Simplify and Add Lightness – LiveU Lightweight Productions

Heroes.? They can be problematic.? Often you put them on a pedestal and then find that they have feet of clay.

For instance, Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus sports cars has long been a hero of mine.? Chapman is famous for his “simplify and add lightness” approach to engineering.? His design ethos saw him radically alter the way that sports and racing cars were built and won him and his teams many trophies and awards.

Sadly, Chapman fell in with some bad company (like John DeLorean – he of the Back to the Future car fame) towards the end of his life, which tarnished his posthumous reputation somewhat.? But before his feet became slightly clay-like, his innovations propelled his customers and clients to performance heights of which they had previously only dreamed.

Using innovation too as a tool to help strive for greater performance is something that gels well with the LiveU culture and has shaped the solutions that we deliver to help our customers thrive.

Shorten workflows and add efficiency

For example, the LiveU EcoSystem is designed to do two things:

1. shorten workflows – that is to reduce the typical complexity involved in creating a live video production and transmit it to an audience or control room. 2. Add efficiency – thereby allowing the content producer to create more for less. Less time, less money, and less effort.?

This approach has helped storytellers across sports, news, entertainment, corporate communications, public safety, houses of worship, and many more genres to focus on the content, rather than the technology or the operational constraints that can beset a modern, fast-paced production.

At the vanguard of the LiveU Ecosystem (for more information on what this is please have a look here: https://www.liveu.tv/solutions/ecosystem ) sits a solution set that we call Lightweight Production.

It epitomises the “Chapman” design principles of ‘simplifying and adding lightness’ but rather than engineering cars, the IP-video engineers and inventors on LiveU’s R&D teams have created a more efficient way of capturing, enhancing, and sharing a broadcast quality story.

They did this because producing high quality live video in a reliable and repeatable manner can be costly and complex.? Those two barriers to entry – money and effort – have historically limited the number of events, football matches, news stories, or campaign trail election snippets that could be covered.? The simple economics of investment and return meant that only content capable of engaging with a sufficiently large audience to generate a positive return would be viable.

Unfortunately for the content economists, audiences used to the on-demand, always-on content streams accessible through an ever-increasing number of connected devices, began to demand more diverse and niche content be delivered to them across a growing number of consumption channels. A double whammy of an increasingly fragmented audience being spread across a wider spectrum of interests resulting in a very real need to produce more content to serve a greater number of niche audiences.

LiveU’s Lightweight Production Solution seeks to help content producers overcome these multi-dimensional challenges by making easy-to-use live video production solutions as accessible and as efficient as possible.

Overcoming complexity

Traditional live video production can require large numbers of production crew to operate cameras, satellite trucks, graphics stations, technical direction workstations, audio mixing, editing, social repurposing, distribution scheduling, and more.? Many of these people need to be on location, at the shoot, meaning they must travel to the job and then set up in each new location.

Lightweight Production techniques look to minimize the number of crew required, allowing teams of just one or two people (inclusive of the on-screen talent) to be deployed to the location.? Thanks to the power of LRT? (LiveU Reliable Transport), a LiveU portable field encoder can be dispatched to the location, a camera or video sourced connected to it and within a matter of minutes, the feed is ready to be transmitted. The field unit is capable of bonding multiple IP connections together to form a single, robust connection that the audio-visual data is transmitted over.? By bonding multiple and diverse cellular 4G and 5G connections together, along with ethernet and Wi-Fi (if available), the field unit gives the Lightweight Production crew the freedom to go to exactly where the story is, without needing to phone ahead to arrange a network link.

Once the video is acquired, the portable field unit can stream the content directly into LiveU Studio, the cloud native production suite.? Accessed via a browser, the user-friendly interface allows a single producer to create a program feed complete with lower thirds, graphic overlays, transitions, remote guests and much more.? As it is cloud based, the producer can be located remotely, meaning that they can avoid the need to travel to the location, reducing costs, down-time, and the environmental impact.

With the program feed enhanced with broadcast quality production techniques, the feed can be distributed directly from LiveU Studio to up to 30 digital destinations like YouTube, Twitch and Facebook simultaneously, as well as to a more linear orientated workflow for playout.

Ground-to-cloud-to-crowd

Lightweight Production can be simple single camera shows or larger, fully frame-synchronized multi-camera productions.? Both scenarios make moving content from ground-to-cloud and then on to the crowd (the audience) a nimble and efficient process.

As a software defined workflow, Lightweight Productions are highly scalable, providing a large range of operational flexibility helping the producer maintain full control.? The solutions are available on a range of access plans, from the flexible pay-as-you-go plan, through to subscription, rental or purchase options.? All are backed by LiveU’s world renowned global support model.

Taking the concept of simplifying one step further, we have created a number of Lightweight Production bundles that combine all the elements needed to go from glass-to-glass in one package, with the added benefit of additional cost savings.? The bundles can save you up to 49% off the standard cost and include the LiveU encoder, LiveU Smart Data for cellular connectivity and LiveU Studio access.? We’ll be showcasing these solutions at InfoComm in Las Vegas from June 12-14.? Click here to join us there or to find out more: Lightweight production and Infocomm details

Lightweight Productions save time, money and effort, letting you produce more, for less, or as Colin Chapman would say, it lets you “simplify and add lightness" - this time with no feet of clay!

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