USGA US Open Amateur Championships
Live X Trusts Haivision and SRT for Flawless Live Remote Production Workflows
About Live X
Live X is a full-service production company, designing, producing, and broadcasting live events and creating immersive experiential concepts for top global brands. From idea development through technical execution, from video, graphics, and 3D animation to live onsite and remote production and streaming, Live X uses innovative technologies to help industry-leading clients all over the world create captivating experiences to increase their audience engagement and build their brands.
“As production people, we use whatever solutions are best of breed, that’s what our clients expect. Haivision Makito X video encoders are just that; the UI is simple and easy to use, they offer extremely low latency, and most importantly they are rock solid and reliable. These products are mainstays in our studio.”
Corey Behnke
Co-founder and Producer, Live X
The Challenge
Satisfying the Growing Demand for More Live Golf Content
With over 15 years of experience in the industry, New York-based production company, Live X is well versed in producing both traditional and remote live events for its customers. One of the company’s biggest live streaming clients is the USGA for which it has provided traditional broadcast coverage of all the ancillary “pre-events” at the US (Golf) Open over the past four years.
Using its 4K mobile unit, the Live X team supports two stages with remote cameras across the golf course so it can live stream to the USGA website as well as Facebook Live, Twitter, and YouTube. However, when it came to coverage of the smaller USGA events such as the amateur championships, despite the huge appetite for live content, the fans didn’t have access to the same viewing experience because of budgetary constraints. That is, until two years ago, when Live X proposed creating an SRT-based workflow to cover these events remotely so that they could give the fan base the high-quality content they were hungry for while keeping costs in check.
The Solution
Distance is No Object
The 118th USGA US Open Amateur Championships took place in Pebble Beach, California. The USGA wanted live, multi-camera coverage of the commentator perched above the 18th green, while additional, wireless cameras covered the golf action at key locations including the iconic 7th hole. There was no one from the Live X team on the ground in California, and the entire production was managed remotely from its Master Control Room 3000 miles away in New York city.
Using the Azzurro TX portable transmission system and Pin Bridge (both equipped with Haivision Makito X video encoders and decoders), and leveraging the Secure Reliable Transport protocol (SRT), Live X transported live low latency (sub 500ms) audio and video feeds from six cameras from California to New York in sync and with the best possible quality. Live X was able to do everything it usually does on the ground, including controlling cameras, live edit and encoding, as well as live communication between on set talent and the MCR, completely remotely.
The Result
Creating More Content for Less
By adopting a remote production (REMI) model using SRT and Haivision, Live X was able to reduce the burden of deploying significant resources onsite, along with the field crew needed to set up, operate and manage it. The USGA was able to produce the event at a fraction of the cost of a traditional outside broadcast setup while offering fans a high quality and unique viewing experience.
The low-latency bidirectional audio and video transport over IP with SRT enabled the production to flow as if the 3,000-mile distance was nothing at all. Live X successfully delivered content to the official USGA YouTube and Facebook pages, where it helped to increase engagement and viewership of the championship. In fact, it was so successful, Live X was engaged again to remotely produce the 2019 championships in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Products Used
