Dyn Media, the new sports streaming service in Germany, is working with NEP Germany and Broadcast Solutions to create what’s described as an innovative remote production environment.
Working with NEP Germany, Broadcast Solutions has built six units it calls venue kits. Each has a core rack in a flight case with three stage boxes, connected over fibre. Typically six cameras plus minicams feed into the core rack, along with microphones and other audio sources, all using SMPTE ST 2110 standard equipment, said Broadcast Solutions.
According to the company, the set-up means the entire system for an outside broadcast can get to site in a single VW Crafter van, and be set up and run by just a few people at the location, thus reducing the carbon footprint of the operation.
All signals are routed to NEP Germany’s headquarters in Munich, where Broadcast Solutions has built two large control rooms around Grass Valley Kula switchers, a central equipment room, and a network operation centre (NOC), which handles the central management of signal transmission from all arenas, to and from Cologne, as well as to the cloud and OTT platforms.
The NOC allows flexible allocation of venue kits to the production control rooms in Cologne and Munich, and several Riedel Simplylive Production Suites serve as production control systems for smaller productions or can be used as replay facilities, added Broadcast Solutions.
Audio in the venues is controlled remotely from sound quality control (SQC) rooms with the normalised signals dispatched to the production control rooms. Audio mixing largely uses the Prodigy from DirectOut Technologies.
NEP Germany and Broadcast Solutions have also designed and built one large gallery, three small control rooms and associated audio facilities at Dyn Media’s headquarters in Cologne, which share the hardware installed in Munich.
“Dyn Media was eager to begin distributing its live sports content using an innovative, fresh approach,” said Zlatan Gavran, managing director of NEP Germany. “They entrusted us with their entire technical operations, and we needed to work with a systems integrator that understood these complex and forward-looking requirements.
“Broadcast Solutions proved to be the perfect partner and we collaborated on a design that was practical, resilient and cost-effective,” Gavran added. “They had the resources to design and build everything, from the venue kits to the flexible control room architectures, delivering a complete solution.”
“A big thank you to the great team at Broadcast Solutions!” added Andreas Heyden, CEO of Dyn Media GmbH. “Their active support in setting up the production infrastructure for Dyn Media was an important building block in the development of our channel. The smooth cooperation and high level of commitment has been instrumental in enabling us to build one of the most advanced production environments in Europe in just a few months. We are very grateful for this partnership and we are looking forward to many more successes in the future together.”
