BET bets on NDI for live production

BET bets on NDI for live production posted: 29/09/2017

by Ellen Camloh

BET Betting Big on IP Workflows

A History of Firsts: In 1980, BET (Black Entertainment Television) became the first television network in the United States primarily devoted to African-American viewers. In 1991, the network's then-parent company became the first black-owned company to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And recently, the network scored another first, this time in technology adoption - enabling it to stake its claim among the pioneers of IP-based production workflows.

Creating Sponsorship Value - Over IP

Each June, the Los Angeles Convention Center and LA Live event complex come alive with the BET Experience, an annual festival of music, entertainment and fan activities surrounding the BET Awards.

With dozens of attractions drawing attendees (upwards of 165,000 in 2016) to multiple venues within the complex, BET's sponsors jump at the opportunity to reach as many of those visitors as possible with their branded content.

Stuart Brewton is the Director of Technology Management for BET

In previous years, according to Stuart Brewton, Director of Technology Management at BET, the Fan Fest portion of the BET Experience - held in the Los Angeles Convention Center - would capture the attention of attendees with a jumbotron-style screen suspended above the center of the convention floor. A scheduled feed of shows and events, produced on-site during the BET EXPERIENCE, would play on the large screen, switched from a central routing truck.

This year, Brewton says, instead of just one giant screen, the BET Experience team wanted to provide more value for their sponsors: more video displays, located near more activities that appealed to certain sponsors, with more specifically branded content to update the displays - ten of them, to be precise.

But instead of the effort, expense and complexity of setting up baseband routing (and laying in enough fiber and coax to drive 10 video displays), Brewton's team had a different solution: connect the digital signage displays to an Ethernet network - and then feed them with IP video using NewTek NDI.

Says Brewton, We had our TriCaster system in the central mobile routing truck at LA Live, and connected it to the Los Angeles convention center next door over a 1Gb LAN via a single fiber pair.

Anthony Valley, Technical Director for BET, at the controls

Once in the convention center, each of the displays was connected over 1Gb Ethernet. The digital signage displays, Brewton says, used standard PCs running NDI software. Instead of physically running cables all across the convention center, we could actually just open up the NDI Video Monitor to designate the video source each screen would receive.

What's more, with all NDI sources available over the network, Brewton's team didn't need to separately produce and switch live event video for each display. We could brand the content for each individual screen group, and drive them dynamically, all from the one TriCaster accessing the source content feeds.

Planning Ahead

The groundwork for the BET Networks production workflow was put in place a few years back, according to Brewton.

We've always been very resourceful with equipment, manpower, and funding to get the best possible programming representative of our brand out with whatever resources we could afford, he says.

They started with the TriCaster 8000 in 2012 to produce video programming, driving the green screen stage and some virtual set segments. Over time, the team began pushing out content through more channels as social media platforms became more user-friendly and they could take advantage of the ability to stream live.

Brewton and his team explored all the capabilities of the system, and created workflows to leverage as many as they could to enhance their programming.

We basically said, This is our production Swiss army knife.' We would use it to drive screens on set. We would use it to do small (ancillary) shoots on larger productions. If we needed to do a social media execution, we would put a guy there with a TriCaster and let him drive the whole thing.

And crucial to a technology department focused on providing the maximum capabilities to its team without the usual associated expense, Brewton says, If I sent one of our guys to cover an event with a TriCaster, I didn't need to bring in another production truck.

Inside BET's control room in Times Square

Two Places at Once

Four years, a new studio location, and several remote TriCaster systems later, if you ask Stuart Brewton how production has changed at BET he answers with three words:

Volume of work.

I had the home base' TriCaster 8000 I needed in the control room. I had a few remote systems. But I needed another Swiss army knife-type box for the cases where we have multiple remotes happening at the same time with similar needs, he says.

Brewton says everyone on his team realizes the worth of these systems. We look at upcoming productions we need to do and say, If we had a TriCaster here, we could do this. Too bad ours is on a shoot in another location.'

He decided to designate a new TriCaster system as a swing unit that would be assigned to production wherever it was needed, whether in a remote production, a major event like the BET Experience, alongside a regular broadcast, or at neighboring MTV studios, BET's fellow Viacom network across the street in Times Square.

But his reseller had other plans.

View of Times Square from Viacom offices

An Unexpected Switch

Brewton wrote up his specifications and placed the order. Having placed multiple TriCaster orders in the past, he figured he'd take delivery on the usual schedule. But a few days went by without hearing more, and he went on vacation before the n

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