How Slow TV' watching moose migrate is accelerating live cloud workflows at SVT By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 10, 2024 - 08:00
Print This Story
Credit: Den stora lgvandringen/SVT
The slow meandering trek of herds of moose doesn't have much in common with the turbocharged power, noise and control of rally cars but right now in Sweden, they are virtually joined at the hip.
Swedish broadcaster SVT's month-long round-the-clock live broadcast of The Great Moose Migration (Den stora lgvandringen) was the latest test of an organisation-wide digital transformation project that will soon encompass the next leg of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
It's a slightly insane project, says Dennis Buhr, SVT head of production development, chatting with SVG Europe about the remote production initiated for this year's Great Moose Migration. It's not that common that your show is 500 hours long.
About the Moose Migration
Every spring, for thousands of years, Sweden's population of moose (or European Elk) in V sternorrland in the north of Sweden migrates across the same tracks in the forest to get to greener pastures. Since 2019, SVT has live-streamed the action' over several weeks.
This great moose migration' has proved hugely popular with the public ever since with viewers rising from a million in 2019 to about nine million this year on SVT Play alongside more than 300,000 chat interactions an increase of 30% on 2023.
The show has also been broadcast live on Twitch reaching nearly 15 million views around the world. Men aged 16-25 seemed to enjoy the respite from hardcore gaming.
Den stora lgvandringen is a slightly insane project. It's not that common that your show is 500 hours long.
The livestream is now a national springtime phenomenon and a classic example of Slow TV' which this year is also being aired on Finland's YLE and RTL in Germany.
It's always been a huge technical struggle to get this to work in a forest with a wild river and at time of year that turns from winter into spring with huge ice melts, says Buhr.
SVT lays thousands of metres of cable across the forest area to connect 30 camouflaged cameras and 28 mics. In the past, these feeds were all sent to a remote production gallery built on site.
This year the Moose Migration has gone truly remote.
New cloud-based workflow
First and foremost we decided to keep all our production staff inside our TV building in Ume , says Buhr. Immediately that cuts down the costs of having staff on site for a month.
In this new setup, the cameras (a mix of Sony PTZ during the day and Axion surveillance cameras at night) and mics are converted from SDI to IP by VideoXLink and transported as H.264 streams over the internet to SVT's hub at Ume , a 3-hour and 250km drive away.
Two cameras in this year's production were positioned next to a wild bear spot. Unable to run either power or fibre to that location they used solar power and a Starlink satellite internet connection.
At Ume the rest of the IP streams are captured into Agile Live, a software-based system jointly developed over a number of years by SVT and Agile Content. Image mixing and overlay graphics are performed by operators in Ume with rendering done on-prem in Stockholm 650km away.
The technical cloud workflow of this is not particularly difficult, says Buhr. The actual work is the shift in mindset we have gone through at SVT. We have had to rethink production.
He elaborates, You can't stream high-res images everywhere as you are used to. You have to think about who needs to see what, when, and in what quality. You need to understand and communicate the advantages of it rather than comparing this workflow to how it used to be done.
This year's production has brought together SVT broadcast engineering with its IT teams. Many, it seems, had never met before, yet here they are working to deliver the production together.
All of a sudden you have meetings and you see people inside the organisation you do not regularly see. They might be responsible for computer services in whole other areas of the business. They are experts in networks, computer hosting and IT security. Everyone gathered to make a TV show. That was a new thing for me - and for everyone.
I've been doing broadcast for 22 years and this is the first time I've seen computer guys getting a credit on the show. It made me extremely happy.
The culture clash between IT and broadcast worlds that is often mentioned as a management nightmare didn't materialise. Or, if it did, everyone treated each other professionally and understood the overall mission.
We have had our discussions shall we say, but it has not been a hassle more of a learning curve, says Buhr. Early on we asked for a feature from the network department and gave them four days' notice. They said, You can't have this short a time span.' But when you work in live TV with the red light about to flash, four minutes is a long time, let alone four hours. That was one cultural difference but people have genuinely been getting on very well and understand it is a joint venture.
Having previously trialled the arrangement on a local sports production, the 2024 Great Moose Migration is by far SVT's biggest proof of concept to date of its transformation project Next Generation Online (NEO).
NEO is an organisation-wide glass-to-glass approach to making production and distribution under the same roof. It is aimed to be 100% software, based on COTS servers and standard IT using the internet.
It's a huge scope but we started early, in late 2018, and now we are live with a working product.
The same set-up will be used by SVT to produce the ERC Bauhaus Royal Rally, part of the WRC calendar, on June 13-15 at several different loc
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
How Slow TV' watching moose migrate is accelerating live cloud workflows at SVT By Adrian Pennington 
