No SDI? No Problem! Growing eSports Productions Over IP posted: 17/06/2017
by Ellen Camloh
When it comes to live streaming productions, local is the new global, and UK-based Digital Tree Media is no exception
We started off as a relatively small media company, serving schools and colleges with basic media requirements, says Digital Tree's CEO John Coles. We've grown to provide very large event-based productions, such as a mini-Olympics that took place in the greater Manchester region. At that time, with young athletes descending upon the city from all over the world to compete in a two-week long festival of sport, Digital Tree produced the event - which covered multiple competitions in different remote arenas - for viewers in the U.S., France, Russia, and Germany, among others.
We provided video workflows over LAN and WAN, and that was back in 2013 before anybody was really thinking about IP, says Coles. That is something that NewTek have been doing very well for years. We started using these networked workflows back when we had NewTek TriCaster 40, using AirSend (the predecessor to NDI, NewTek's encoding protocol for video over IP). The configuration was easy to do, and it made production simple.
In a matter of weeks, the company had transformed virtually from a local production company to an international online sports broadcaster.
Today, the company still produces local events, such as election coverage and municipal activities, from single-camera programs to large live productions. But its team members gravitate to solving the Olympic-like complexities of unpredictable, dramatic, multi-venue live video with a small crew.
Esport commentators provide play-by-play and analysis, meet-and-greets and on-camera interviews
A lot of the time, people come to us with problems that other companies have told them were impossible to solve, says Coles. We look at it and think, Okay, we know how we can solve 90% of it. That other 10% we'll sit down and figure out as well.' Increasingly, they're solving it with IP video.
Ahead of the Esport curve
You might say they've taken sports production over IP to the next level: the all-IP, all-remote, massively multi-player live competition that is Esports.
Esports has been a growing market for broadcasters for years, says Coles. You've got larger and larger festivals happening. A large gaming community that already streams. You look at Twitch, and the size of their audience is huge.
This is no exaggeration. According to Superdata Research, digital gaming in general now has one of the most valuable and highly engaged demographics, and Esport specifically is approaching a billion-dollar industry.
And according to ESPN's data analysis brand, FiveThirtyEight.com, tournaments such as The League of Legends Championship are drawing more viewers than Stanley Cup Finals, the Masters final round, the World Series, and even the NBA Finals.
Millions of gamers are playing (and watching). Broadcasters are taking notice. And Digital Tree Media has created an advantage: a built-in, highly engaged audience for the world's most popular online video game - Minecraft.
Looking out from the lounge, rows of 48 gaming workstations in the foreground await Minecraft players registering in the background
Digital Tree owns the second largest Minecraft server in the world. We have peaks of around 30,000 players on our Minecraft server, and about 300,000 unique players per day coming through the server, says Coles.
That made the company the natural choice to produce an April 2017 gaming event that combined the world of Esport with live in-venue production.
You want it when?
Multiplay - the organizers of Insomnia, the largest gaming festival in the UK - came to Coles and his team to help create exactly the kind of complex production Digital Tree Media specializes in.
The Minecraft Zone would be set up as a large networked stand in the NEC (Birmingham, UK's National Exhibition Centre), with 48 computer workstations. Festival-goers could drop into the stand and play Minecraft with other players in a competitive, team-based environment, while on-stand Esport commentators would provide running play-by-play and analysis. Influential gamers known for their YouTube presence would show up for meet-and-greets, and be hustled into the studio for on-camera interviews.
All of these on-screen and on-camera activities would be mixed into a centralized program, and sent to two different audiences. One mix would output the program to large IMAG displays throughout the stand to grab the attention of attendees and give them an up-close glimpse of the games, the interviews, and the stand.
A second mix would stream live via the Twitch social gaming video platform, to Digital Tree's CubeCraft community - whose members would have the opportunity to interact with people back at the event, via chat windows and Q&A to the celebrity gamers.
The challenge? How to plan a four-day live event that would capture live video from 48 computers and 4 remote-controlled PTZ cameras for two different audiences.
Oh, and one other detail: the event was taking place in just over three weeks.
The Minecraft Zone at Insomnia - the UK's largest gaming festival - is fully networked for tournament play
Connecting communities
Right away, it was obvious that connecting all the computer systems in the Minecraft Zone for live video would require new thinking.
Nobody we've talked to in the community has done a live Esport competition this size before, in such a short time, says Coles.
After all, this was not the controlled confines of a broadcast studio, nor the usual Esport tournament setup of a handful of competitors isolated on a stage - but four dozen Windows computers in the midst of a heavily trafficked pedestrian concourse, a
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No SDI? No Problem! Growing eSports Productions Over IP posted: 17/06/2017 
