51 THE LIVE LIFE LiveArena
The service is also spreading to other countries. LiveArena has begun working with the National Sporting Federation of Norway, streaming additional sports, as well as other sporting federations in Sweden outside of ice hockey. Norway took things a step further and wanted to have increasingly sophisticated productions for the more advanced players, including multi-camera shoots, scoreboards and graphics and commentary. “We needed to figure out more advanced solutions. We developed a sturdy computer that would work in cold ice hockey arenas and be rugged. We needed a good software solution and chose Telestream’s Wirecast.” There are 80 of these production kits distributed to higher end hockey arenas in Sweden and Norway. In Norway, the gear is also used for second division senior ice hockey as well as the higher junior games. The simplest production set-up provided by LiveArena involves camcorders and an encoding application developed by the company that allows users to create a simple scoreboard.
The more advanced production kits are enabled for two-camera set-ups and advanced scoreboards and graphics, and include Telestream’s Wirecast streaming production software. Wirecast has seen an explosion of use in recent years as live streaming expands to all sorts of verticals. The software is oered in two versions. Wirecast Studio allows unlimited capture, production and encoding of both HD and SD video sources for live streaming to multiple servers and platforms. In addition, Wirecast Pro oers eight-track audio output, replay, support for more capture devices and IP cameras, web stream input, programme feed output, live scoreboards, virtual sets and ISO recording. LiveArena has an agreement with incumbent Swedish telecom operator TeliaSonera to provide connectivity in the arenas with a dedicated 2 or 4Mbps upstream connection for streaming to the cloud. In addition to ice hockey, LiveArena’s junior sports oering is also streaming netball, volleyball, and Norway has added martial arts and handball.
DOWN TO THE WIRE The more advanced production kits used at higher end hockey arenas in Norway and Sweden rely on Telestream’s
Wirecast software
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