The South American Games, produced remotely with Dejero

More than 100 EnGo mobile transmitters and 30 WayPoint receivers from Dejero help the XII South American Games to carry out the first remote production in its history.

Los XII South American Games, which are celebrated from October 1 to 15 in Asunción, Paraguay, have broken all records in terms of their size: 4,526 athletes across 53 sports. To undertake this ambitious project completely remotely, Quality has deployed more than 90 cameras y all kinds of mobile transmitters from Dejero to capture live sports at various stadiums and other venues around the city. Pablo Reyes, head of production at the production company, tells more details about this workflow: "Using a fully remote workflow, we can produce up to fourteen simultaneous live sports with a single control. We are the first production company in the history of television, in collaboration with our co-sponsor stations ABC and IMG, to carry out a multi-sports production of this magnitude completely remotely."

Each camera is connected to a mobile transmitter Dejero EnGo LTE that uses technology Smart Blending, which dynamically and intelligently manages fluctuating bandwidth, packet loss, and latency differences of individual connections in real time to simultaneously combine multiple IP connections. In this case, we used a combination of fiber at headquarters and 4G mobile connectivity from various local network providers such as Tigo, Claro and Personal, forming a virtual “network of networks” and achieving average upload speeds of 20mbps.

This, according to Reyes, has provided significant economic and environmental savings to the South American Games: "By using Dejero at all Asunción locations, at the IBC (International Broadcast Center) and at our Buenos Aires hub, we have created a remote production workflow that represents an NPV (Net Present Value) saving of approximately $2.5 million. If we think about our fully remote workflow compared to a traditional multi-OB (Outside Broadcast) truck setup for a large-scale sports production like this, we have reduced the movement of around six tons of extra material and 40 people, not to mention the installation of hundreds of kilometers of cable that would normally be necessary. The time and cost savings in logistics, resources and time are monumental.

Engo and WayPoint at the South American Games

mobile transmitters EnGo, which have a latency of less than one second between the crystals, are transporting the signals from the fixed sports facilities and the traveling cameras of the XII South American Games to 23 Dejero WayPoint receivers located in the IBC of Asunción. Others ten WayPoint receivers, located in Quality's operations center in Buenos Aires, reconstruct and decode video signals that are fed into a matrix to be shared with switching and repeating systems. From this location, producers, directors, graphic artists and technicians They coordinate all aspects of production and finalize parts. The packaged contents are uploaded via satellite for distribution to rights-holding broadcasters (RHB) and are introduced into the intake system. Among the RHBs are local national broadcasters TIGO and Paraguay TV, as well as TyC Sports in Argentina, TVN Chile, CDO Chile, COB Brasil and Panam Sports.

With this new remote production model, Quality only sends the EnGo transmitters and camera operators to sports venues. And, because the devices are easy to operate and do not require complex setup, camera operators and crew are ready to go live in a matter of minutes: "It would be impossible to cover multiple sports in one day with one or more OB vehicles due to cost implications and physical distances. The flexible workflow of remote production means that cameras are not tied to mobile units and can easily be moved from one location to another."

“The event has been a milestone in the audiovisual history of Paraguay. People on the street are very excited about the quality of the signal we are producing. Meanwhile, the rights holders are complimenting the quality of the image and the production of the signal every day, and the feedback from the networks has been fantastic,” concludes Reyes, highlighting the production.