Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

ESPN, DMED Pull Off First End-to-End Cloud-Based Live-Game Production With A-10 College Hoops Game

24/01/2023

ESPN, DMED Pull Off First End-to-End Cloud-Based Live-Game Production With A-10 College Hoops Game The Davidson-George Mason game is believed to be the first live end-to-end-cloud production of a U.S. sporting event By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Tuesday, January 24, 2023 - 3:13 pm

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

ESPN and Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution (DMED) continued to push the boundaries of cloud-based production on Jan. 14, when they teamed up on the first-ever fully cloud-based live-game production in the U.S. during the Davidson-George Mason Atlantic 10 Conference basketball game in Fairfax, VA.

Operators on hand in Bristol: (from left) Director 1 Ashley Ward, Senior Associate Producer Greg Burud, Media Replay Operator 1 Maddie Boccardi

Feeds from onsite cameras and microphones were sent directly into an AWS cloud instance, where software-based production tools were running virtually. Meanwhile, operators used control surfaces in a control room at ESPN's Bristol, CT, campus to produce the show remotely. The software-based approach not only reduced costly hardware and physical infrastructure but also eliminated transmission bottlenecks associated with hardware-based REMI productions.

We see this as a major step forward in our evolution as it related to cloud-based production, says Chris Strong, director, specialist operations, Disney Media & Entertainment. The beauty of cloud is, we can take the REMI model or any type of traditional model and be able to make it a far more scalable solution. In a traditional fixed facility, you build a set amount of rooms that is the total rooms you have available. If you want to scale that up, you're going to have to build more brick-and-mortar facilities. But, with the cloud, you can take all those resources and send them to a cloud instance, which allows you to scale almost infinitely.

Building the On-Ramp to Distributed Production in the Cloud The proof of concept comes on the heels of ESPN/DMED's recent successful deployment of a cloud-based workflow for super-slo-mo replay for REMI productions and marks a major step forward in their efforts to create a sustainable cloud-based live-production model. Although the production crew was located in Bristol for the initial production, ESPN believes this cloud-based production model will eventually allow its production workforce the flexibility to work from anywhere.

The next generation of this [model] will move to a distributed workflow where our operators can work from home, says Strong. The goal is to build an efficient, scalable, and sustainable model so that, when our [ops team] has two college-basketball shows to cover at once, we could spin up a [cloud] instance instead of using resources in one of our fixed facilities. We also would be handing a single program output to the facility versus trying to accommodate eight to 10 more individual resources like in a REMI or REMCO [model].

Senior Audio Operator Cody Hardin in Bristol uses an SSL audio-mixing control surface for the cloud-based production.

Live Cloud Production From Beginning to End During the production, ESPN successfully tested video switching, replay, graphics, multiviewer generation, audio mixing, comms, file transfer, and transmission QC in the cloud.

All the typical things that we would normally have within the facility to produce the show were running in the cloud, says Daniel Lannon, manager, REMI operations, DMED. Then we had the director/TD, replay operator, producer, audio operator, comms specialist, and our graphics operators and graphics producers all located within the facility. They were all controlling the [technology] that was running in the cloud data center from [control surfaces] in Bristol.

Graphics Interface Coordinator Keith Rall

The cloud-based operation was based on a ViBox all-in-one production video switcher and slo-mo replay system from Simplylive (now owned by Riedel Communications). The team also used a Simplylive Venue Gateway onsite encoder/decoder and multiviewer for IP encoding of all the camera and audio feeds and transported them to an AWS cloud instance using SRT.

All the necessary tools for the live production were running in the cloud, including Vizrt's Viz Trio, Viz Engine, and Clock & Score Control Interface for graphics; Scoreboard OCR (optical character recognition) for clock-and-score data extraction; Solid State Logic audio mixing (with a 16-fader console surface in Bristol); Unity Connect audio comms; Audinate Dante Domain Manager; ENCO DAD audio-asset-management and -playout; Avsono audio NDI gateway and processing; Sienna ND NDI routing, processing, and multiviewer generation; and Signiant high-speed file transfer.

Quality and the expectations from the production team were key, says Strong. We did not give up any level of production that would have been done in the hardware brick-and-mortar facility by putting this in the cloud. It has exactly the same quality with the same level of resources as the REMI ViBox model would have been. Our production was afforded everything they're used to in our normal REMI model: switching, audio, graphics, video, camera isos, replay, scorebug, comms, and even talent onsite.

Added Challenges: Announcers Onsite and Preparing a Backup Plan With ESPN's announcers at EagleBank Arena calling the action, all camera and audio feeds had to go into the cloud, the show was cut in Bristol, and the mix-minus audio, program feed, and tallies went back to the arena for the announcers via the Simplylive Venue Gateway and Unity Connect.

As a redundant backup plan, ESPN also took four isolated camera feeds directly into a separate AWS cloud instance equipped with small-switching and audio-mixing capabilities. If there was a failure in the primary cloud-based production chain, ESPN would
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/01/24/espn-dmed-pull-off-first-end-to...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

27/07/2026

AES Educational Foundation Announces 2026/2027 Scholarship and Grant Recipients

The Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation has named its scholarship and grant recipients for the 2026/2027 academic year. The awards support students...

27/07/2026

ESPN and MEAC Reach Multi-Year Media Rights Agreement Through 2030-31

ESPN and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) have signed a multi-year media rights agreement covering basketball championships and select football and ba...

27/07/2026

Yahoo Sports and Cameo Integrate Celebrity Video Bookings into Yahoo Fantasy

Yahoo Sports and Cameo have partnered to allow fantasy football users to book personalized celebrity videos directly within the Yahoo Fantasy app and website. T...

27/07/2026

Eutelsat to Receive $504 Million in FCC Upper C-Band Transition Payments

Eutelsat has welcomed the FCC's order establishing the regulatory framework for the transition of Upper C-band spectrum in the United States. Under the orde...

27/07/2026

ESPN Acquires U.S. and International Rights to International Dance League

ESPN and the International Dance League (IDL) have signed a global rights agreement for the 2026 season. Events will air bi-weekly on ESPN2 at 7 p.m. ET beginni...

27/07/2026

NBCUniversal and YouTube Announce Multi-Year Global Partnership

NBCUniversal and YouTube have signed a multi-year global partnership that includes bundling Peacock with YouTube Premium, extending NBCUniversal's distribut...

27/07/2026

Two Weeks Away: 2026 SVG Venues & Teams Summit at Miamis Kaseya Center To Reunite In-Stadium Production Community

Agenda includes presentations from the Miami Heat, Inter Miami, Florida Panthers...

27/07/2026

Behind The Mic: CBS Sports Bolsters College Football Analyst Team

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, including new deals, departures, and assignments compiled from press releases and repo...

27/07/2026

PBR Goes Animated With BS: Bull Stories, Giving Its Bucking Bulls a Voice

Ten one-minute shorts will roll out across CBS, The CW, Paramount+ during the 2026 PBR Teams season PBR is officially moving into scripted animation. The Profe...

27/07/2026

Vochlea announce DubBox

New app turns vocal percussion into polished loops Vochlea, the company behind the voice-to-MIDI instrument Dubler 2, have just announced the launch of a ne...

27/07/2026

Sonora Cinematic launch Pure 12-String for Soundbox

Latest MPE-capable instrument completes Pure Trilogy line-up Sonora Cinematic have just released the third and final instalment in their series of acoustic ...

27/07/2026

fedDSP introduce Opto compressor plug-in

Emulates four varieties of optical compression The latest addition to the fedDSP line-up has just been announced, and packs four distinct optical compressor...

27/07/2026

Drawmer reveal the OC1 & FC1

Optical & FET compressors join 500-series line-up At our recent GearExpo UK show, we heard from Drawmer that they would soon be launching a pair of new 500-...

27/07/2026

T-Mobile Tops Ookla's Mobile Network Rankings

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/07/2026

Pebble to Feature Virtualization, Cloud-Based Playout Tech at IBC

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/07/2026

NBCU Telemundo Turns To Chyron PRIME 5 For World Cup Graphics

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/07/2026

Lightware Adds SNMPv3 Monitoring to Taurus Devices

Lightware announces SNMPv3-based monitoring support for selected Taurus devices, available from firmware v1.20.0. The update enables IT administrators and AV in...

27/07/2026

Mediagenix Showcases the Real-Time Media Enterprise at IB...

Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, will showcase its vision for the Real-Time...

27/07/2026

Official trailer: Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars in Sky Original supernatural thriller Possession

All episodes available Thursday 6 August on Sky and streaming service NOWMonday ...

27/07/2026

Seven paradoxes shaping the next era of media production - Episode 4

Why Confidence MattersIn this series, we explore the technologies, architectures and operational realities shaping modern media operations. Along the way, we ex...

27/07/2026

Apple brings AppleCare One to the UK, streamlining coverage - UPDATE - Posted on 27 July 2026

Apple today announced AppleCare One - a new way for customers to protect multipl...

27/07/2026

944,000 VIEWERS WATCH RT'S COVERAGE OF MAYO'S HISTORIC WIN, AFTER A 75 YEAR WAIT TO LIFT THE SAM MAGUIRE

Yesterday witnessed truly memorable scenes in Croke Park, bringing the curtain d...

27/07/2026

SES Statement On FCC Upper C-band Auction Decision

Luxembourg, July 27, 2026 - SES, a leading space solutions company, issued the following statement following the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approval...

27/07/2026

Industry Leaders Unite in Open Secure AI Alliance for AI Safety and Security

Open source software is a critical pillar of the global economy. It underpins cloud computing, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, government...

26/07/2026

Audio Vivid: A New Destination for Immersive Audio

What is Audio Vivid? A New Destination for Immersive Audio Over the past several years, immersive audio has evolved from a niche production consideration into a...

26/07/2026

NVIDIA Harnesses Vera CPU to Speed Up Design of Next-Generation CPUs and GPUs

The complexity of modern chip design continues to grow as engineering teams work to develop increasingly sophisticated CPUs, GPUs and AI systems. To help meet t...

25/07/2026

Vochlea introduce DubBox

New app turns vocal percussion into polished loops Vochlea, the company behind the voice-to-MIDI instrument Dubler 2, have just announced the launch of a ne...

25/07/2026

Study: T-Mobile Remains Best Mobile and Fastest 5G Network

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/07/2026

Mark Bridges to Lead CableLabs

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/07/2026

Total YouTube Views for All FIFA World Cup Content Top 200 Billion

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/07/2026

Pebble To Address Future Of Media Operations At IBC 2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/07/2026

Paramount Agrees to Pause Warner Bros. Discovery Deal

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/07/2026

Export FCP7 to XML Without Needing FCP7 Installed

Export FCP7 to XML Without Needing FCP7 Installed Dave Rice July 24, 2026 0 Comments I've created an open source tool that allows you to export FC...

25/07/2026

Documentary Sell Your House Edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio

Documentary Sell Your House Edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio Brie Clayton July 24, 2026 0 Comments Filmmakers post feature documentary from opposite...

25/07/2026

Time to Act: Bringing a New Opera to Life

Time to Act: Bringing a New Opera to Life Boston Conservatory at Berklee vocal arts students played a vital role in shaping the opera's creative developme...

25/07/2026

Beyond the Score

Beyond the Score For Dean of Music Kevin Haden, the boundless possibilities of classical music begin with process. July 24, 2026 By Kevin Haden Michelle ...

25/07/2026

Reading the Room

Reading the Room As music director of two major orchestras, conductor Jonathon Heyward aims to make the concert hall a space for everyone. July 24, 2026 By ...

25/07/2026

First look revealed for YAGA, a seductive mystery thriller coming to Sky and NOW this October

Saturday 25 July 2026 First look revealed for YAGA, a seductive mystery thrille...

24/07/2026

ESPN Adds New Production Features for NFL FLAG Championships

Referee hat cameras, player/coach mics, and virtual graphics will be deployed at the three-day event for the first time The NFL FLAG Championships return to ES...

24/07/2026

Qvest, Ateme and Scaleway Deliver Sovereign OTT Platforms for European Broadcasters

Qvest, Ateme, and Scaleway have partnered to offer broadcasters, media organizat...

24/07/2026

LTN Reaches 3,000 Satellite-to-IP Migrations as FCC Votes on C-Band Auction

LTN has completed satellite-to-IP migrations for more than 3,000 broadcaster, MVPD (Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributor), head-end, and content owner si...

24/07/2026

Chyron Releases Virtual Placement 8.1

Chyron has released Virtual Placement 8.1, an update to its live sports virtual graphics platform. The release adds workflow and graphics changes across chroma ...

24/07/2026

Riedel Deploys RefCam and Easy5G at International Soccer Match

Riedel's RefCam Live was used for the first time at an international soccer match during a friendly between the German men's national team and Ghana in ...

24/07/2026

USSI Global Offers Services for Next Phase of C-Band Spectrum Transition

USSI Global said it is prepared to help broadcasters, satellite network operators, and media organizations manage the next phase of C-band spectrum clearing, fo...

24/07/2026

Fubo Launches The Athletic Video Hub on CTV

FuboTV and The Athletic have launched The Athletic Video Hub on Fubo, bringing The Athletic's sports video content to connected TV (CTV) for the first time....