Game Creek Video's GCV Anywhere' Platform Makes Live Media Production Happen at a Distance for CONCACAF Gold Cup and More

Game Creek Video's GCV Anywhere' Platform Makes Live Media Production Happen at a Distance for CONCACAF Gold Cup and More GCV Anywhere has been used for 500+ events by YES Network, CBS Sports, and others By SVG Staff

Tuesday, July 27, 2021 - 12:23 pm

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Since the early days of the broadcast shut down in March of 2020, Game Creek Video has been pioneering a new remote production platform designed to be endlessly scalable, uniquely customizable and above all, consistently reliable. The result of those efforts is a new platform called GCV Anywhere, which as already been leveraged by Host Broadcast Services for the CONCACAF Gold Cup and at nearly 500 events including regional sports productions with YES Network, NFL and college football productions with CBS Sports, and two major golf championships.

How It Works: The GCV Anywhere Remote Production Platform

While remote operation and control has been a field of development in the live media production industry since as early as 2005, the pandemic sparked a new sense of urgency for the population of talented operators and content creators who endeavoured to get back to work producing live media for millions of viewers. Of those dedicated few, Game Creek Video led the charge by leveraging existing technology including secure network transport, low latency video encoding via Haivision SRT, RTS RVON Intercom connectivity, IP KVM, and Audio over IP, into a new platform designed to put people back to work safely and from a distance without any compromise to production quality or workflow.

Easily integrated into any production facility, across any network, GCV Anywhere was created to utilize public or private internet to promote remote control and contribution. Unlike other existing remote control platforms, GCV Anywhere is intended to provide connectivity without the expense of dedicated IP transport or networking, allowing operation from anywhere sufficient public internet is available.

With GCV Anywhere, we're solving the problem of how to conduct a production at a distance, from anywhere - leaving all the major production assets in place in the truck on site, while shifting production crew and operators back home, says Game Creek SVP of Technology Jason Taubman. The client can customize their workflow for the different operating positions, with GCV Anywhere as the centerpiece. It manages the bandwidth, video encoding and decoding, comms, and so on. That way, we can offer the client this transport piece in the middle, allowing them to choose the pieces they need on both ends. Additionally, to ensure the success of every event, we've established a dedicated support team focused on providing end to end technical support.

A Proven Platform At Nearly 500 Regional, National and International Events Game Creek Mobile Unit Chesapeake at the 2020 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Since the Fall of 2020, GCV Anywhere has been deployed at nearly 500 events including various regional sports productions with YES Network, NFL and college football productions with CBS, two major golf championships in the Spring and Fall, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Digital Show and the 2021 Season of American Ninja Warrior with NBC Universal.

Beginning in May 2020, GCV Anywhere's first encoder and decoder kits were being built and tested, supported by the already heavily utilized remote contribution technologies that existed before. Game Creek's first major deployment of GCV Anywhere was for CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network College Football and Basketball. With GCV Anywhere encoding kits deployed to mobile units in college venues across the US, a combination of producers, directors, graphics ops and announcers were performing their duties remotely from the GCV Anywhere enabled Freedom Broadcast Studios in Clifton, New Jersey. In one of GCV Anywhere's first successes, production staff were able to safely produce live media at a distance during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Next, the YES Network utilized Game Creek's GCV Anywhere platform at the New York Yankees Spring Training in Tampa, FL, with their centralized production hub in Stamford, CT. Since then, Yankees announcers have called nearly 85% of all regular season Yankees broadcasts from the comfort and safety of their homes over 500 miles away.

As the platform grew, Game Creek engineers refined the technology and expanded its capabilities for major golf championships in the Fall of 2020 and the Spring of 2021. GCV Anywhere transported contributions directly from the homes of the announcers back to the golf course.

In its second national deployment, GCV Anywhere supported an entirely remote production crew for the Verizon Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Digital Show. While GCV mobile units were stationed in New York in late November, talent, production staff, and operators conducted business remotely, producing and directing the digital show from Los Angeles using the platform's low-latency live control at a distance of over 2,700 miles.

Scalability, Flexibility, Reliability and The CONCACAF Gold Cup Game Creek's Gotham mobile unit was at Exploria Stadium in Orlando, FL, for Gold Cup matches.

As the host broadcaster for the production of the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup, Host Broadcast Services contracted Game Creek Video as the primary technical provider for outside broadcast solutions. Game Creek and the GCV Anywhere platform have been at the center of the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup; the 31 match, 10 venue tournament produced entirely in 1080P HDR exclusively with Game Creek mobile units.

When HBS came to Game Creek during planning for the extensive tournament and asked for a method to produce the Additional Content Feed (ACF) remotely, GCV Anywhere was the perfect fit. At the top of the list of concerns for HBS we

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