DoP Michael Sanders Seamlessly Executes Remote Productions with AJA U-TAP SDI
data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c562aaf4-bpthumb.jpg data-srcset=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c561c0e7-bpfull.jpg 2x class=lazyload avatar avatar-80 photo height=80 width=80 />
Brie Clayton May 4, 2021
0 Comments
Change is a constant in production, with new technologies, formats, and standards continuously challenging professionals to adapt and evolve. When the global pandemic struck, production professionals quickly found new ways to forge ahead, even amidst travel restrictions and social distancing regulations. To keep productions on the rails, remote workflows became the industry's new normal, and professionals looked to technology to support everything from longer distance cable runs on-set to geographically dispersed monitoring and review sessions. Well positioned for the shift, UK-based Director of Photography (DoP) Michael Sanders had already dabbled in remote production for documentary films, corporate videos, and other projects for nearly a decade. In building out and refining his workflow over the years, Sanders quickly uncovered the AJA U-TAP SDI USB 3.0 capture device, which is now part of his standard camera kit.
Whether the production team is overseas and cannot travel or we simply need to reduce the number of people in a room, streaming the output of a camera is now standard practice, and U-TAP is an ideal tool for the job. It's portable and plug-and-play, and most importantly it doesn't require a power supply, as it's bus powered, he shared. U-TAP is also so versatile; it supports nearly every format and frame rate imaginable. The fact that it also works with multiple frame rates from 23.98 upwards to 60p means that I only need one box to serve a range of clients.
Sanders' workflow gives him the flexibility to provide a stable connection so that the interview can take place regardless of how far apart the production team and interviewee are located. For one of Sanders' first post-lockdown projects, a feature documentary, the director, production crew, and script writer were stationed in the US, but the interview subject was located in the UK. To facilitate a real-time connection between the group, the output from the camera was fed to the U-TAP, which just appeared as a source in Zoom. Connected to the Zoom feed, the production team was able to watch, listen in, and monitor the shoot in real-time. With the sound recordist's audio mixer connected to the camera, the U-TAP could then extract the audio from the embedded SDI stream, and the team watching over Zoom didn't experience any audio sync issues.
Sanders also recently leveraged the U-TAP to deliver an earnings report live stream from a European company to a global audience. Using two identical camera set-ups located in different offices within the same building, one for the CEO and the other for the CFO, in addition to two U-TAPs and a collection of other gear, the team was able to send high quality signals from the UK to the US over the internet. In the US, the UK feeds were integrated with three separate feeds from other members of the executive team using vMix Call. Sanders said, Because U-TAP supports 1080p, we could easily send our signal over the internet at a quality that was high enough for a remote director to perform a very good chroma key and unify the output of the five remote sites. Although this can be done with other hardware, the U-TAP is so reliable that it gives me a feeling of confidence that it won't suddenly stop working in the middle of such an important event.
While remote workflows have been standard practice for Sanders for some time now, he expects that the advantages made apparent to the larger industry throughout the pandemic will be hard to ignore moving forward, especially the cost-efficiency aspect of them. Additionally, he sees the practice opening new doors for projects that may not have previously proven feasible due to budgets, logistics, and travel. For these reasons, Sanders expects that the media and entertainment and live event/proAV industries will continue to embrace a hybrid on-site/remote production approach moving forward, even as travel and lockdown restrictions ease.
Whatever the approach, Sanders is confident that AJA U-TAP will remain a key part of his workflow. He concluded, U-TAP is my go-to for remote production because I don't need to think about it. I just plug it in and it's there, available as source in any app. It may sound boring, but what you need from any piece of kit in this industry is: reliability, ease of use and support when something does go wrong. With U-TAP, AJA provides all three.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
DoP Michael Sanders Seamlessly Executes Remote Productions with AJA U-TAP SDI 
