SVG Sit-Down: AWS's Evan Statton on the Cloud-Based Future of Live Sports Production

SVG Sit-Down: AWS's Evan Statton on the Cloud-Based Future of Live Sports Production More than 40 AWS partners demonstrated remote technology at the show By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Friday, October 7, 2022 - 7:00 am

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As the M&E industry shifts toward a cloud-based future, AWS is the axis on which many next-gen workflows spin. So it wasn't surprising that the AWS booth at IBC 2022 in Amsterdam last month was packed wall-to-wall with visitors throughout the show.

To showcase the end-to-end capabilities of its cloud ecosystem for M&E, AWS split its IBC booth footprint into five pods: Content Production, Broadcast, Direct-to-Consumer & Streaming, Media Supply Chain & Archive, and Data Analytics. Each pod featured technology demos in conjunction with AWS's 40+ technology partners on hand at the show.

SVG sat down with Evan Statton, principal architect, M&E, AWS, during the show to discuss the company's presence at IBC, how the cloud enables remote-production models, the potential for live 4K UHD production in the cloud, how the pandemic accelerated the shift to cloud and microservices, and how he sees the cloud impacting live sports production specifically.

AWS's Evan Statton: Technology we haven't even thought of [will] enable people to work wherever they want, when they want, and how they want.

What key workflows are you demonstrating here at IBC in relation to sports production?

AWS has over 400 partners in the M&E space that span five categories, and we're highlighting those here. Subspecialties of M&E are broadcast, direct to consumer, data analytics, supply chain and archive, and content production. The story of the booth is taking people from start to finish.

In terms of sports, I think our live production demonstration is a highlight because we have just control surfaces here talking to instances in the cloud - no physical [infrastructure] equipment. We are showing demos with both the Viz Vectar [cloud-based switching platform] and the Grass Valley AMPP [Agile Media Processing Platform]. In both cases, we have a switcher panel here at the booth, but the actual switcher itself doing the processing is [offsite]. We're just pulling back the multiviewer and the user interface, which is coming back via our own NICE DCV (remote-desktop] protocol. The latency is single-digit milliseconds, so, for the technical director, it feels just like you're in the truck.

We also have an audio-mixing control panel here running on MIDI, and we have partnered with Evertz and SimplyLive for replay here at the show. We have all the primary pieces you would need for a live sports production.

Are your M&E customers transitioning to remote-production models, and what role is the cloud playing in this transition?

There are two main ways that customers are interested in doing remote production. One is essentially having a control room that doesn't have racks behind it, and it's just operating via the cloud. The other way is people working from home. Basically, you just take that same concept and break it apart even further. Customers could want either option for different reasons or a combination of both. Some key people might need to sit next to each other, while the graphics [operator] could be at home.

Many people still see limitations for live UHD production workflows in the cloud. How are you seeing these capabilities improve?

The bitrates of uncompressed 12-Gpbs, 4K video are huge; there's no question about that. Early on, people would say to us that they thought it was impossible, but nobody is saying that anymore because we are doing it.

AWS's booth at IBC 2022 focused on software for production rather than physical gear.

There are various ways to do it. NDI is one way that people transport video in the cloud in a compressed [format], but the quality is still good. AWS CDI [cloud digital interface] is another way that people are working on it in an uncompressed [format]. And then you have your established SRT streams. We have come a long way in a very short period of time, and I think that will only continue.

How did the pandemic accelerate this move toward the cloud and the SaaS/microservices model?

Before COVID, I don't think that people would've said that Zoom is a good way to make a TV production. But suddenly, out of necessity, people had to get something on the air so they started using Zoom. Zoom is an AWS customer, and they were able to scale up to 300+ million users because everybody needed to join Zoom all of a sudden. They were able to do that only because they were in the cloud. That was a great example of how the cloud can scale to a global audience.

Zoom quickly made its way into news coverage and other live broadcasts largely because it was an easy tool for people to use. I think that's the key: tools have to be easy to use. We all learned a lot in those early days, and now we're trying to make the [more advanced] professional tools just as easy to use in the cloud.

In what ways do cloud-based workflows and infrastructure cater specifically to live sports production?

What our customers are asking for is a way to get what they need when they need it but then turn it off when they don't. That's especially true for [live sports production]. Live production has always been something that needs to scale up and scale down because an event is for only that fixed period of time. So live production is a very good fit for the cloud model.

We have more than 400 M&E partners in the space, and, as those vendors make their technology more accessible, they're going to see more adoption. If you need to pick up the phone to call your sales rep every time you need something, that's a slow and burdensome process. And that's not a scenario that wo

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/10/07/svg-sit-down-awss-evan-statton-...
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