Infront Productions produces the Berlin Marathon on the cloud with Sony Virtual Production

Sony's cloud-based live event streaming solution enabled Infront Productions to cost-effectively streamline its workflow and reach new global audiences via social media with high-quality live footage from the popular marathon.

He BMW Berlin-Marathon, one of the largest sporting events in Europe, has successfully experimented with a new wireless workflow with Sony Virtual Production in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom e Infront Productions.

Last weekend, the solution of cloud-based live event streaming from Sony enabled Infront Productions to cost-effectively streamline its workflow and reach new global audiences through social media with high-quality live footage from the popular marathon.

Sports event productions present multiple challenges, which can be very costly, particularly with the need to move large amounts of hardware to different locations. Using Sony Virtual Production's cloud switcher, Infront Productions could operate with Sony Xperia smartphones, opening up new possibilities for connecting and engaging with fans, as well as optimizing resources and reducing setup time.

Peer Seitz, production director at Infront Productions, comments "we see a real change in production. In the past, we brought the data center to the event, sometimes in the form of a mobile unit, but now we are bringing the events closer to the data center, simply moving to the cloud and transferring the content over the Internet. We have collaborated with Sony Virtual Production for the BMW Berlin-Marathon and the configuration we are implementing allows for flexible resource allocation; in the future, it will allow production operators to work from wherever want.”

"We are seeing more interaction between users and central production, mainly through social media. With cloud-based solutions like Virtual Production, we will be able to receive spontaneous contributions of video content from fans around the world. For us, it is a completely new way of engaging viewers, which will take sporting events to the next level," he adds.

"There is a growing appetite for personalization in the viewing experience. One way to increase viewer engagement is to adapt high-quality content created on smartphones into production. At Deutsche Telekom we want production companies to be able to achieve this by providing the necessary network capabilities," he says. Tiana Trump, Product Manager 5G de Deutsche Telekom.

Stuart Almond, Director of Intelligent Media Services, states that "At Sony, we are always evolving and responding to the market and we know that viewing habits are constantly changing. This drives the need for cloud-based solutions, which help content creators reach their audiences anywhere and everywhere.

"Listening to the market, we developed Virtual Production and we are excited to see the way Infront Productions has been using it. This successful application will open the doors to a completely new form of sports production and fan engagement, and we are proud to be a part of it," he acknowledges.

Virtual Production is part of Intelligent Media Services, a portfolio of open technology and services from Sony, enabling media companies to capture, manage and deliver content while adding value at every stage.