Inside Look at the NHL's Historic Live Cloud Production of an NHL Game, Alternate Broadcast Supported by AWS, Evertz, and others, the league launched a new era of production possibilities By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Monday, April 1, 2024 - 11:48 am
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When it comes to pivotal moments in the history of the NHL, the evening of March 22 won't be remembered for a milestone on the ice, but it will be remembered as the start of a new era of broadcasting. On that date, the league, with the help of AWS, made broadcast history with a completely cloud-based live production of the game between the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes.
For the game played in Capital One Arena in DC, all the camera and audio signals were encoded into the cloud and cut by two NHL crews wielding cloud-based production tools to create two shows: a regular broadcast, produced by an NHL Network crew in a control room at MLB Network in Secaucus, NJ; and an alternative stats-heavy broadcast (NHL EDGE Unlocked), cut by the NHL Studios team in a control room at NHL Headquarters in Manhattan.
The front-bench area of the control room during production of a cloud-based alternative broadcast for the NHL Network
The efforts continue the league's vision of leveraging new technology to create experiences for new audiences. We're on our way to a fully direct-to-consumer distribution model where [fans will create their own] experience, explains Dave Lehanski, EVP, business development and innovation, NHL. Do you want stats? No overlays? Want to play a game or bet? [The core production team] does a great job producing [a show] that appeals to our general fanbase, but maybe there are people who want to go deeper or want a kid's version or even a lifestyle version like the Manningcast. And now the technology is there to efficiently be able to produce all that content.
The feeds from 10 JPEG XS cameras are sent to AWS Media Connect for re-encapsulating to NDI for cloud routing and distribution, according to Grant Nodine, SVP, Technology, NHL. The NDI routing fabric makes the signals available to the different broadcast tools in the cloud: the switcher, graphics, replay, and everything else.
The two production teams used cloud-based TriCaster Vectar production switchers and Viz Trio for graphics, TVG for the scorebug, Evertz DreamCatcher for replays, and Audinate and SSL for audio. Sienna handled routing of all the feeds.
Theoretically, Nodine says, if we wanted to use Grass Valley for switching, we could do that by changing the orchestration code so that you can license that software and install the right version of each piece of software. But, essentially, that's all you're doing: rather than having a Grass Valley switcher sitting in a rack here, we can rent it whenever we want without having to pay for the care of it.
Live cloud production is still in its early days and for those operating equipment, in particular the replay operators, there is a bit of a learning curve, according to Dustin Robinson, one of the NHL Network's replay operators.
There was occasional multi-viewer lag but once we adapted our replays became smoother as the night progressed, he says. It was a perfect example of preparation meeting opportunity, and everyone involved should be proud of the successful endeavor. This model, though in its infancy, will undoubtedly push the envelope of the live sports model.
Adds Steve Blevins, NHL Network, senior lead replay operator: There are a few differences between the cloud broadcast and a traditional one. The feel is the same, but from a tape room perspective, you receive isolated feeds, and they get repurposed into packages and other in-game rolls. On this broadcast we used the DreamCatcher by Evertz which offered many new and enhanced features to strengthen the broadcast.
The Evertz DreamCatcher replay team cut replays in the cloud rather than on local replay servers.
The flexibility to choose the preferred tool is important to AWS, which considers being software-agnostic to be paramount. We started by asking the NHL what vendors and software they wanted to use, notes Andrew Reich, senior consultant, sports, AWS. We're providing the infrastructure, and the idea is, we should be able to support and supply any software vendor needed for a production.
Latency is always a concern, but, according to Nodine, it was only three frames from the venue to the cloud, and, with JPEG XS for the return, overall latency was around seven frames.
There's no latency for the operator, he notes. It just comes down to the end-user latency of the person receiving the broadcast. We can drive down the actual overall latency of the broadcast to the point where it's possible to start feeding the game back into the venue for distribution on mobile devices without the fans' being jarred by the difference in game play.
Three-Year Project The cloud efforts began in 2021 when AWS and the NHL worked together on building a cloud-based encoding and scheduling pipeline whereby the league would take feeds from every venue, pass them through AWS, and make them available to distribution partners and broadcast personnel. The next step took place last fall during the NHL's Tech Showcase in Seattle last year.
We started asking. How can we get camera and audio feeds into the cloud and then produce a game?' says Nodine. We did a shadow production at the showcase, which was a game between the Ducks and Kraken. We had all the components, replay, graphics, switching, and editing in the cloud. What was really cool was that our technical director was in Wisconsin and the replay operator was in Canada.
From there, the concept continued to grow. For a cloud-based production in Melbourne, Australia, the world
