Streaming Downtown Showdown

Kate Phibbs

Author: Kate Phibbs

Published 1st November 2013

by Kate Phibbs
Issue 82 - October 2013
With summer well and truly on its way out, what better way to send it off than a trip to Paris to produce and live stream the Vans Downtown Showdown 2013.
After the success of producing and broadcasting the Vans Spring Classic in Italy in April, we here at 3xScreen Media knew that Downtown Showdown, Europes largest skateboarding competition, would need an extensive and envelope-pushing solution. Though the client was more than happy with our efforts in Italy, we were ready for the challenge of upping the ante for this much larger event. So, we assembled our best production and live streaming crew of fifteen, including seven cameramen, two directors/ vision mixers, two broadcast engineers, one producer, one graphics operator, and a floor manager and we sent them south across the Channel.
The key challenge presented by Downtown Showdown was that we were essentially required to provide a production solution that covered four skate competitions in one. The competition was spread out over one day with teams of riders competing on four different obstacles. With five cameras per obstacle, there were twenty cameras positions in total spread throughout the venue with very little time to move cameras and operators between obstacles. The resulting solution was an intricate combination of near-range wireless and pre-wired camera positions with fibre cable runs of up to 250 metres. The tried and tested 3xScreen Media event live production and streaming kit remained at the heart of the solution we provided for this event, though it required substantial supplementation. At the core of our production workflow is our suite of NewTek live production equipment. Starting with two, eight-channel NewTek Tricaster 855 video production studios, we utilised two directors for the two different elements of the broadcast. We wanted to maximise the competition coverages suitability not only for the general public but also for the expert skateboarding community watching from their PC or mobile device. Hence, in addition to our non-skateboarding content director who took care of things between the actual competition, we had one specialized skateboard director and a team of skate-experienced cameramen.
The TriCaster system we use offers a number of benefits. The integration of audio engineering and VT operator roles reduces crew size and production costs. The Tricasters ability to record multiple combinations of program output with and without graphics and commentary allows us to provide content for the creation of a post-edit TV program as well as clips for uploading later to YouTube.
The sibling to the TriCaster is the NewTek 3Play. For the modern sports broadcast, the inclusion of instant live replays is assumed as a given. For the integration of slow motion and real time replays within the production, 3xScreen Media uses the NewTek 3Play 425 six-channel replay machine. Our 3Play operator worked alongside the competition director to ensure no Kick Flips or Ollies went uncovered. Finally, completing our trifecta of NewTek production gear, we equipped our graphics engineer with Newteks LiveText computer. The key thing that Livetext offers is the creation of dynamic fully animated graphics for rider names, score sheets, presenter and interviewee names and more. Our graphics operator further improved the live graphics work-flow by introducing Young Monkeys Master Control Unit. This third-party technology enables macros to automate Tricaster operations, making it possible to perform complex multi-key actions with the push of a touch screen panel button. As far as new additions to our kit go, Master Control wasnt the only new piece on the scene. Any cameraman will tell you great coverage of an event all starts with having the right cameras and with a sporting event as dynamic and unpredictable as skateboarding, we knew it was essential that our camera crew be mobile enough to follow the fast-paced action but also to get out of the way quickly too! With this in mind, we acquired the Teradek Bolt. The Bolt is a wireless HD-SDI monitoring system that transmits zero delay uncompressed HD video. This new addition to our camera kit gave our cameramen scope to get amongst the action with ease and minimal disruption to the competitors while capturing some amazing up-close footage.
We relied on a number of different cameras for this production. There were manned Sony EX-3s, GoPro Hero 3s on fixed mounts and, thanks to our friends at Broadcast Services Sony PMW-350s with 33x lenses. To get cameras in the thick of the action smaller, we chose to equip the lighter EX-3s with the Teradek Bolts since a camera with a traditional broadcast wireless unit is much too heavy to fling around. The Bolt proved highly effective as a near-range wireless solution. For the event hosts who roamed the event over a wide area, we chose to use ABonAirs to send their feeds to our production booth. The live feeds from the other cameras set up around the venue were sent back to our production team via fibre optic cables. To add further excitement to the live coverage of a skateboarding competition, we sought to share the excitement of the crowd at the venue while keeping production costs down. To avoid the cost of a conventional jib we paired a GoPro with an Aviator micro jib to get some crowd shots to show the audience at home what they were missing out on. As great as this was, most fun of all was our new DactylCam Go Rig. The DactylCam is a remotely driven sled and GoPro that flies above the action on a zipwire, enabling us to get some great new angles and capture some eye-catching aerial footage of the event.
This beautifully produced package created on site in Paris La Grande Halle de la Villette and sent by a program output feed to flat screens in the VIP and Riders areas as well as to Jumbotrons screens in La Grande Halle where over 15,000 spectators could see the action. This was accompanied by an audio feed sourced from the live commentary booth during the competition.
For the 300,000 online viewers, the program output was fed live to 3xScreens Master Control Room in London using two LiveU LU70 live mobile video uplink backpacks. We used two LU70s for redundancy and had both sit across two Ka and one Ku broadband broadband satellite connections as an alternative to their usual 3G/4G SIMs. Utilising LiveU in our live streaming workflow eliminates the need for a streaming engineer onsite and means that we can stream to multiple platforms without the need for shipping encoders or arranging onsite internet. For Downtown Showdown we live streamed to five destinations - Factory Media, VANS and other sites via our Tier 1 Global CDN accounts, plus YouTube, Livestream, UStream and DailyMotion - 30 Mbps of live stream publishing.
With online viewers from 99 different countries, twenty per cent of whom watched the action on mobile devices, we were satisfied that we delivered the highest quality production and streaming of the event. By enhancing our usual workflow with new innovations and equipment, we were chuffed with the resulting six seamless hours of comprehensive, professional coverage of an epic annual skate competition.
Kate Phibbs is 3xScreens Media Event Live Broadcast Production Manager, emergency camera(wo)man, graphics operator, cable-basher and crew-feeder..

Related Listings

Related Articles

Related News

Related Videos

© KitPlus (tv-bay limited). All trademarks recognised. Reproduction of this content is strictly prohibited without written consent.