News & Updates

Known as the town where dreamers come to achieve their wildest aspirations, Hollywood is a fitting city to host those fortunate enough to hear their name called during the 2022 MLB Draft. MLB Network (MLBN) is airing their coverage of Day 1 on Sunday, July 17 in a big way: a large stage in front of L.A. Live in Downtown Los Angeles.

“We’ve been in good hands working alongside the crew at L.A. Live, and this show has been well thought out and planned,” says Susan Stone, SVP, operations and engineering, MLB Network. “A lot has gone into making this production successful.”

Early Days of Planning: Multiple Visits and Production Meetings Begin the Process

Despite this being a one-day broadcast, the work that has been done on this show dates back to the early months of 2022. Prior to the start of the regular season, the network’s production staff starts to think about potential ideas. As it gets closer to the first game of the year, Coordinating Producer Marc Weiner and the rest of the department kick it into overdrive. The crew is focused on other tasks during the year, like daily programming emanating from their Secaucus, NJ studios, but as prognosticators and experts in Major League Baseball write their draft projections or make amendments to previous mock drafts, the production is always changing to cater to these new storylines.

Zaac Christopher, Jacob Soto, Tom Guidice, Susan Stone, and Marc Weiner on the main Draft set.

“Every time new rankings are published, I’m updating our spreadsheet and sending it around to our team,” says Weiner. “We’re ready to discuss over 500 players, so I can’t say enough about how much our research, graphics, and edit teams prepared [for this show].”

Operationally, Stone, VP, Remote Operations Tom Guidice, Production Managers Emma Roberts and David Beun, and the crew began outlining their plan in Los Angeles in March. After a total of three onsite visits, the team had a general idea of how much real estate they were receiving and how they could fit their footprint within those parameters. Tapping into the year-round sunny weather, MLB Network opted to bring this show outside of L.A. Live on Xbox Plaza. After taking the MLB Draft Combine from the U.S. Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, NC in 2021 to Petco Park in San Diego last month, the network wanted to partner with the league to elevate the significance of this year’s first-player Draft. Working closely with MLB’s VP, Events Jeremiah Yolkut to devise a stunning and covered structure, the Draft will be housed on the biggest stage to date. The roofed section features a large-scale Draft Board to help attendees keep track of first round picks in the, a runway for players to walk down and shake hands with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, and iconography of Los Angeles, including palms trees, hills, rocks, and a Draft billboard in the spirit of the Hollywood Sign.

“The league’s operations and events team helped us push this event to the next level,” says Marc Caiafa, SVP, production, MLB Network. “It was a collective effort between the both of us.”

Down in Downtown: Mobile Units Park Two Blocks Away at Crypto.com Arena

The A and B unit of Game Creek Video’s Gridiron will be leading the onsite responsibilities, but since Los Angeles is an extremely congested metropolitan city, the crew isn’t able to have their mobile units parked right next to the Draft stage. Utilizing the surroundings that are situated around this entertainment district, the trucks will be parked at Crypto.com Arena — a quick three-minute walk from the stage. Tasked with hosting home games of four professional franchises — the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks — the venue is more than able to provide reliable connectivity.

The studio set is leveraging a jib camera.

“L.A. Live has been accommodating with all of the fiber that we have running from here to the arena,” says Zaac Christopher, remote technical manager, MLB Network. “We’re able to have the trucks two blocks down the street and still have a seamless production.”

MLB Network is preparing redundancies for every need possible in the broadcast compound. Alongside the Game Creek truck, the network’s Saunders Electric UPS system will be fed by house power and will flip to a generator in case of an emergency.

Onsite Equipment: Camera Complement, Studio Set Cover the Picks

Within the limits of L.A. Live, MLBN will flood the area with high-quality hardware. The broadcast will be centralized around the primary hard camera focused on the Commissioner’s podium. Additional hard cameras will cover two slash positions of the main stage area. Two jibs will cover both angles of the Draft setup: one facing toward the main studio set and another on the opposite side that’s covering the crowd, seating area for families, and the stage. Two RF handhelds, provided by CP Communications, will rove throughout the environment as well as another handheld camera dedicated to the reporter’s position near the stairs leading to the stage. Other cameras also include a robotic camera, provided by Fletcher, at the top of Crypto.com Arena to establish beauty shots of Sunday’s atmosphere. Similar to previous Drafts, MLBN will provide feeds to ESPN for their first-round Draft broadcast.

“Aside from their three cameras for their set, a handheld, and reporter position, we’re sharing a lot of resources with ESPN,” adds Stone. “That has continued to be a great partnership.”

Marc Caiafa and Soto in front of the stage in Downtown Los Angeles.

To further their coverage of the event, MLB Network will have two separate studio sets in Xbox Plaza. The main desk, located closely to the setup of ESPN, was constructed by Filmwerks and will be the center of Draft analysis and predictions for Day 1. A full cast of talent will be seated at the table, including hosts Greg Amsinger and Scott Braun, analysts Dan O’Dowd and Harold Reynolds, and Tennessee Head Coach Tony Vitello, as reporter Lauren Gardner conducts player interviews. Atop a balcony from across the street, another small-scale set will be present hard-hitting information about the way the Draft picks are unfolding. MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo, Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo, and UCLA Head Coach John Savage will be manning this position. Hall of Famers Trevor Hoffman and Greg Maddux, 2002 World Series-winning manager Mike Scioscia, Georgia Tech Head Coach Danny Hall, Louisville Head Coach Dan McDonnell, TCU Head Coach Kirk Saarloos have also taped player breakdowns, which MLB Network will roll into its coverage on Day One. Rounds 3-10 on Day 2 and Rounds 11-20 will be broken down from a studio set in the lobby of the JW Marriott next to the footprint of the original Draft stage.

Along with the onsite technology, fans in the crowd will add another layer to the broadcast. First experienced during the 2021 MLB Draft at Bellco Theatre within the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, fans can react in real-time to their favorite organization’s picks and bring further authenticity to the event.

“Having our fans [in person] has definitely added a new vibe,” says Weiner. “There was a natural energy in the building [in Denver last year], which is what you want in productions like these.”

Celebrating From Home: Remote Workflows Integrate Offsite Prospects, Club Personnel

Playing a critical role in the last two MLB Drafts, remote workflows will once again take center stage. In a relationship that began with the 2020 NHL Draft in Secaucus, BitFire will be leveraging a majority of the remote feeds seen during Sunday’s broadcast. These will include prospects enjoying the day with their respective families at home and 29 clubs allowing access to their Draft rooms. To coordinate this wrinkle, two control rooms will be in play back at headquarters: one will monitor the incoming feeds and another will execute the live show. The biggest hurdle to overcome is the reliability issues that come with a standard residential internet connection.

“There are so many moving parts [to this show],” says Jacob Soto, VP, engineering and IT, MLB Network. “The players that get picked want to tell everybody on social media at the same time we’re going to their at-home setup, so we sometimes lose their feed because their bandwidth goes down. The control room knows it’s a possibility, so they switch to a camera that has a generic graphic.”

Another jib is capturing the opposite side of the studio set and the stage.

A lot of that experience has been gained from the past two incarnations of the Draft. This process is two-fold. The first aspect has to do with the players and their families. During the times of increases measure of social distancing and other safety regulations, MLBN’s production team needed to trust that these individuals would set up the equipment properly and present a shot that’s suitable to take to air.

“We had to send cameras to all these families without being able to fly a technician to their homes,” says Caiafa. “Jacob and his team were sending manuals out, but that set the stage for how we’re doing it now.”

The other side of the process has allowed the technical team to master their skills.

“We’ve had a lot of practice over the last couple of years,” continues Soto. “We have a very good team that’s developed a script to working with these families. This includes how to set up their cameras, how to get ready for their shot, letting them know when to stand by, cueing them when they’re on the air, and talking them through the whole process.”

As the proceedings shift to Days 2 and 3, Secaucus will be the main hub as the network’s efforts shift to a full remote production on Monday, July 18 and Tuesday, July 19.

An Evolving Show: MLB Network Escalates Production Efforts for Stunning Onsite Show

From its humble beginnings during their first televised MLB Draft in Secaucus in 2009 to the heavy-lift that is presenting a second-consecutive MLB Draft during MLB All-Star, MLB Network has continued to push the envelope. Although technologies have changed over the last 13 years, each Draft has had one thing in common: the ability to attract the league’s next wave of star power to their setup. In the city based on hopes and dreams, MLB Network is banking on another year of success.

“We’ve had the likes of Mike Trout, Tim Anderson, Aaron Judge, and Carlos Correa at our televised Drafts,” concludes Caiafa. “I’m pretty proud of that fact.”

Rounds 1-2 of the 2022 MLB Draft on MLB Network begins on Sunday, July 17 at 7 p.m. ET. MLB. com takes over with Rounds 3-10 on Monday, July 18 at 2 p.m. ET and Rounds 11-20 on Tuesday, July 19 at 2 p.m. ET.

For the 20th season of American Idol, Arizona-based BitFire Networks and California-based Holley Video Consultation partnered to engineer a solution to connect families with contestants during the production’s socially distanced audition process.

Dubbed the “180 Room,” the setup features a three-segment screen and open area in the middle for the contestant to stand. Oversized video feeds of families, friends and pets are displayed around the contestant, creating real-time emotional and memorable moments for the show. The 180 Room lets contestants talk to loved ones who couldn’t travel to California due to social distancing and travel restrictions.

“American Idol needed a new solution to bring families together remotely due to COVID protocols in California,” says Bob Sullivan, president and CEO of BitFire Networks. “Working with our partners, we provided the technology to ensure families could experience these life-changing moments together.”

As the search begins to find the country’s 20th singing sensation, NEP Sweetwater and Pacifico Television helped make this complex vision a reality with BitFire.

The contestant’s families and friends were provided with a simple web link that connected them to BitFire’s FireBridge platform. Using their own devices, their video and audio signals were transmitted directly to the American Idol production. Onsite Holley Video routed the feeds through BitFire servers to display on the 180 Room screens.

Camera feeds of the contestants onsite were routed back through BitFire servers allowing families to seamlessly watch, hear and interact with their loved ones.

BitFire’s communication solution was also integrated with the setup allowing show producers to talk directly to each remote guest and prepare them for their moment in the show. With BitFire’s Network Operations Center onboarding each family, the Idol production was able to streamline their workflow. BitFire could prep and test multiple guest signals and then route each guest to the production when they were ready for their moment on-air.

“Working with American Idol was a team effort,” says Zak Holley of Holley Video Consultation. “There were many moving parts with about 15 remotes per city. Holley Video built a rack loaded with Bitfire’s powerful servers and worked with NEP Sweetwater to display the families on a 180-degree wall.”

The 180 Room solution was used in each city on Idol’s annual audition tour, including Austin, L.A. and
Nashville. BitFire and Holley Video will continue to support the show as they build up to the live finale,
as our servers will facilitate live feeds to off-site executives and production teams.

“Pulling off an event like this for one of the most popular shows in the country, requires the right
technology and broadcast veterans to ensure everything runs flawlessly,” adds Sullivan. “When you
have Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, Lionel Ritchie and Ryan Seacrest watching, there is no room for error. Our
success is a testament to the team and our ability to find flawless, state of the art solutions when our
clients need them most.”

BitFire Networks announces a continuation of their partnership with the Professional Fighters League (PFL) to provide critical production support for the expanded 2022 season. On the heels of BitFire’s support last season, the PFL will again use BitFire Networks proprietary technology to execute its complex productions for viewers around the world.

The PFL just launched their 2022 season with the all-new Challenger series. The 8-week series began on February 18 from Orlando. BitFire will handle transmission of multiple video feeds and comms channels between the primary production truck in Florida and multiple operators working remotely. The core of the remote crew will be working in North Carolina to execute the shows live graphics and scoring systems.

Five separate multiview and program feeds from the onsite production truck will transmit to BitFire servers installed at the offsite production facility in North Carolina. Crew will be able to monitor camera, graphic and show feeds in real time. The remote crew will also use BitFire’s virtual communication system for seamless communication with the production truck onsite in Orlando. With BitFire’s ability to interface directly with the comms system in the production truck, the entire crew is effortlessly linked together to execute this complex production.

BitFire will also integrate talent into the live broadcast. Ian Parker will provide gambling analysis for each show using a BitFire remote talent kit installed in his home. The easy to deploy kits include BitFire servers to transmit the talent camera feeds back to the production truck. They also include broadcast quality PTZ cameras which can be remotely operated by the technical crew onsite. For the Challenger series, a celebrity guest judge will join the production live each week via BitFire’s FireBridge platform, allowing for guest contributions on their own devices.

BitFire will expand on this support system as the PFL moves into its main series production later this spring.

“BitFire is thrilled to continue our ongoing partnership with the PFL into 2022,” says Bob Sullivan, CEO and President of BitFire. “With hosts and crew members spread out across the United States, BitFire demonstrated our skill in seamlessly linking together audio and video from disparate locations, integrating multiple remote locations to the main show’s onsite production. Because of our skill set and broadcast production solutions, we believe our partnership with the PFL will just continue to grow.”

With live production for each PFL event taking place in one location and a large production team and talent located in other separate locations, a seamless and dynamic solution was required to broadcast these events. To keep these locations connected as if they were a single production set, the PFL tapped BitFire’s video transport technology and remote distribution platform. With so many operators working remotely, the crew required a high-quality broadcast audio and video feed to monitor everything happening onsite in real time. BitFire’s solutions use the company’s proprietary broadcast transport network, allowing the PFL to execute these shows easy and reliably over the internet.

“BitFire has been the genius behind our communications and connectivity for PFL,” says Professional Fighters League Executive Producer George Greenberg. “We have a pretty complex setup that requires a lot of communication even though we’re not all in one place. The system is just brilliant and has made communication seamless between those of us (onsite) and those (working remotely).”

The PFL features elite MMA athletes across six weight classes, including a women’s division. Backed by an investor group of sports, media, entertainment and business titans, PFL events are broadcast live in primetime on ESPN2, ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes and shown in 160 additional countries around the world on premium sports networks. The inaugural PFL Challenger Series will air exclusively on the Fubo Sports Network.

As MLR’s fifth season kicked off on February 5, BitFire Networks expanded their efforts to support the league’s broadcast transmissions across the globe. This partnership began in 2021 and will now run through the entire 2022 eighteen-week season, followed by the Championship series.

“BitFire is thrilled to continue our partnership with such an elite broadcast group in showcasing Major League Rugby to the world,” says Bob Sullivan, President and CEO of BitFire Networks. “MLR execs were so pleased with our production capabilities, that they asked us to partner on the current season.”

BitFire’s one-of-a-kind technology is central to helping the league’s production partners with broadcast program transmission, monitoring and REMI – or Remote Integration Model – support.

BitFire will use its customized live production system and again partner with two of MLR’s top production teams, L2 Productions and Tupelo Honey, in broadcasting the 2022 matches. BitFire deployed servers in the control rooms of L2 Productions and Tupelo Honey. Servers were also installed on several of the mobile units that will travel to the team’s venues.

This REMI workflow solution will allow the production companies to have their crews produce game coverage remotely, with only minimal staff onsite at the venue. BitFire’s transmission solution will keep all the video and audio feeds perfectly in-sync – allowing the production crews to produce the game exactly as they would on-site.

BitFire also continues to expand their proprietary transport network allowing them to manage program transmission for every MLR game to regional, local and OTT affiliates across the U.S. and Canada.

With the ability to distribute each game to multiple sources at the highest quality, BitFire Networks is providing a turn-key solution for the league’s on-air distribution. In the 2022 season BitFire will manage coverage that will air on NBC Sports, Bally’s, AT&T, TSN, and several local network affiliates.

“Innovating & delivering live production and broadcast solutions is what BitFire does all under one roof,” adds Sullivan. “Our reliable, crystal-clear broadcasts are essential in a remote production world, to the hundreds of thousands of fans who watch professional rugby each year.’

BitFire Networks is honored to be awarded a bronze in the category ‘Best Lockdown Solution’ at the 2021 OTT Awards from SportPro.

The awards celebrate the pioneers of OTT and streaming in the sports industry. It was given for our work during the pandemic in the first-ever remote, virtual National Hockey League (NHL) Draft in 2020, as well as the draft in 2021, in deploying 75 simultaneous remotes and more than 100 total IP broadcast transport feeds each year.

As the Covid-19 lockdown led to the cancellation of many events, the NHL was adamant in conducting a draft, refusing to let the pandemic stop one of their premier events. Major League Baseball Network (MLBN), the NHL and BitFire Networks combined forces to implement a remote and distributed production solution to ensure both the 2020 and 2021 NHL Drafts were conducted flawlessly.

Given the scale and scope of the event, prospects, teams and league officials needed a turn-key solution to physically conduct the draft, as well as provide live and digital content distribution to the league’s broadcast partners. The ability to engineer, deploy, implement and deliver a solution for an international event of this magnitude demonstrated the unique technical differences inherent to BitFire’s platform.  

“To receive this award in just our first year of business shines a bright, global spotlight on the depth of BitFire’s talent, technologies and solution-focused capabilities,” said Bob Sullivan, CEO of BitFire. “Our company was created by broadcasting experts who are professional and poised and aren’t afraid to take on challenges and create customized solutions for our clients.

We are so grateful to our partners for trusting us to deliver.”  BitFire is honored to be among such an elite group of nominees and award winners as the Olympics, NBA, NFL and Discovery+, in honoring the most exceptional and creative uses of technology today.

Read More

Vendors including CP Communications, Ross Video, LTN Global Communications and BitFire have ramped up products and repurposed facilities to meet the surging pandemic need for remote production. Above, inside LTN Global Communications’ Kansas City, Mo., production facility.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began roiling the broadcast industry in March 2020, technology vendors have stepped up to create new products and new facilities to meet the challenges of remote production. While the COVID situation in the U.S. has improved markedly this year and many broadcasters have returned to their studios, usage of these new remote production tools hasn’t slowed down as networks and sports leagues appreciate the new flexibility and efficiency they provide.

This Day in History

The common denominator among these new remote production systems is using the internet for live video and audio transmission as well as device control, often in a hybrid architecture that combines software applications running in the public cloud with traditional on-premise hardware located at a broadcast center or studio. They also include a healthy dose of the type of traditional customer service that broadcasters have come to expect from their key vendors.

‍

CP Communications’ CamSTREAM And Streaming Studios

Several mobile production specialists pivoted last year to create new remote production options. CP Communications, a longtime provider of wireless audio and video links, RF frequency coordination and other production services for live sports and entertainment events, had its core business basically halt overnight. As the company worked to help its customers, it saw a need to provide higher-quality video and audio from remote contributors than could be achieved over conventional videoconferencing systems like Zoom.

So, CP created a turnkey system to solve the problem called CamSTREAM. With Wi-Fi, ethernet or bonded cellular connectivity, CamSTREAM includes a compact Sony or Panasonic PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) camera that can be controlled remotely through a web interface; lavalier or handheld mic; an H.265 encoder; and a 10-inch built-in HD monitor for watching return video. Compact enough to fit in a standard flight case, CamSTREAM can be FedEx’d to talent and set up in less than 10 minutes. It can be leased or purchased, with the price ranging from $15,000 to $23,000 depending on configuration (adding a bonded encoder, for example, costs more).

CamSTREAM has since been adopted by CBS and other major networks to pipe remote talent into studio shows and to provide remote commentary for live events, as well as by several large corporations. There are about 50-100 systems deployed in the field today. Developing a high-speed return video capability for the system was key.

“The sports use is obvious,” says CamSTREAM COO Jerry Gepner. “If you have a commentator at home, the faster you can get him or her the return feed, the closer you are to real time. You’re never going to get it to zero, but we’ve been able to get coast-to-coast down to about half a second.”

CP Communications is also offering new IP-based remote production services through Red House Streaming Studios, a 5,600 square-foot facility the company has created within its St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters comprising a conventional studio equipped with several CamStreams, a separate green screen stage and an adjoining control room running software-based production tools like the VMix production switcher. The Red House facility is being used for a range of streaming and broadcast productions, leveraging a dedicated data circuit from Crown Castle.

While the bulk of the work at Red House is headed to Facebook Live or YouTube, the studio is also used regularly by a U.K.-based client to provide OTT and broadcast coverage of second tier (Formula 4) auto racing in the U.S. in what Gepner calls a “fast return” workflow, based on WebRTC transport. Sometimes this client even uses a Red House control room to “pre-switch” camera feeds before they are sent back to the U.K., thus cutting down on bandwidth requirements.

“We’ve designed for them a package of 10 to 12 bonded cell encoders and cameras that they are able to send out in the field to cover a particular race,” Gepner says. “And they do send a production manager. But there is no truck, and there are no onsite commentors. It’s done as a REMI using this technology, and they’re assembling it back in the U.K. And it’s near real-time — within a couple seconds it’s on the air.”

Ross Repurposes Connecticut Facility

Ross Production Services, the in-house production and rental services division of equipment manufacturer Ross Video, was faced with a similar predicament in March 2020 when sports production shut down and left its six mobile units sitting idle. That’s when RPS Technology Manager Matthew Webster and Senior Broadcast Production Specialist Logan McDonald set about finding a way to repurpose the equipment in the trucks and at its Wallingford, Conn., headquarters.

“We took equipment we had lying dormant and kind of pieced it together to figure out how to do a hybrid REMI distributed workflow,” McDonald says. “The theory being if you’re doing shows in the cloud, that’s just someone else’s equipment that’s somewhere else. So, let’s make our broadcast center, our warehouse that we have in Connecticut, just another point in the cloud.”

The RPS team began exploring the best way to bring in feeds from remote talent and let production personnel see multiviewers with low latency. They developed their own secure web portal to access feeds and created their own software encoders and decoders and chose Web RTC for transport and the Amazon Web Services cloud to manage the feeds and production communications. The feeds are then brought from the AWS cloud into the Connecticut facility for processing using traditional on-premise hardware such as Ross Ultrix routers and Carbonite production switchers.

“Instead of using virtualized, like a vMix [software-based switcher] in the cloud, we’re taking all those signals and using AWS technology to transport the video, and the data like our comms signals,” McDonald explains. “That flows through AWS, but it all lands back into hardware just as if it was a traditional truck. So, what it does is it leaves us without any restrictions on how we produce a show, because we don’t have to concede any kind of limitations of doing a show all in AWS. Because we’ve built out three control rooms at our Connecticut facility that run traditional broadcast hardware.”

By July 2020, RPS had the hybrid cloud solution up and running to produce a FIFA e-sports event. There were only two on-site personnel in Connecticut, an audio mixer and replay operator, while the technical director and graphics operator were both in Canada and the rest of the production staff were spread out between Canada and California.

Since then, the hybrid solution has stayed busy with a mix of e-sports and traditional sports coverage include College Gameday and several awards shows for ESPN; last week it was being used to cover an e-sports world championship with production staff in Canada and remote camera feeds coming in from players around the world. RPS has also created remote commentary kits that it provides on a per-event basis to several networks.

While the traditional live sports business has rebounded and RPS’s fleet has grown to eight mobile units, cloud-based production now accounts for about a third of the company’s work. It has allowed RPS to grow its e-sports business while also being more competitive against bigger mobile vendors for event coverage like awards shows, Webster says.

“We’ve gotten a lot of extra stuff from existing clients that we never would have gotten before,” he says.

LTN Ramps Up IP Production

Another vendor seeing a lot more business for its IP production services is LTN Global Communications. In addition to providing fully managed IP transmission services for top broadcasters using its “internet overlay” technology of private data centers and proprietary routing protocols, LTN also owns a 30,000 square-foot production facility outside Kansas City, Mo., as well as six mobile units.

The two-year-old K.C. facility has some 75 staffers and is purpose-built for centralized and REMI production using LTN’s low-latency network. It is regularly used to facilitate coverage of college football and other sports for several major networks.

By leveraging the public internet as an access point to its managed network, LTN is able to bring the sort of multi-feed connectivity that high-speed fiber links have long provided to big-market stadiums and arenas to venues across the country, allowing for more REMI production, says Mike Burk, GM of LTN’s Event Production and Transmission Unit.

“Our network has allowed us to provide that same concept and take it to the masses,” Burk says.

LTN uses its network for IP production in several ways. It can bring multiple camera feeds back to the K.C. for switching there in a traditional REMI-style production. It also operates in “hybrid” mode, using its low-latency network to remotely control truck components like graphics and replay in the field. And like CP Communication and RPS, it has also created “home kits” with a built-in camera, intercom and return video to facilitate remote commentary for clients.

Business is good, Burk says, with both transmission traffic and production jobs ramping up markedly through the pandemic.

“The overall exposure to LTN’s ecosystem has really helped throughout COVID,” Burk says. “Everyone knew of LTN as just a network. But because of the production capabilities that we have and the facility that we built, it exposed people to the entire ecosystem.”

BitFire Fills Remote Production Need

A new company taking full advantage of the industry’s shift to remote production is BitFire Networks, which was launched in July 2020 specifically to provide IP-based live transmission and production services.

The company was founded by former Scripps and Tegna programming executive Bob Sullivan with his brother Timothy, a former CEO of several large manufacturing companies, with input from broadcast veterans like Ken Aagaard, former CBS Sports EVP of operations. Bob Sullivan serves as president and CEO, while his brother is chairman; Aagaard is the other board member.

BitFire started with the acquisition and merging of two Boston-based companies: D2 Productions, a traditional live production house with a 6,000 square-foot facility and two mobile trucks; and Journey, an IP transmission software firm founded by D2 employee Jim Akimchuk (who is now BitFire CTO). The former D2 facility now serves as the master control center for the BitFire Transport Network, a managed IP transmission system that can be accessed via the browser-based “FireBridge” or through the FirePower, a stackable HD server.

The company has created its own remote talent contribution system consisting of a server and PTZ camera, integrated mics and two-way audio and video communications, which is used regularly by networks like MLB Network and Fox News Channel as well as syndicated shows like Tamron Hall and Judge Jerry. BitFire continues to pick up new business for its remote transmission services, helping Dancing with the Stars navigate a COVID crisis this week with two of its dancers and providing live remotes for American Idol this fall.

MLB Network first worked with BitFire to remotely produce its coverage of the 2020 NHL Draft. It now uses the company’s remote talent system every day to support the show High Heat, with MLBN reporter Alana Rizzo live from her home, as well as on a monthly basis by analyst Mark DeRosa, who uses it to contribute remotely from his home in Atlanta.

“It really has given us the ability to be so nimble and to have great content on our air, and to able to access announcers and analysts that we maybe normally wouldn’t be able to get, because they wouldn’t be in Secaucus and we’d have to have them as a phoner,” says Susan Stone, SVP operations and engineering for MLB Network.

“To have a visual presence on our air, it’s been super-solid and really a game-changer for us.”

BitFire has greatly expanded its capabilities with the launch this week of BitFire Studios, a 16,000 square-foot production facility in Phoenix with multiple studios, sound stages and control rooms including a dedicated “virtual production” studio equipped with high-resolution Planar LED display walls and floors. The new BitFire Studios is also home to Bandit Productions, a separate content development company founded by the Sullivan brothers, and Do Not Peek Entertainment, a gaming and e-sports production company.

The goal for BitFire Studios is not only to serve as a local production hub in the rapidly growing Phoenix market. The company also wants to use its IP connectivity and virtual production capabilities to support production from anywhere, including pumping in live talent from remote green-screen stages and shooting them in the LED-equipped studio. Sullivan says the new production capabilities are a natural complement to BitFire’s transmission business.

“We’re a full-service provider,” Sullivan says. “We’re not about servers — we’re about helping you with your live production.”

BitFire Networks is joining L2 Productions in bringing the NCAA College Football Season to fans across the country. With the recent season kick-off, BitFire is providing technology to assist in TV broadcasting, live streaming, and live video production for up to 10 games this season.

The partnership with L2 productions will support the backhaul of six camera feeds from onsite at the remote venue back to L2 studios in Austin, Texas. With servers installed at both locations, these camera feeds will be sent to the studio via the BitFire Transport Network. This proprietary network comprises many points of presence across the internet and around the world, with servers ranging from physical appliances co-located in data centers to cloud instances in geographically diverse areas. The BitFire model allows each of these locations to be leveraged on a booking-by-booking basis to optimize the route a feed takes between its source and destination.

This cost-effective workflow will allow L2 to have their crews edit and produce the game coverage from home, with only minimal staff onsite at the venue. BitFire will keep all the video feeds perfectly in-sync – allowing the L2 crews to simply produce the game as if they were onsite.

“Our technology today is state of the art in that it allows crews to function from home as if they were in the field,” says Bob Sullivan, President and CEO of BitFire Networks. “BitFire is the only company that has this capability all under one roof, making it a very reasonable option in live TV broadcasting.”

BitFire has already supported the Abilene Christian at SMU game on September 4, as well as the North Texas at SMU game on Saturday, September 11th and is currently prepping for more.

“Using the BitFire Network, we are able to provide secure, reliable, IP-based remote production workflows to our partners in the NHL, MLB and NHL to name just a few,” adds Sullivan. “We look forward to a very successful NCAA college football season.”

For the entire 2021-2022 NFL Football Season, BitFire’s technology will bring all the excitement of the NFL to radio airwaves across the country. BitFire’s new partnership with Adhara Communications will provide broadcasting support for every game during the season. For most games, BitFire’s systems will connect multiple broadcasts from each NFL stadium with home, away and national calls all happening simultaneously.

Sports and technology firm Adhara Communications coordinated the massive install of a private and secure fiber MPLS network at all 30 NFL venues. Adhara then deployed their Line Out Connectivity Services (LOCS), which marries Adhara’s MPLS with BitFire’s services and proprietary technology. BitFire is contracted to power and serve LOCS.

“Redundant internet connections are not unique,” says Bob Sullivan, President and CEO of BitFire Networks. “However, our system allows it to be supported with just one BitFire server onsite. Both connections use the BitFire Transport Network, providing support, monitoring, reliability and security.”

Adhara’s clients consist of 30 of the 32 NFL teams and the four national radio broadcast networks, Westwood One, Compass, ESPN and Sports USA. All will be utilizing BitFire’s proprietary technology and support from their 24/7 Network Operations Center.

That MPLS network at each venue link back to BitFire’s Network Operations Center (NOC) in Boston, MA – connecting BitFire to each stadium.

BitFire built their own network to connect stations around the country to the venues. To enable that link, BitFire provisioned and deployed servers to all the radio affiliate stations and the national broadcasters.

The custom BitFire servers provide each station with their own network subnet linked back to the MPLS network and by utilizing the BitFire Transport Network, the connections are supported by the same recovery algorithms used in BitFIre’s industry leading IP video transport solutions.

Using BitFire’s solution allows each station to connect to the Adhara MPLS network with MPLS-like redundancy over the public internet. BitFire’s recovery algorithms are applied 100% transparently and are compatible with all equipment, requiring no reconfiguration of any IP-based device. This allows stations to use their same established workflows when connecting their broadcast devices, both at the stadium and in their station control rooms.

“Game day only comes once a week,” says Michelle Salvatore, CEO of Adhara Communications. “Live broadcasts require the most robust solutions to deliver content to fans. We are very excited to offer our NFL teams the latest in broadcast technology and infrastructure to meet these demands. In just 6 weeks, Adhara Communications, along with our partners, deployed a brand new radio broadcast backhaul network. We replaced an existing legacy copper network at the 30 NFL stadiums with a state of the art fiber optic based MPLS network with an SDWAN over cellular failover solution giving full redundancy for delivery of critical content.

BitFire’s pioneering technology also allows for multiple internet networks to be connected to a single server, with 100% redundancy should any connection encounter issues, ensuring the highest quality broadcast connection during the game production.

“Our strategic partnership with BitFire and their proprietary transport protocol and network operation expertise assures NFL broadcasts the highest quality, most reliable backhaul network to date,” adds Salvatore. “We look forward to our multi-year partnership with BitFire and deploying LOCS to other leagues and live events.”

BitFire’s level of support is unmatched in the industry today. Our NOC onboarded each NFL radio station and worked to configure and test their equipment for the season. The BitFire NOC will also provide 24/7 monitoring and oversight of the connections at both the radio stations and at the venues.

“This is certainly the wave of the future and BitFire continues to be on the leading edge,” adds Sullivan. “BitFire creates state of the art, innovative solutions for clients searching for more reasonable, enhanced and advanced broadcasting options.”

BitFire announces general availability of the next generation of its cloud-deployable, software-defined operational solution for video production and transmission. The BitFire Media Platform eliminates entire complex workflows, replacing capital expenditures with marginal operating expenses.

Gain Complete Flexibility

For shows ranging from sports, news, talk, to events and streaming productions featuring remote contributors, the BitFire Media Platform delivers seamless workflows between the camera and the audience, leveraging a revolutionary convergence of physical and cloud resources, eliminating boundaries traditionally associated with hybrid-cloud production through the use of the BitFire Transmission Network. Professionals choose from a growing list of encoders, decoders, multiviewers, record and playback decks, comms channels to flexibly deploy production resources to their BitFire Servers and the BitFire Cloud, decoupling media processing and production participation from a given physical location, all while remaining flawlessly synchronized.

Because it incorporates cloud technology, the BitFire Media Platform is infinitely scalable, and easy to reconfigure to react to changing production needs.

Reduce Capital Costs

To build and operate a permanent, fully-equipped studio, broadcast engineers identify their desired capacity, capabilities, and transmission needs, before spending considerable amounts of capital on the purchase of often-rigid, single-use hardware. The BitFire Media Platform allows producers to marginalize the expense of supporting a hardware workflow, by paying only for the components and paths that are needed, and only when they are needed.

The BitFire Media Platform goes beyond cloud-based media production, to include both hybrid cloud / on-prem processing and deterministic-latency transmission, allowing producers to deliver their content to - and manage their entire production from - anywhere.

Leverage Advanced Technology

With the BitFire Media Platform, broadcast engineers gain significant flexibility within their production environment, whether it’s built in a control room, a press box, a truck, a convention center, or a home office. BitFire’s internally developed technologies optimize entire workflows, incorporating resilient transmission, unparalleled telemetry, and redundant disaster recovery protocols to mitigate outages and other bandwidth restrictions.

A more flexible set of solutions enhances the production process by putting access to resources at your fingertips. The BitFire Media Platform is a true plug-and-play production workflow solution, capable of delivering broadcast-quality video in up to 1080p59.94, including High Dynamic Range (HDR).

In addition to the BitFire Media Platform, BitFire goes beyond the live production workflow, offering additional services, including our XR LED soundstage, centralized control facilities, production services, and remote camera kits for contributors.

Read More