DMC Live Streams Heartland Emmys from Two Cities with TVU One
The Heartland Emmy Awards were held at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver.
The annual Heartland Emmy Awards are held simultaneously in Denver and Oklahoma City. To make the show as dynamic as possible, video production company Denver Media Centre (DMC), wanted the live video event to reflect the dual-location nature of the awards gala with real-time live feeds from each location.
The Heartland EMMY Chapter galas were streamed live to the organisation’s Facebook page from the venues in both cities - Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver and the Heritage Centre in Oklahoma City. With one TVU One mobile IP transmitter in Denver and one in Oklahoma City, plus TVU receivers in each location, DMC switched its coverage live between the cities for air on the Facebook page.
DMC live coverage of both galas includes speeches from award winners and red carpet walks from Oklahoma City using TVU receivers and a video switcher. The receiver in Oklahoma City took in the master feed from Denver. Using the TVU One transmitters, feeds from both locations were distributed back and forth for creation of the live master feed, which was switched and streamed to the Facebook page out of Denver.
DMC has, in fact, used TVU Networks’ equipment to produce the Heartland Emmy Awards for the past five years, including pre-show editing and live directing. The company also produces regional Emmy Award shows for chapters in Colorado, Texas, New England and Washington, DC.
But the Heartland arrangement this year added significantly to the content in the finished production. “The first year we produced this show, we used just one transmitter in Denver and a receiver in Oklahoma City,” said DMC Co-owner Nick Arnold. “We didn’t cover the speeches or red-carpet highlights in Oklahoma City at all. Adding a receiver in both locations and a transmitter in Oklahoma City really opened up the back and forth and created a much more exciting main show.”
The number of views on the Heartland Emmy Facebook page for this year’s gala support his comments. Nick reported over 1,000 views on Facebook, which includes a growing number from areas previously not engaged with the event. The Awards are held each July, and entries are just closing now in February for the 2018 event.
“The Heartland Emmy Awards cover a wide section of the country,” he said. “Many of the Oklahoma stations haven’t usually attended the ceremony or submitted their work for award consideration. But since the live Facebook stream from both locales this year, we’ve seen participation rise dramatically from the Oklahoma chapter. They now represent a much larger part of our membership.”
Currently, the Heartland Emmys are the only Emmy show that takes place at multiple locations, even though other TV chapters also cover several large cities, particularly in western United States. “We’re promoting this idea of including more than one city in live Emmy telecasts as a way to increase participation,” said Nick. “When live feeds incorporate more than one city, everyone becomes a part of it, and people feel more involved and excited about the event.”
He said after seeing the new TVU Networks’ gear at the Rocky Mountain Audio Video Expo in late October, he’s enthused about putting it to work on future projects. “The TVU equipment gets smaller and easier to use every year and their portability gives us a lot of options.”
The new TVU One live mobile IP transmitter with integrated HEVC compression replaced DMC’s existing TVU mobile units. Built with TVU’s Inverse Statmux Plus (IS+) transmission algorithm, TVU One can deliver HD quality video with half-second latency at 3Mbps. It can transmit simultaneously over multiple mediums, including cellular, microwave, satellite, BGAN, WiFi and Ethernet. www.tvunetworks.com
