Tips for Journalists in Brazil ...

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With little over a month to go to another summer of sporting ecstasy, controversy and disenchantment, media entities across the world are gearing up to share the many defining moments of the 2014 World Cup with billions of fans.

As the largest single sports event and most-watched competition on earth, the World Cup enjoys phenomenal interest from sporting and business worlds alike.

Logistically the 2014 FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be challenging. Not only are there 12 venues rather than the customary 10, but also the sheer size of the host country will put unprecedented strain on media partners involved.

The leisurely progress of infrastructure widely documented in the press has highlighted several major connectivity challenges for freelance reporters to defeat.

So for the legion of freelancers, stringers and other journalists tasked with grabbing footage remotely from the field, here's Aframe's guide to ensure you're match-fit'.

No.1 Plan for poor telecoms infrastructure

Mobile communications in Brazil are sluggish, at around 1.4 Mbps on average according to Infonetics. They also warn that there are not enough base transceiver stations around the grounds to accommodate the mobile traffic of the impeding crowds. It may result in fans and reporters forced into improvising on uncertain hotspots and 3G networks.

You won't be able to apply a magic sponge to your technology. To overcome a tournament of broken files or frustrating restarts, reporters can accelerate ingest by utilizing the latest UDP file transfer technology - effectively maxing out your Internet connection and lowering latency.

No.2 Get some media movement options

A total of 64 matches are to be played stretching across twelve cities from the Amazon basin in the North, to the banks of the River Guaiba over 2,000 miles away in the South. The host cities are distributed among the five greater geographical regions of the country, which differ significantly in terms of infrastructure, capacity and adequacy of stadiums.

A cloud-ready solution may prove the only viable solution to immediately access, organize and collaborate footage over a simple web-based interface - saving freelancers precious time and capital in file-movement costs.

No.3 Think about security

With further threats of protests, staying safe and avoiding the favelas has never been more salient. Travelling around with DVDs, hard drives and media cards therefore isn't advisable. Get your video quickly and safely into the cloud to ensure your media is protected and backed-up with a reliable provider.

No.4 Plan storage and collaboration

Video journalists will typically shoot far more than they need and then cut it before sending the semi-finished piece back to base at the broadcaster. That's going to leave an awful lot of unused, but not entirely useless content, stuck on your laptop or removable hard drives. Having it on your computer isn't going to benefit anyone else looking for GVs of Rio's Estadio do Maracana.

To ensure you don't fill up your local machine, which in turn will give you some performance headaches down the line, when you do get a decent connection upload everything into a cloud storage solution that can handle multiple media types. That way you can free up some local storage and enable the wider team to benefit from your footage.

No.5 Pre-tournament medical

Make sure you have the latest up-to-date browser with all the necessary plugins.

Remove any unwanted add-ons, extensions, and plugins to fully optimize your browsing speed.

Finally, if you have the opportunity it's strongly advised to test the playing field. Speedtest.net is a great tool for testing your connectivity in disparate locations.

The first test of readiness is on June 12 where the Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo is due to host the opening match between Brazil and Croatia with a forecasted audience to exceed 3 billion viewers.

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LINK:	http://aframe.com/blog/2014/04/broadcasting-from-brazil-5-essential-pr...
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