Animation Research Uses AWS to Virtualize Remote Sports Production posted: 30/09/2020
AWS also helps ARL's Virtual Eye production arm to reduce its carbon footprint while delivering high-profile sports events to fans around the world
Virtual Eye is the sports division of New Zealand-based Animation Research, LTD, which is one of Australasia's leading 3D computer graphics production houses. For more than 25 years, Emmy Award-winning Virtual Eye has specialized in 3D TV graphics that revolutionize the way fans watch high-profile sports, and has delivered those experiences on multiple platforms for events such as the Ryder Cup, The The Open Championship (The British Open), the US Open, the America's Cup, Formula 1, The Olympics, World Rally, Red Bull Freeride Tour, The Ashes, and both the PGA and European golf tours.
Typically, Virtual Eye teams travel around the world to provide on-site production support and create 3D graphics that help broadcasters deliver compelling stories to viewers as sports action unfolds. In golf alone, ARL and Virtual Eye cover more than 90 tournaments a year across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US, and have an average of 30 projects under way at any given time. Helping sports programmers share great stories with fans is in our blood, said John Rendall, Head of Technology and Innovation for ARL.
But 2020 has not been a typical year. In the space of fewer than 24 hours, Friday March 13th - a bleak Friday if ever there was one recalls Ian Taylor Managing Director of ARL, Covid 19 hit international sports and ARL's sports business came to an unexpected and sudden halt. This presented a challenge for Virtual Eye, which traditionally deployed crews of up to 12 people to locations around the world for on-site production. More than 80 percent of our annual revenue is driven through our sports focused business (Virtual Eye), said Taylor. When COVID-19 hit, we were faced with the daunting prospect of what's next?'
Angus Reid and Ian Taylor
Not only did it become a major risk to have their operators roaming around the world but countries, including New Zealand, were already closing their borders. Rendall and his tech team had to think about how ARL could deliver to its clients if sporting events around the world resumed, but the ARL team couldn't be on site to support them. We had to devise a platform that would allow us to do everything remotely from New Zealand. The flexibility, scalability, and security of AWS was the answer we needed for cloud-based remote production operations, said Rendall.
Other platforms were complicated to use, Rendall added. Having access to off-the-shelf services, a good set of APIs in order to access them and fine applications to go with them has really made a difference for us. That is a really big benefit for a company that has to move as quickly as we do. We have 30 to 40 projects going at any one time, and, because we're a relatively small company, we need to be able to find products and service that can deliver what we need with the minimal effort.
Now, by leveraging the AWS-powered architecture, ARL provides a high-capacity bridge between remote on-site productions and Virtual Eye offices in Dunedin, New Zealand without having to deploy crew to manage operations at multiple remote sports venues. Using AWS global infrastructure and services, including AWS Elemental MediaConnect, Virtual Eye is able to provide full, virtual operations management. This enables broadcasters to deliver live video from remote locations and provide secure exchanges of live video feeds between sports venues and central operations in New Zealand with minimal latency to ensure optimal viewing experiences. To further assure secure content delivery over its network, ARL uses AWS Virtual Private Cloud with site-to-site VPN and AWS Global Accelerator, a managed service that improves the availability and performance of applications with local or global users to meet broadcasting standards.
Eliott Smith & Reece Witherspoon
I don't have a technical background, said Taylor, but as soon as John showed me what Media Connect could deliver to solve this problem we had, it was a no-brainer for me. Moving video around the globe is always challenging and expensive, whether you were using satellite links or dark fiber lines. Media Connect allows companies like us and a lot of broadcasters to do this without the huge costs associated with it previously. AWS has such a good array of services. And a lot of our customers are using the same tools we are.
The AWS architecture was put to the test at one of the first sporting events back after the initial COVID 19 shutdown, the Charles Schwab Challenge PGA golf event in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. From 7,500 miles away, Virtual Eye provided CBS Sports with augmented reality, virtual ball tracking and other graphic elements, rendered in real time, for the enjoyment of fans at home. The system worked flawlessly, said Rendall. We have now delivered every tournament for the past 3 months and we are currently gearing up for both the US Open and The Masters.
Because we built our platform around AWS, it's opened up new doors of opportunity for us. We are at the other end of the world and we still are able to reach distant places thanks to AWS. If we can do it from here, we can do it from anywhere. That's the kind of reliability and confidence we can now provide our clients, Taylor said. Additionally, AWS is accelerating our speed of innovation into machine learning use cases, giving us the ability to automatically track players in the field using ML vision to provide a wealth of insights and analytics to different stakeholders from viewers to coaching staff.
Both Rendall and Taylor also saw the AWS cloud video infrastructure as an opportunity fo
Europe Stories
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
12/03/2026
Staines-upon-Thames, UK, 11th March, 2026 - Yospace, the trusted leader in Dyna...
12/03/2026
In Latin America, women are shaping music and defining its future. To kick off t...
12/03/2026
En Am rica Latina, las mujeres est n moldeando la m sica y definiendo su futuro....
12/03/2026
Let's turn back the clock 20 years: The music landscape was a world away fro...
12/03/2026
Bad Bunny is no stranger to Spotify's Billions Club. In fact, he has a whopp...
12/03/2026
Spotify was at the London Book Fair this week, joining conversations across the publishing industry about how people can make reading part of their daily lives....
12/03/2026
Mastering tool improves mono compatibility
Tokyo Dawn Labs' Ohlhorst Digital range is a series of mastering-focused plug-ins developed by Jan Ohlhorst, ...
12/03/2026
Wave FX processor integrated into four products
Lewitt have teamed up with Elgato to create a new processor for the company's Wave Next product range, i...
12/03/2026
Free tool for annotating audio files
Mix Notes is a new, free iOS App that provides users with a simple way to annotate their audio files. It's been cre...
12/03/2026
Side-chain ducking tool gets an upgrade
Devious Machines' popular side-chaining and envelope-shaping tool has just been kitted out with an improved enve...
12/03/2026
Ceremony to take place on 16 April 2026
The MPG (Music Producers Guild) have revealed the full shortlist for this year's MPG Awards, which will be takin...
12/03/2026
Emulates three classic dbx 160 variants
The latest arrival to Overloud's Gem Series plug-in range faithfully recreates not one, but three versions of th...
12/03/2026
New granular soft synth announced
Said to be their most advanced software synthesizer to date, Baby Audio's latest release has been built on a new granu...
12/03/2026
Latest version now live!
Edit 11 March 2026 - Bitwig Studio 6 is now live, and available for all to download!
The latest version of Bitwig's DAW softwa...
12/03/2026
Latest free eBook now available!
Designed for recording engineers, audio-technology students and technically minded musicians, our latest free eBook deliver...
12/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity expands SITLine network encryptor portfolio - more...
12/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz to showcase future-proof EMC testing solutions at EMV 2026 Rohde & Schwarz will participate in EMV 2026, Europe's premier trade fair and c...
12/03/2026
Modern media operations demand a platform that unites automation, orchestration, and human oversight without compromise. In this post, we explore the six key te...
12/03/2026
A deep dive into the platform
Architecture The Blue Lucy platform follows a distributed microservices architecture, meaning the overall operational capability...
12/03/2026
Orchestration platform enables broadcasters to deploy multiple AI models safely with full auditability, rights protection, and regulatory oversight.
LONDON, En...
12/03/2026
Wuppertal March 12, 2026
Riedel Expands Managed Technology Division in the Ame...
12/03/2026
Advanced Media Server Delivers Double the Channel Density at Half the Cost per C...
12/03/2026
The Late Late Show Show St Patrick's Day special
Dancing with the Stars f...
11/03/2026
First Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) deployment of the emergency.lu platform for refugees and their host communities' use provides dependable broadband for humani...
11/03/2026
Following a successful first series, UKTV today announces the commission of two ...
11/03/2026
Wednesday 11 March 2026
Sky and CANAL launch new partnership to develop English-language drama
Sky and CANAL are today announcing a strategic co commissioni...
11/03/2026
NTCA, Cartesian Release New Report on the Business Case for USF
March 11, 2026
Network Economics
News
NTCA - March 11, 2026 - As the FCC and Congr...
11/03/2026
TELL US YOUR (SHORT) STORIES
The 2026 RT Short Story Competition is now open for entries
Recognising and rewarding the best new Irish fiction writing for...
11/03/2026
RT 's The Traitors Ireland is among the nominees for the 2026 Celtic Media Festival Torc Awards for Excellence, announced today....
10/03/2026
10 Mar 2026
VEON's Largest Market Pakistan Almost Triples Mobile Spectrum i...
09/03/2026
Contains all six dual-ensemble libraries
VSL's Duality Strings series offers an intriguing alternative to your average string library, capturing two str...
09/03/2026
Outstanding Contribution To UK Music
Photo: Samuel Bradley
Ahead of their upcoming MPG Awards, the Music Producers Guild (MPG) have revealed the latest win...
09/03/2026
Two new high-quality DI boxes announced
Boasting some impressive technical specifications and versatile routing options, Strymon's latest active DI boxe...
09/03/2026
Latest MPE-capable Soundbox library released
The follow-up release for Sonora Cinematic's Pure Nylon has arrived, and becomes the latest addition to the...
09/03/2026
Popular wireless mic head design revived
Sennheiser have revealed that the MD 9235, a cardioid mic head designed to pair up with their handheld wireless sys...
09/03/2026
Captures two sought-after Dumble combo amps
The latest TONEX release captures a pair of sought-after Dumble amplifiers from IK Multimedia's private amp ...
09/03/2026
Flexible all-analogue insert matrix joins line-up
HUM Audio Devices don't tend to do things by halves - even the quickest of glances at the likes of the...
09/03/2026
Captures three sought-after pianos
Rhodes latest software release brings together a collection of three virtual pianos: a concert grand, an acoustic upright...
09/03/2026
Flagship compressor gets an upgrade
Techivation's flagship compressor plug-in has just been treated to a ground-up rebuild that kits it out with some po...
09/03/2026
Profiler OS 14.0 enters open beta
Kemper's amp-modelling systems already have a great reputation, but the latest update to their systems' underlying...
09/03/2026
Procedural stems smasher & recomposition engine
Blinksonic have recently launched a new Reaktor-based tool which they say takes a radical departure from yo...
09/03/2026
13 - 15 March 2026 at University of Warwick Conference Centre
The Institute of Professional Sound (IPS) have announced that The IPS Training Weekend 2026 wi...
09/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz and NETGEAR collaborate for next generation Wi-Fi 8 access point...
09/03/2026
UKTV has agreed a new partnership deal with Samsung that makes UKTV's free linear channels available to internet-only Samsung TV viewers in the UK for the f...
Animation Research Uses AWS to Virtualize Remote Sports Production posted: 30/09/2020 
