NBA 2K League Deploys Unique Multi-Site Production, Virtual Studio for APAC Invitational The esports production utilized two control rooms: one in Seoul and another in NYC. By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Thursday, January 30, 2020 - 1:29 pm
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Earlier this month, the NBA 2K League headed to Seoul, South Korea, for the 2020 NBA 2K League APAC Invitational. In an effort to produce the event efficiently without sacrificing production quality, the NBA 2K League production team opted to deploy a unique multi-site workflow that utilized two control rooms nearly 7,000 miles apart in Seoul and New York City. While the competition itself was produced onsite at Seoul's Nexon Arena, NBA 2K League's on-air talent were back in New York City inside a virtual studio casting live over the game feed.
The onsite control room at Nexon Arena in Seoul was one of two production facilities used for the NBA 2K League APAC Invitational.
This is a really unique production because we decided to create two completely separate but interlocking workflows, says Matt Arden, Head of Content and Media, NBA 2K League. And, believe it or not, we planned it all out in about a week and pulled it off without a hitch.
A Production Tail of Two Cities: Seoul and NYC
Held on Jan. 20-21 at the Nexon Arena, the APAC Invitational was the league's second international qualifying event in the Asia-Pacific region and identified elite players from the region who will become eligible for the 2020 NBA 2K League Draft. Arden and company had originally planned on sending casters/hosts and a production team to Seoul to produce the event onsite. However, facing sizeable travel costs and a significant language barrier - the majority of the Nexon Arena crew do not speak English - Arden began exploring other options.
The control room at OS Studios in NYC handled the host/studio side of the NBA 2K League APAC Invitational production.
We realized quickly that we would also have to budget for translators. And they would have to be translators that not only spoke both languages, but also spoke live production' who can translate in near-real time when we're moving very quickly in the control room. And that's just not feasible, says Arden. And then also add in the fact the [Nexon Arena production team] is amazing at what they do and really wanted the opportunity to produce this event. Korea is the de facto home of esports and they wanted to show the level of production that they were capable of.
With that in mind, Arden and company began developing a workflow that would allow the primary NBA 2K League production team to remain in New York while the Nexon Arena team handled the production in Seoul.
In the end, the main competition was produced out of an onsite control room in Seoul staffed by the Nexon Arena crew with Arden producing and directing via a translator. A dirty feed (featuring lower-third and player-ID graphics, but no commentary) was then sent an RTMP stream to OS Studios (located at the OS NYC gaming and content lounge in Manhattan). The league enlisted LiveCGI to create an NBA 2K League-branded virtual studio at OS NYC, where hosts/casters Scott Cole and Mike LaBelle hosted live studio segments and called the game action.
One of the big issues we faced was that nobody in New York were familiar with players competing at the APC tournament, so we had Chinese- and Korean-speaking production people helping us ID them in real time in Seoul. And then we sent that quasi-dirty feed to New York where they overlaid studio and host content on top of that feed.
Matt Arden, Head of Content and Media, NBA 2K League, produced and directed the game feed via a translator in Seoul.
The Final output was then live-streamed on the NBA 2K League's Twitch and YouTube Channels and in China on Tencent.
Arden coordinated transitions with NBA 2K League Content & Programming Management Lead Mike Budney, who was at the front bench in New York. Dealing with roughly 30 seconds of latency between the live event in Seoul and the operation in New York, the two communicated key moves and transitions via Facetime.
I controlled the show from Korea and New York took leads from me, says Arden. When we would [transition] to New York, I would tell Mike on FaceTime we're killing our stream now, so you're on live in 30.' And then if New York wanted to talk to Korea, I would just give them a game-mark time on the scoreboard since I was in the future. [The latency] actually gave New York about 30 seconds to prepare for anything that was coming down the stream, so it ended up being helpful.
Back in NYC: NBA 2K League Gets Virtual With LiveCGI at OS Studios
OS Studios provided the bulk of the production crew and its broadcast studio, which features a NewTek VMC1 media production system, four BirdDog Eyes P200 PTZ cameras, and a Behringer x32 digital audio mixer.
LiveCGI created an NBA 2K League-branded virtual studio at OS Studios in NYC.
LiveCGI provided the virtual studio system in which the talent was located and integrated the software with the studio's cameras and backend infrastructure.
The opportunity to create virtual studios is incredibly exciting to us, especially since we're a bit of a transient league and we travel a good amount, says Arden. The opportunity to test the boundaries of this virtual experience has been really fun. And OS Studios and LiveCGI were very easy to work with, especially considering the complicating international origination factor.
Although the technology was utilized for this production, LiveCGI also offers an optional motion-capture body suit that would allow the user to create digital avatars of on-air talent.
We're definitely interested in the technology LiveCGI provides, adds Arden. We could potentially create avata
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NBA 2K League Deploys Unique Multi-Site Production, Virtual Studio for APAC Invitational The esports production utilized two control rooms: one in Seoul and another in NYC. By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
