12 Networks)

After 11 years in the San Francisco facility where it was born, Pac-12 Networks has moved to this brand-new home, providing a valuable asset and laying a critical broadcast foundation for a league with, to put it simply, an uncertain future.

This was, honestly, an amazing chance to reflect on what we had built in San Francisco many years ago with great success, says Ryan Currier, SVP, engineering and products, Pac-12 Networks. Even though the core of that facility was 10+ years old at that point, we were still doing a lot of innovation. This, though, was the chance to start fresh in terms of the underlying fundamental technology and technical stack.

The REMI Pioneers Soldier On Since its first days in 2012, Pac-12 Networks has been a leader in at-home (or REMI) production, handling larger REMI-style shows than anyone in the U.S. then or since. This academic season, the broadcaster will produce live coverage of more than 850 events as well as a robust lineup of live studio programming, and nearly all of it will run through the San Ramon facility as REMI shows.

The new building is loaded, highlighted by nine control rooms - four of them full production-control rooms for REMI/at-home game production built around Grass Valley K-Frame XP production switchers. Each of the four control rooms, as well as a studio-control room, has an accompanying audio room with a Calrec audio console at the center.

We've always felt that we've been a pioneer of the REMI style of production, says Larry Meyers, EVP, content, Pac-12 Networks. We wanted to take that even a step further. Even when we do remote studio programming, it's a REMI-style production: camera and audio [feeds] are brought into the facility in an encoded fashion, and we [produce] everything from the facility. We think we've taken that a step further with this facility by integrating into an IP environment.

San Ramon also has two large bullpen areas: one housing 26 Ross Xpression graphics stations; the other, 14 Evertz DreamCatcher replay stations. There's also a highlights center built around a Dalet asset-management system.

Pac-12 Networks' new production facility is built to the IP standards SMPTE ST-2110. It has a single studio space for anchoring linear television coverage. (Photo: Advanced Systems Group)

Additionally, there are four software-defined (vMix) control rooms for smaller REMI/at-home game productions. The game broadcasts can be produced by as few as two operators. According to Meyers, one person at the front of the room serves as producer, director, replay operator, audio mixer, and technical director, and another person behind them works graphics. Onsite at this level of production, there are typically two or three camera operators, the game announcers, and a small contingent of support personnel.

Pac-12 Networks' new facility features two large bullpen areas dedicated to graphics (Ross Xpression) and replay (Evertz Dreamcatcher) for REMI live game production. (Photo: Advanced Systems Group)

We think we have the lowest-latency REMI-style production facility anywhere, says Meyers. The fact that we're still using legacy J2K encoding and decoding equipment and integrating it into an ST 2110 environment is challenging. It's easier to build a facility from scratch when you're not integrating legacy equipment or legacy signal types into it, not trying to put the old and the new together. That said, we did do that. At the same time, if we find ourselves in the fall with a requirement to deliver in 1080p or 1080p HDR, that might require changing our encoding equipment. But it would lead us to make choices that would allow us to stay in this super-low-latency environment where we can have announcers onsite and everything works - whether that's tally lights, comms systems, IFBs, talkback, or announcers' being able to look at replays.

A Full Commitment to IP and SMPTE ST 2110 All these tools, toys, and spaces are built on and linked by a cutting-edge SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructure, an Arista IP switching core, an Imagine Communications routing and edge-processing core, and 2,088 fiber cables.

With this set of SMPTE IP standards still in relative infancy, it was a bold move for Pac-12 Networks.

We were looking for flexibility for our productions, explains Hieu Ho, lead broadcast technology engineer, Pac-12 Ne

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/01/25/pac-12-networks-new-production-...
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