The ABCs of remote production at Betevé

Beteve, a television dedicated to broadcasting all the latest news from the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona, ​​has been betting for several years on the versatility that remote production offers. On the verge of a possible paradigm shift, with virtualization and the cloud as possible game changers, Oriol Icart, technical and innovation director of the network, transfers the myriad of remote production techniques available to Catalan television.

Since his birth in 1994, Beteve has had a technological approach inherited by the courage of Manuel Huerga, who beyond driving the first steps of television, directed the art of the groundbreaking opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games 92. That post-Olympic era, in which Barcelona city opened to the sea and presented himself to the world as a dynamic, contemporary and young city, required a local television that assumed these same values.

Betevé, in this way, opted for “technologies that at that time nobody used", transfers Icart. Since the use of compact cameras until broadcast through a video server, Betevé, perhaps as a result of its limited resources, struggled to find its place by rethinking the technological pillars that supported broadcast.

Currently, this philosophy translates into a production approach in which remote occupies a predominant role in your programming through the use of multiple solutions: “We don't have the budgets that others have, but we make decisions even if they are risky. In the end, the economic containment makes the imagination grow. Perhaps we will not be the first to set up a network in 2110, but we will be among the first to explore remote production because it is inscribed in our way of working.”

Technologies will change, but they will all remain working towards the same goal: cover the entire news derived from Barcelona, a large city that brings together a significant percentage of the population of Catalonia. “All our desire to continue improving and to be leaders comes from that time. It is part of our DNA,” highlights Icart, who reveals to the readers of Panorama Audiovisual the most crucial decisions that drive your production.

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Remote production, today

It is not necessary to go far away in time to place ourselves in that space-time in which the DSNG and the unidades móviles They enjoyed absolute prominence on the vast majority of state television. There is no doubt that these teams survive and constitute some of the more reliable solutions in certain conditions. However, at a time when the versatility and cost savings become priorities, these motorized vehicles begin to occupy a background. Icart, without at any time underestimating the validity of mobile units in all their aspects, considers that remoteness “cannot be understood” currently without the internet, “in its broad sense.” “Currently, for us, remote production means being able to work with several mobile phones or backpacks with 4G/5G; con multichannel systems about public internet, the about dark fibers that we have installed in various infrastructures in the city. We cover everything,” says the technical and innovación from Betevé.

All these production routes that freely displays the Barcelona television they have a common denominator: “The main concept of remote production is through not moving all the technical means to an event to produce it. The only thing I have to move is the video source, which is the camera; for the rest, I continue working from home”.

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Backpacks, FTTH, multichannel systems…

The audiovisual industry is advancing at great speed, but the team led by Icart you are not allowed to slow down. The exploration of new opportunities is a constant. This effort, to date, has resulted in the consolidation of “three main systems” that structure its production.

The first, and the oldest, transfers Icart, is a fiber installation between the headquarters of Betevé and Barcelona City Council, where there are installed 15 PTZ cameras who will be in charge of broadcasting the coverage of the municipal plenary session, as well as other events held in different locations of the town hall, such as the historic Hall of Cent.

How could it be otherwise, Beteve also benefits from the use of “many backpacks” that are used in all types of applications. Television has its own park of rented equipment such as service por Overon Of the brand TVU, although this is scale based on production needs: “One of the last events we did was cover the Barcelona triathlon, for which we used 15 cameras with wireless connections, including drones, cranes or motorcycles on boats. It is our daily life.”

“In the middle of these two systems” is the third axis of their productions: multi-stream systems. “They are devices with which you can synchronously receive between 6 and 8 signals that use public Internet with which plays, concerts, inaugurations or fireworks have been covered,” explains Icart.

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The advantages of a single ecosystem

Backpacks take up papel central among Betevé's remote production ecosystem. Currently, television has eight teams, although, either for the previously mentioned Barcelona triathlon or for other events such as Marathon production o las municipal elections that can already be seen on the horizon, the Icart technological team you need to scale your equipment. However, there is a fundamental rule: do not combine different manufacturers. “We have not closed ourselves off from exploring new manufacturers, but we do not want to have a varied park because it can make you lose the flexibility that backpacks give you,” says Icart.

Today, the trust of Beteve is deposited in the equipment TVU Networks. Their relationship began more than a decade: “In 2009 we tried different manufacturers to get into backpacks and at that time TVU was the one that worked best. We know the brand very well, and there is another very practical thing to keep in mind: its European office is in Barcelona. It helps a lot that they are close.”

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Exclusive production control

For Oriol Icart, one of the keys to success in producción remota es really bet on her, which resulted in a transformation of the facilities of production of Beteve.

Currently, television has a exclusive production control for remote realization, which allows all people related to the production to know the possibilities and capabilities of these systems: “When you go with a cell phone, and even more so if it is not yours, you depend on what you find or the equipment that is available at that specific moment. We know everything we have, since we work with it every day.”

This deployment also allows Betevé a complete interconnection with the rest of television: “Whether you want to receive a signal, assemble a piece or access a file to retrieve a clip, everything is immediate.”

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Two old acquaintances: latency and reliability

The operational infrastructure, regardless of how established it is, it still depends on own external conditions of the progress of technology. In this context, the latency continues to present himself as the great challenge to be overcome: “Our commitment to remote has allowed us to learn to work with the delay. The camera team has been trained to be able to anticipate movements and deal with this situation. It is also necessary to recognize that 5 years ago you could work in two or three seconds. Currently, we are working at one second and, in multichannel productions, we can go down to half a second, which is practically immediate.”

In parallel, and with the trauma of the narrowernos pixels At the birth of broadcast backpacks, the reliability (represented by signal stability) continues to be treated from Betevé with the respect it deserves. The fact that television groups its activity in the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona makes the access to coverage is guaranteed in most cases. Even so, the mass events they continue to assume a whole challenge: “In these cases where the backpacks may fail, we usually ask for fibras FTTH circumstantial that are easily deployed. Additionally, as connectivity costs have dropped, we have fibers in points of the city where we know we go frequently: football stadiums, institutional headquarters... For 30 or 40 euros we are guaranteed to leave with all the guarantees."

In the same way, Icart confirms that, for large events, the television production team travels throughout the city to make coverage maps. In this way, Betevé is able to anticipate problems which they will face on the day of the broadcast when using their units.

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5G: big questions

The deployment of 5G networks, today and regardless of different tests, in practice They only represent a slight improvement in 4G networks. The big news will come in a Couple of years, materialized in the form of edge computing or the expected private 5G networks.

Icart is attracted to these concepts, as they can fit the perfection in your remote production philosophy. However, it is shown pragmatic about the reality of its implementation: “The questions we ask ourselves about this are several. Can we pay it? Will it be available for all televisions? Will there be radio frequencies available to everyone?

Until these questions find their answers, Betevé does not leave aside the 5G. While using it for his backpack broadcasts, he performs numerous European tests through projects such as 5GCat or with companies of the stature of Cellnex.

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Small steps in the cloud

“We were afraid of what could happen, but the experience was incredible”: this is how Icart summarizes what the launch of a channel was like FAST 24/7 through which Beteve broadcast from all angles the La Mercè Festivals, held from September 23 to 26. For this project, the Barcelona television team relied on the solution cloud TVU Channel, which allows live programming of different digital platforms from a browser web.

This test, which with hardly any publicity was “a complete success,” is for Icart further evidence that the entire broadcast world is turning towards the cloud: “In the last IBC many companies only talked about cloud, and, in fact, hundreds of start-ups They had specific solutions. (…) It is the great change and the great evolution.”

On the horizon for Icart and his team are many other cloud-related concepts, such as implementation of cloud video mixers, the system virtualization o to continuity cloud. In any case, from time to time: “As is evident, we are looking and thinking about how to take advantage of the cloud, but we have to see how it evolves.”

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Three challenges: automation, cinema…

By the time you are reading these words, it is very likely that the Beteve is at street level, conveying Barcelona's reality, benefiting from remote production technologies. In the background, not so noticeable but present, Oriol Icart and his team continue studying the market for find paths with which to optimize your productions.

Away from remote production, Icart reveals that the next big television project will pass through automation of performance controls for the news production: “We firmly believe that there cannot be 10, 12 or 15 people pushing buttons in the making. These have to be played alone, and there have to be different people thinking about how they are going to be played.”

In the same way, the growing trends of the inclusion of large format cameras in the environments broadcast, which can contribute different ways of expressing yourself from a more “artistic” point of view: “It is a trend that began with the first DSLR, but which currently seems to be growing with solutions from brands such as Sony o ARRI”.

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…and Three Wise Men

Short term, Beteve will face an important production in which They will deploy all available means at their disposal. On the table is, possibly, your particular triple somersault in the field of producción remota: the complete broadcast of the Three Kings parade.

For this initiative, Icart and his team have designed a roof in which technology 4G, 5G, FTTH, backpacks, multi-transmission systems, cranes or drones They are going to coexist in harmony to broadcast from the 16:30 to 21:30 los five kilometers that will travel the Three Wise Men of the East on the shores of the Mediterranean: “We are going to have an open set with a single camera, but the rest of the coverage, which will be completely remote, is going to be produce on foot track. (…) We are not going to focus on just one point where the parade passes by, but rather we are going to accompany every moment of the event.”

It won't be easy. However, Icart trusts the possibilities, talent and experience of Beteve to overcome this and the rest of the challenges that will inevitably arise in the future: “Technologically, the great challenge is how we exceed thousands of people that they are going to go out into the street. However, we have experiencia. We learned a lot in 2017 as a result of the large demonstrations derived from the process. We know how operate in complex environments and I'm sure that's how it will turn out reflected in the cavalcade of kings”.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez

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