Ultimate Gamer captures the best of live eSports with AJA Ki Pro Go

In collaboration with CineSys-Oceana, Black Stage Productions has adopted a workflow for the broadcast of the 'Ultimate Gamer' eSports championship with AJA solutions and Sony cameras.

Revolutionizing the traditional eSports format, veteran live event producer and founder of Black Stage Productions, Steve Suárez, has created the multi-genre eSports championship Ultimate Gamer. The series challenges players from around the world to compete in fighting, shooting sports, battle royale, and online multiplayer battle arena tournaments for a chance to win the title of Ultimate Gamer.

For his first tournament LAN Valuerant, which took place over three days this summer in Miami, Suárez live-streamed all the action to fans around the world via social media platforms. Using a H.264 multi-channel recorder/player AJA Ki Pro Go supplied by system integrator CineSys-Oceana, his team also captured the highlights to integrate into the three-day broadcast.

The ability to livestream the event was paramount to its success, allowing Ultimate Gamer to limit the number of people on-site in Miami and practice safe social distancing, while still reaching its international community of fans. By the end of the event, the team had streamed over 30 hours of 10-player gameplay to Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Periscope. At the same time, images were recorded in real time to USB drives as high-quality H.264 files using the Ki Pro Go and passed to the editorial team intermittently throughout the event. The publisher used the files to cut replays and highlights to include in the broadcast. All recordings were archived and will be used to create the original programming that Ultimate Gamer is developing for television and OTT providers.

Workflow

Developed by CineSys-Oceana technical specialist, Javier Mendez, the Ultimate Gamer workflow included three cameras Sony for the acquisition, including two on approach and one over the shoulder, which captured images of players and tournament hosts on site. Each player's signal, whether via Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Switch, was integrated into the feed for live mixing, after being converted to SDI via AJA FS-Mini mini converters. A first-person view, filmed via webcam from each player's computer, was transported via NDI to also be integrated into the feed. Ki Pro Go recorded all three camera feeds and the game feed in HD 1080p directly from a video production system NewTek Tricaster.

Mendez says, "Burning each source directly to USB with Ki Pro Go is very convenient. We can quickly deliver the units to our editors, who are mostly freelancers working from a laptop, and they can get to work immediately with high-quality files in their NLE of choice, whether Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro. In an hour we can double the match replays or highlights in the stream. Being able to control and configure the device from a web browser is also huge, and with the new support of 10-bit on the latest firmware version, we can be sure that every time, we are capturing high-quality video without the risk of downtime.”

Underscoring the importance of finding new ways to connect the gaming community during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, Suárez concludes by assuring that "Video gaming brings people together and often provides a much-needed distraction from the real world, and with Ki Pro Go we are able to capture our tournaments and deliver high-quality video content to our global audience. It is truly a reliable plug-and-play solution, so we never have to worry about technical issues, and we have received positive feedback from the entire production team and the editorial team.

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