SVG Sit-Down: Zixi's Ken Haren on the Explosion of Remote Production, IP-Based Contribution in Live Sports

SVG Sit-Down: Zixi's Ken Haren on the Explosion of Remote Production, IP-Based Contribution in Live Sports The company aims to help customers manage all aspects of contribution, distribution By Jason Dachman

Friday, October 7, 2022 - 2:29 pm

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As more live sports productions transition to IP networks for backhaul and contribution in recent years, Zixi has seen its place in the industry continue to grow. At IBC 2022 in Amsterdam last month, the company unveiled enhancements and features for its modular Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), including a new Live Events Scheduler for ZEN Master targeting live-sports-production customers.

Zixi also played a major role in multiple IBC Accelerator projects at the show. Among them, 5G Remote Production in the Middle of Nowhere demonstrated delivery over bonded 5G/4G LTE and LEO Satellite Constellations to enable untethered low-latency live video productions.

SVG sat down with Zixi Marketing Director Ken Haren during IBC 2022 to discuss the new Live Events Scheduling tool, the continued explosion of live remote sports productions, and how Zixi offers a viable alternative for (or can augment) traditional backhaul technologies.

Zixi's Ken Haren: To be able to do a 4K HDR live stream without multiple hops across the internet or satellite uplinks and downlinks, that's a game-changer.

How does the new Live Events Scheduling tool make the ZEN Master platform more user-friendly for live sports productions?

A lot of our customers use us to deliver events, but the vast majority of what we carry is in linear transmission. Now more and more of our traditional linear customers and a rapidly growing number of event producers and sports leagues are using Zixi to manage IP distribution of their live sports content.

At IBC this year, we're announcing the new Live Events Manager in Zen Master, which is a big new feature for us. It helps our customers manage all aspects of both the contribution and distribution workflow within Zen Master with new dashboards specifically designed to schedule an event. Previously, you would have a channel, but you wouldn't really have a concept of a start and end.

Now, if you want to have a segment trafficked [differently] for the pre-event period and live-event period, you can do that. Maybe you need to have tools to extend the event or break into the event. After the event, you can either just shut the channel down or continue to run it with some alternative content. Building out a programmatic schedule allows you to define all of these stages, event times, and the metadata around the event. You can drive all that through Zen Master or programmatically through the API.

One of our major OTT streaming customers is using this for several thousands of live sports events that they've licensed. They are new to streaming live sports, and this has helped them ramp up their operation. They have always done linear or on-demand, but this allows them to get into the live game.

What role do you think Zixi has played in the drastic expansion of remote production for live sports coverage over the past few years?

Obviously, we've seen the number of remote productions grow, and a lot of these productions are being done over IP networks. Today, people don't want to necessarily roll a truck and ship an entire crew to every event. There is also a focus on sustainability and how remote production lowers their emissions footprint. But they want to enable these remote productions without sacrificing quality. So people are looking at delivery over IP networks and over 5G networks to do that.

Here at the IBC Accelerator program, we're part of the 5G Remote Production in the middle of nowhere project using a bonded 5G and Starlink low-latency backhaul for remote production, which is really exciting.

Now that remote production is nearly ubiquitous in the industry, how are you seeing these workflows evolve?

[Our customers'] focus so far has been on delivering the backhaul to their studio facilities, and that's great. But we recently had a customer that leveraged AWS Wavelength Zones to [produce an event] in mobile edge compute environment. They had 5G [signal] going into a production server in the Wavelength Zone and then back through the 5G network out to the audience. There is no faster way to remote-produce content with editors accessing resources that are localized to the event venue. In this case, it wasn't sports; it was financial news data. But it certainly could be relevant for sports. To be able to do a 4K HDR live stream out of the Wavelength Zone without ever egressing through multiple hops across the internet or multiple satellite uplinks and downlinks, that's a game-changer. We're excited to be part of those kinds of projects.

If you look at the evolution of remote production, you originally needed massive pipes into the venue because the bandwidth requirements were huge. That's just not the case anymore. And these types of [workflows] unlock the ability for leagues and [rightsholders] to more economically produce events that never would've been feasible in the past or to launch new alternative experiences that provide fans with more personalization and interactivity on their mobile and connected devices. Today, we can compress without losing a lot of quality, send it out to a global audience across all the different connected devices, transcode on the fly, and monitor performance at every point in the distribution. We're doing that today, which is very exciting.

Have you seen Zixi being used more often as a primary or backup contribution path for live sports productions (as opposed to fiber or satellite)?

One of our big use cases has been what we call Satellite Rationalization, which is how our pla

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/10/07/svg-sit-down-zixis-ken-haren-on...
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