Sports streaming network Dyn Media now runs a custom remote production environment, designed and implemented by NEP Germany with resource integration expertise from Broadcast Solutions.
New sports network Dyn Media is now running a custom remote production environment, designed and implemented by broadcast facilities provider NEP Germany. Dyn Media was launched Christian Seifert, former CEO of the German football league Bundesliga, who runs it as a joint venture with media company Axel Springer.
The goal was to create a new streaming platform for German fans of the leagues and sports beyond soccer including basketball, handball, volleyball and table tennis. With the slogan ‘No frills; no pretence; just the power of sport’, Dyn aims to enhance awareness and appreciation for these sports through high-quality production standards. NEP Germany itself, for instance, is the production service provider of all games for the German basketball and handball league at Dyn.
The coverage is based mainly on remote production. Working with NEP Germany, systems integrator Broadcast Solutions has built six units, called venue kits. Each kit has a core rack in a flight case with three stage boxes to connect devices to the mixing console, connected over fibre. Typically six cameras plus minicams feed into the core rack, along with microphones and other audio sources, all using SMPTE ST 2110-standard equipment.
Super Compact
This compact set-up means the entire system for an outside broadcast can travel in a single VW Crafter van to the site or venue, where a crew of only a few people can set it up and run it. The result is not only very cost-effective coverage, but also reduces the carbon footprint of the operation.
All signals from the kits are routed to NEP Germany’s headquarters in Munich, where Broadcast Solutions has built two large control rooms centred on Grass Valley Kula switchers, a central equipment room and a network operation centre (NOC). This infrastructure handles the central management of signal transmission from all arenas – to and from Cologne where Dyn is based, as well as to the cloud and OTT platforms.
The NOC allocates venue kits as and when they are needed to the production control rooms in Cologne and Munich. Several Riedel Simplylive Production Suites serve as production control systems for smaller productions or can be used as replay facilities. The Simplylive Production Suite is a modular software system, running on commodity hardware or in the cloud, made up of application layers tuned to various tasks such as slow motion replay, master recording, streaming or referee review. As well as functionality, users can add staff to cover large projects, or scale down for a one-operator event.
Audio in the venues is controlled remotely from sound quality control (SQC) rooms and the normalised signals are then dispatched to the production control rooms. Dyn is free to send commentators to the event, or voiceover rooms at the new facilities are available for commentary from staff viewing the monitors. Audio mixing largely uses the Prodigy from DirectOut Technologies.
Sharing Resources
NEP Germany and Broadcast Solutions have also designed and built one large gallery and three small control rooms in Dyn Media’s headquarters in Cologne, plus the associated audio facilities. These share the hardware installed in Munich, so Dyn can place its editorial team in either city and have exactly the same functionality, while controlling capital costs and energy consumption.
NEP Germany and Broadcast Solutions worked together to design the entire system, and then Broadcast Solutions took responsibility for installation and commissioning in both Munich and Cologne. The six venue kits were built in Broadcast Solutions’ workshops in Bingen.
Dyn Media was ambitious about distributing its live sports content, using a modern, fairly complex approach from the start. Zlatan Gavran, managing director of NEP Germany said, “Dyn entrusted us with their entire technical operations, and therefore we needed to work with a systems integrator that understood their complex, forward-looking requirements.
“With Broadcast Solutions, we collaborated on a design that was practical, resilient and cost-effective. They had the resources to design and build everything, from the venue kits to the flexible control room architectures, delivering a complete solution.” broadcast-solutions.de
