CyberZ Renovates eSports Studio with ATEM 2 M E Broadcast Studio 4K

Blackmagic Design announced today that Japan’s CyberZ built a new eSports studio in its media department around Blackmagic Design’s ATEM live switching products, including ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Panel and ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel. CyberZ is also using Blackmagic Design’s Teranex AV, UltraStudio 4K, DeckLink Studio 4K, Smart Videohub 12x12 and HyperDeck Studio products in the new studio.
CyberZ is a company specializing in smartphone advertising, smartphone media and advertising technology. Its headquarters is in Tokyo and its branches include Sendai, San Francisco, South Korea and Taiwan. The media department in CyberZ, called OPENREC, started OPENREC.tv, a platform for game play videos on smartphones, where every user can post game play videos with audio commentaries. OPENREC renovated and reopened a studio called OPENGREC Studio, where users can produce live or recorded programs as well as invite users to produce material to post on his or her page.
“We had an OPENREC Studio in Shinjuku previously, but we decided to build a new studio, which is three times bigger and has better equipment, because the market for eSports and smartphone game play videos is thriving and we want to invigorate the industry more. We mainly live stream programs and hold league series or tournaments for smartphone games in the studio. In the live streaming programs we invite professional gamers, game loving voice actors and comedians,” said Kosuke Eda, a technical director of OPENREC who supervises the studio.
Gamers who perform better than others can get invitations to the studio to record and stream material. OPENREC not only provides a platform for gameplay videos but also invites users to the studio and supports them technically. Many users dream of the invitation and this is one of the many methods OPENREC uses to try to keep users motivated.
ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K’s program output is recorded on HyperDeck Studio. The other program output is sent to Teranex AV and after being up converted to Ultra HD, the signal is fed to DeckLink Studio 4K for capture. They fully make use of the macro feature available on the ATEM switcher, enabling the automation of usual operations.
Mr. Eda continues: “We like ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K because it has many input ports, it is easy to arrange elements in the picture and you can control it via ethernet. You can control ATEM from anywhere you want as long as you have access to it by network. In the live streaming of gameplays, it is important to reflect current scores and update texts in real time. One of the advantages of ATEM is that you can create and export stills on Photoshop flexibly and put them on the program. HyperDeck Studio is useful not only for recording but also for playing material like replays and scores.”
He continued: “We hold events frequently outside Tokyo so we carry around a small rack system set up with Teranex AV and UltraStudio 4K inside a suitcase. We find the flexibility of Teranex AV highly valuable in streaming productions outside our studio, because video formats required for streaming are sometimes different from what we had expected and resolutions requested can change at the last minute. As powerful and versatile as Blackmagic products are, they are small and can fit in a rack so they are easy to carry from one place to another.”
“We have three big studios in the OPENREC Studio. Every video signal from all the studios are monitored and controlled in the master room. It is equipped with Smart Videohub 12x12, which is used to route video signals from each studio to the entrance and each studio. There are many video feeds from game consoles but Smart Videohub 12x12 is helpful in organizing inputs and outputs via PC. I like the fact that Blackmagic products can be controlled by network as long as they have ethernet ports. We had no hesitation in choosing Blackmagic products for the new studio, because we had already been using them and knew that they are extremely reliable. I think that the quality of OPENREC.tv is greatly improved by Blackmagic products which can be utilized flexibly and creatively,” he concluded.