World Racing Group uses a Dejero workflow to live stream the full racing season from 120 track venues to its DIRTVision streaming channel and other OTT platforms for viewers worldwide.
Over the past year, World Racing Group (WRG) has successfully live streamed 550 races from 120 track venues across the USA and Canada on its DIRTVision streaming channel. The Group’s broadcast team has found that the resilient connectivity they achieve using Dejero’s network aggregation devices works well for recording the fast-growing sport of dirt track racing.
With a need to transport their operations between a number of venues, their kit includes Dejero’s EnGo video mobile transmitters supported by CellSat blended cellular and Ku-band IP satellitedevices and CuePoint return video devices.
Connectivity and Consistency
“Dejero gives us reliable connectivity and consistency from venue to venue, which has been crucial to our production of high quality race coverage,” said Brian Dunlap, director of broadcast services at World Racing Group. “Using this remote production workflow, we were among the first in the world of motorsports to take responsibility for a premier series and live stream every event.”
When WRG began using Dejero CellSat for network blending, not only could it live stream virtually all of its premier racing schedule year-round from more venues than had been possible before, it could also push raw feeds back to the WRG studios in Concorde, North Carolina, with a predictable latency.
“Traditionally, races were streamed from tracks using encoders on site, but we were limited by available internet connection,” Brian said. “By using Dejero connectivity, regardless of the venue’s location, we can produce live shows, add graphics and final-mix the audio, transmit to our studio and then distribute a high quality, fully packaged product to OTT platforms for viewers to watch around the world.”
OB Expansion
Over a five year period, WRG has expanded its fleet of mobile production units by adding two vans with 16ft trailers and a flight kit to its existing 26ft truck. The Group is now in the process of building another 26ft truck. Each mobile unit is equipped with a CellSat blended cellular and Ku-band IP satellite system, Dejero EnGo video mobile transmitters, plus the team’s production gear – switchers, audio equipment and cameras.
WRG has also deployed Dejero EnGo transmitters at ten race track venues across North America where they have created production facilities in order to broadcast weekly shows from each track. The EnGos encode high-quality video, transmitting WRG mixed clean switcher feeds, primarily over fibre and using cellular networks as backup, to reliably deliver high picture quality with extremely low latency.
“Since we’ve enhanced connectivity and our production capabilities, more dirt track race rights holders have approached us to put their events on DIRTVision - and in turn the DIRTVision brand and the interest in dirt track racing around the world has significantly increased,” said Brian.
Wider Scope, Larger Events
“At one point DIRTVision was strictly web-based but now we have apps on every major platform from iOS to Android, to Samsung to ROKU and more. As a result, our audience are exposed to races year round, which keeps them engaged. Our average subscriber is now buying more tickets to see an event live compared to this time 5 years ago.”
For approximately 200 larger events in its annual race calendar, such as the World of Outlaws Sprint Car and Late Model series events where a live network approach is taken, WRG also uses a Dejeo CuePoint return video server. On these occasions, the CuePoint sends low-latency, live program video feeds to the director onsite for confidence monitoring and to ensure the synchronisation of graphic and commercial placements over existing shots.
Two Dejero WayPoint receivers are located at WRG’s studio in North Carolina where final production including graphics and commentary take place. The WayPoint devices reconstruct and decode the video feeds which are entered into a matrix to be shared with the switcher and replay systems. The packaged video is then distributed to DIRTVision’s OTT platforms. www.dejero.com
