16 STREAMPUNK YouTube Spaces
SOUND SOLUTIONS The audio control room at YouTube Space London is built around a Dante network
INCUBATORS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF STREAMING CONTENT PRODUCTION company developing live and file-based newsgathering solutions for the broadcast market. This gave me a great grounding in IP as well as baseband video. “As the Spaces have grown, I have been fortunate to lead the technical design of all YouTube Spaces across Europe, Middle East and Africa, including Paris, London, Berlin and Dubai.” The world of the streaming video auteur is still in its early stages. The YouTube Spaces will no doubt be incubators for the next generation of streaming content production. So what’s next? “The YouTube Spaces have always, and will continue to lead the way implementing support for new platform features such as 4K and VR180. We have some awesome projects in the works, watch out for announcements!”
In order to accommodate the mix between digital cinema and live workflows, the Space oers Sony’s F55 cameras, with the broadcast module. The flexible Sony cinema cameras operate over SMPTE hybrid fibre, allowing the team to change location easily for live production, as well as using them for digital cinema workflows. “Each creator has dierent needs and preferences. We try to oer as much choice as possible whilst also giving the opportunity to experiment with equipment they would otherwise struggle to access,” says Lock. The Space oers a wide range of production gear, ranging from DSLRs such as the Sony A7S and the Canon EOS 5D – Canons have become a tool of choice for many YouTubers – all the way to high-end digital cinema such as the RED 8K WEAPON. There is also a stock of 360 cameras, such as the Yi Halo that uses the Jump Assembler, as well as ambisonic microphones for recording immersive audio. As you would expect from YouTube, the Space is well networked. “Our production IP networks are all based on 10GbE,” says Lock. “We have used
pre-terminated MTP trunk cables to flood wire the facility, this gives us the flexibility to add I/O and even extend our intercom and wireless RF system wherever the need arises. “We are using redundant high bit rate J2K contribution lines to interconnect the facilities worldwide, we currently have end-to-end sub 100ms latency between Los Angeles and London. And we are able to distribute back to the platform at UHD resolutions using a redundant pair of RTMP encoders.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Chris Lock doesn’t come from a traditional systems integration background – or even from a streaming video background. “I have a very non-traditional background in terms of production engineering, I actually began my career working for a
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