FEED Winter 2020/21 Newsletter

Spanish livestreaming company leverage Vizrt’s software only live production system mixer to produce high-quality broadcast during lockdown

“The show was Todos en casa [Everyone at home], a prime time show that demonstrated how regular people were dealing with the quarantine,” says Ruiz. “The anchor was hosting the show from his home, with a minimal set-up. There was no technician. He was receiving remote support to set up cameras, microphones and lighting, with live connections to regular people who had become famous during Covid. One guy, for example, was singing every day with his grandmother. It was a portrait of Spanish society. “We only had 72 hours to set up the virtualised environment on this show with Viz Vectar Plus,” he continues. “We had four cameras on the host, set up in the cloud, so we were getting live feeds from his home, as well as up to 20 external connections [from the public], through either Skype, Microsoft Teams or Zoom, plus plenty of DDRs [for playing back pre-recorded video clips] plus graphics. It was a regular TV production. But in fact, everybody in the group was operating from home, and it was all cloud and software-based equipment.”

here’s no doubt that Spain’s Covid-19 lockdown experience significantly impacted its broadcast and entertainment industries – it also proved to be an accelerant for a new remote production process being explored

by Madrid’s Square One Media, a full-service livestreaming company. “During 2019, Vizrt released the beta version of Viz Vectar Plus, a 100% software-based vision mixer with additional capabilities,” says Square One’s founding partner Sergio Ruiz. “We recognised the potential of a virtualised production environment with Vectar as the core. During January 2020, we got the first fully functional proof of concept ready, including the minimum glue to build a simple workflow, aimed mainly at online productions. Then, in March, the health crisis hit Spain.” With the lockdown in full force, Spanish national public broadcaster TVE tasked Square One with providing a virtual production environment on very short notice.

@feedzinesocial

Powered by