IP Live Sports Production
APPLICATIONNOTEVersion 2

Application ideally suited for:Broadcasters•
Transport impeccable quality content for
the highest profile, mission critical sporting
events with guaranteed service delivery,reliability and resiliency.
Franchise owners•
Support all media needs with one commonecosystem providing the agility, flexibility andscalability to accommodate evolving media
demands, higher video and data bandwidths,
and workflows.
Remote Production Teams•
Control distant sports venue media
equipment remotely from the studio andsend its content across one commonnetwork in one common ecosystem, all withminimal latency and bandwidth efficiency.
Amateur/Niche/Local Sports Venues•
Move content economically over dark fiber
metropolitan networks using low cost,compact IP Media Gateways supporting
today’s higher resolution video formats alongwith bidirectional data feeds
Features & Benefits•

Evolutionary, not revolutionary soft-step IP
migration•

Support for all video/media types including
4K UHD and 10G Data•

Scalable bandwidth capacity to 100G andbeyond•Integral Network Management software forremote equipment and service assurance,
activation & orchestration

APPLICATION NOTEUnifying Live Sports
with IP Production
A live broadcast covering a sporting event is one of the most technically challenging
assignments for any production crew. Large, demanding global audiences (likethose viewing the Olympics and World Cup events) with ever increasing quality
expectations create even more pressure to produce a well-choreographed, realtime production. Multiple signals in a wide variety of formats need to be transmitted
around and from the sporting venue, as well as being seamlessly integrated withfeeds from a studio or other locations to form a complete broadcast stream.
Increasingly, broadcasters are turning to IP technology in order to simplify theirnetworks by consolidating all their media traffic on a common platform, and to takeadvantage of the increasing array of video devices that natively support IP.
Managing all of the different signal types and locations can be a daunting
task without advanced transport technology. Most media signals need to beencapsulated or adapted to work efficiently over a backbone that carries multiplesignals. The Media Links IP Ecosystem has proven itself as an ultra-reliable, highperformance transport solution for all types of signals used in live sports or any otherform of media networking.

CAPTURE AND
CONTROL

5G NW

TRANSPORT VIASATELLITE UPLINKDATACAMERA
CONTROLUNIT

VIDEO,AUDIOSIGNALS

Related Products

MEDIA AND DATAIPDATAMEDIA AND DATAMDP3020 MAX compact IP Media Gateway
MD8000SX, MD8000, MD8000EX andMD8000-100G IP Media Gateways
MDX Series of Core/Aggregation Switches
ProMD-EMS 2.0 Software

5G NW(OPTIONAL) REMI/REMOTE PRODUCTIONVIA FIBER GATEWAY

TRANSPORTVIA FIBER GATEWAYCAPTURE AND
CONTROL

Live seats

ProductionMixer

Producer

TalentProducerIntercom
DataVoiceVideo input / output

7U

4K
4K
4K
4K
HD
HD
HD
ASI
ASI
OFDM

Phone Interface
POWER
SUPPLYPOWER
SUPPLY

AUDIO
AUDIO
AUDIO
DATA
DATA
DATA
DATA

TRUNK
SWCNT
SWCNTIntercom
Camera Control

Intercom

AES Audio
Gigabit Ethernet

Fixed Video

2

MD8000Port Aggregator

Camera Control

1SDI Video

Camera Video

Camera Video
Video Return path

MD8000 ポートアグリゲータ
2 1Video Source

Audio from site

Audio

MD8000 EX Port Aggregator
TRUNK

CameraIntercom

IP Network
Production Studio
Camera shading correction

To understand the magnitude of the challenge facing live sports production teams, consider the types of services that need to beprovided by a signal transport system, including:Live video and audio feeds that capture the actual competition.
Today these signals are commonly 720p and 1080i that run at 1.5 Gbps, as well as 1080p that uses 3 Gbps. For major events, 4K/
UHD cameras running at 12 Gbps or higher are increasingly being used as the market for delivering this content to subscribers
grows. The number of video, audio, as well as data feeds typically transmitted from a venue has also been increasing. Broadcasters
are adding more cameras and producing more website content, while simultaneously relocating production from expensive venuebased personnel and equipment towards centralized, less costly studio-based or even home/remote-based production teams.
Live video and audio feeds from announcers/reporters/analysts located at the sports venue.
These feeds are often (but not always) delivered in the same format as the event feeds, but may require special configuration tominimize round trip delay (i.e. latency) to permit conversations and interviews to be conducted between studio and venue personnel.
Live data feeds that carry statistics, results and other information about the event.
These data feeds can include scores, details about specific plays and players, in-game statistics, and a host of other pertinent
information. Such data are becoming increasingly valuable to broadcasters and sports leagues, because they can be used toenhance viewer engagement and also to produce alternative offerings to consumers such as mobile data feeds and statisticalarchives that create additional revenue streams.
Two-way voice intercom/VOIP system that provides communications among the production team members.
These links can be used for many functions, not the least of which is allowing a director to talk with camera operators to create theshots used in the live production.
Data links using multiple formats and bit rates are deployed for many different production equipment control and monitoring
functions.
These can include camera shading controls, tally lights, camera PTZ control links, lighting control systems, etc. In addition, manyother data connections are used to support broadcast operations and communications, including file transfers for AR graphics,
animations and video clips; live-to-file recording systems, employee e-mail and internet access, social media feeds from venuebased commentators, and other functions.

APPLICATION-METRONETWORKS-08-2020

In the past, many of these signals required separate, specialized transport networks. HD and SD video signals flowed as SDI
signals over coaxial cables and were switched via video routers. Compressed versions of these signals commonly used DVB/ASI
links which also used one-way SDI circuits within both production facilities and over long-haul terrestrial and satellite networks.
Analog program audio and digital audio signals that were not embedded into SDI signals were transported over shielded cables
inside the production facility and via T1/E1 telephone circuits for long-haul connections. Data signals were often sent as separate
serial links using protocols such as RS-232, RS-422, and contact closures; in some cases multiplexing devices could be used tocombine them over a single telecom circuit or data connection. Intercom and voice circuits require two-way audio connections,which were often transported between facilities using multiple circuits leased from telephone service providers.
Large files associated with graphics, animations or library clips often required physical media such as tapes or disk drives,
although more recently the trend has been to install high-bandwidth IP networks and utilize advanced file acceleration
applications to transport these as digital files. With all these different signal types and network configurations, broadcasters wouldoften needs days before each event to install, configure and test a diverse array of communication circuits.

Media Links Media over IP Transport Platform Unifies all Signals
Today, IP technology implemented across the entire Media Links
Ecosystem allows all of the signals required for a live sports broadcast
to be unified on a common transport platform. By using IP connections
implemented over a high-reliability switched Ethernet fabric, all of thesignals required for a modern sports broadcast can be delivered overa single backbone, greatly reducing system complexity, setup timeand cost.
•Uncompressed video signals are converted from SDI into highbandwidth IP packet streams, which can then be fed over thecommon backbone. Packetization allows FEC (Forward ErrorCorrection) and hitless protection switching to be added toimportant (or all) streams to ensure high-quality video delivery
even over physically lossy networks that experience bit errors
and packet loss. To reduce bandwidth consumption, the Media
Links IP solution portfolio can optionally provide industry standard
JPEG-XS, JPEG2000 or other compression functions for any or
all video feeds. These low-delay, high-quality media transport
platform can be installed at any point in the network to optimize
picture quality for almost any available bandwidth.

Types of Signals that Need to be Provided
by a single Transport Solution• Live video and audio feeds that capture
the actual competition.
• Live video and audio feeds fromannouncers/reporters/analysts locatedat the sports venue.
• Live data feeds that carry statistics,
results and other information about theevent.
• Two-way voice intercom/VOIP systemthat provides communications among
the production team members.
• Data links using multiple formats and bit
rates are deployed for many different
production functions, including graphic
file transfers, equipment control, andnetwork monitoring and management
functions.

•Compressed video signals can be transported in their native IP
format if that is the output generated by the compression codec,
or they can be converted into IP streams from DVB/ASI encoder
outputs. In either case, these signals can be reliably delivered
using the advanced routing and bandwidth reservation systems
provided by the Media Links IP Transport Ecosystem.

•

Audio signals often require point-to-point and multicast delivery
to multiple destinations for sports production.

•MADI digital audio channel (AES 10) support of 28, 56, 32 or 64 channels can also be accommodated, delivered to one ormore production and/or monitoring destinations with superb fidelity.

APPLICATION-METRONETWORKS-08-2020

•Data signals and file transfers can easily be supported using low-speed and high-speed IP interfaces, which can be configured as
separate networks or combined into larger LAN architectures within the Media Links IP Ecosystem network fabric. This versatility
allows some data circuits to be configured as private links for high levels of security and to support unique addressing schemes,
and other data circuits to be combined into larger fabrics to support shared access to valuable resources such as file servers andcontrol/monitoring systems.

•Internet access for sports production, both for employee access to public web-based systems and for interaction with viewers
using social media networks is also supported. The Media Links Ecosystem natively supports IP connections between private andpublic networks, and can be configured to provide dedicated access on some connections as well as shared access for otherinterfaces.

Media Links’ Control Plane Management and Orchestration for Remote Production
The Media Links Enhanced Management Software (ProMD-EMS) ensures the central media hub has full visibility of all RemoteProduction locations over the entire network, and at all times. This powerful software application monitors the entire network, polling
and receiving alerts and notifications in real-time to rapidly identify circuit and equipment issues before they become service affecting.
The Media Links ProMD-EMS also provisions circuits, creates backup routes, and manages bandwidth.
Together, the Media Links hardware and software system components operate as a coherent and seamless ecosystem to bothsupport a mixed-mode configuration, and allow network providers the advantage of transmitting and receiving different signals (4K/HD/3G/SD-SDI, audio, ASI and data) simultaneously. This technology allows for ultra-long transmission distances and serves as anextremely practical and cost-effective method to consolidate the highest quality video, audio and data content elements onto a single
network. Media Links’ IP Transport Products help service providers fully realize the vision of using IP/Ethernet as the preferred content
distribution network platform.
Impeccable video quality with millisecond latency
is achievable. A large variety of signal sources
can be inserted into the IP platform at any given
last mile / edge site and sent to the central media
hub as well as all interconnected facilities acrossthe country or across continents. This centralized
solution also eliminates the need for providers tooperate separate and technically diverse networks.
Media Links provides a common ecosystem platform
for all connected venues, broadcast centers, video
distribution facilities, and more to accommodate
all signal requirements whether 4K/3G/HD/SD-SDI,
DVB-ASI, audio or data. It is the Gold standard for IP
media transmission!

ProMD EMS 2.0 Sample Screenshots

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Kawasaki Tech Center 18F
580-16 Horikawa-cho,
Saiwai-ku, Kawasaki-shi,Kanagawa 212-0013 Japan
Phone: +81 44-589-3440
query@medialinks.co.jp

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431-C Hayden Station Road
Windsor, CT 06095
USA
Phone: +1 860-206-9163
Fax: +1 860-206-9165
info@medialinks.com

APPLICATION-EN-LIVESPORTSPROD-09-2022

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Suite 18242, PO Box 6945,London W1A 6US
UK
Phone: +44 207 096 9569
emea_info@medialinks.com

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2-12 Rokeby Street,
Collingwood, VIC 3066,
Australia
Phone: +61 3-9017-0175
Fax: +61 3-8456-6339
info@medialinksaustralia.com.au

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