THE NEED
Eurosport, an international sports broadcasting company, needs an effective solution to enable real-time sports events coverage by remote commentators. This specific workflow requires transporting the commentary from the sports venue to remote commentators located in various geographic locations. The commentary is then routed to Eurosport servers to be integrated with the video and broadcasted. The main stake for Eurosport is to ensure real-time audio transmission with optimal audio quality, while handling the distance and diversity of commentator locations.
THE CHALLENGE
The main challenge for Eurosport is to elaborate a solution that would include a multi-site management, enabling commentators to actively participate in real-time sports event coverage while ensuring professional audio quality and precise synchronization with the video. Ensuring a stable and reliable audio transmission, even over the public Internet, is of utmost importance to provide Eurosport audiences with a high-quality viewing experience. Moreover, the solution should be extremely easy to operate for commentators and seamlessly blend into Eurosport’s existing production workflow.
THE SOLUTION
Digigram developed a solution based on IQOYA SERV/LINK products to meet the challenges as described by Eurosport.
As this solution unfolds, Eurosport streams the live video of the event, with each sport commentator on a PC screen. Sports commentators can then provide the audio live commentary over the internet as they are witnessing the sports’ event. The commentaries are sent to the Eurosport production studio, where several Digigram IQOYA SERV/LINK units have been installed to collect all these commentaries from the internet. Next step, audio commentaries are output directly to the AES67 audio infrastructure of the studio. These multi-lingual commentaries are then multiplexed into the original video feed for distribution to the Eurosport customers.
IQOYA Connect, the Digigram cloud based SIP infrastructure and application for live remote broadcasting, is used by Europsort to monitor in real time the IP transport quality of all the commentaries, meeting the critical audio challenges faced by the international broadcaster.
BENEFITS
With this solution, Eurosport is able to offer real-time coverage of sports events incorporating professional-quality commentary, even in remote settings. It guarantees precise synchronization between the audio commentary and the accompanying video, enhancing the overall viewer experience.