Ateliere – Overcoming extreme conditions to livestream niche sports
Andy Hooper, SVP Live Products, Ateliere Creative Technologies
Niche sports have a remarkable opportunity to grab a global audience’s attention, but broadcasting events from remote locations presents unique challenges. Take the CX80 World Cup and European Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships (EMTBOC) as an example. This cross-country event, deep in a Polish forest, showcases the power of technology innovations in overcoming infrastructure hurdles.
Challenge accepted: A remote, untapped location
“Producing this event required stepping far outside the box and approaching everything differently,” said Per Frost from Permafrost AB, production lead. “Traditional broadcast methods weren’t going to work here.”
Unlike standard stadium setups, broadcasting the EMTBOC required thinking creatively. Traditional Outside Broadcast (OB) systems were financially and logistically unfeasible. Instead, the team turned to a distributed, cloud-based production model.
A small on-site team worked with remote collaborators across Europe, leveraging lightweight, low-bandwidth solutions to coordinate camera feeds, GPS trackers, and graphics. Ateliere Live’s advanced video transport tools helped stream footage over limited connectivity without lag or poor quality. This efficient, bandwidth-saving approach also eased content sharing with local media and sponsors.
Remote production takes center stage
The EMTBOC team adopted a distributed model with only a small team onsite to manage on-the-ground operations. The smaller physical footprint helped reduce costs and environmental impact. By using cloud-based solutions and low-bandwidth applications, the team coordinated camera feeds, graphics, and other broadcast elements without overwhelming the site’s limited connectivity. This included four cameras in the finish arena and two in the forest, a real-time GPS tracking system, video playout, and graphics overlay.
To deliver high-quality video with unpredictable connectivity, the team used Ateliere’s specialized video transport solutions designed to be bandwidth-efficient and robust. This allowed the team to stream high-quality video over limited network capacity, ensuring minimal lag and image degradation while maintaining a reliable connection.
Compared with traditional solutions, Ateliere Live’s advanced video transport tools and support for time-addressable media can reliably conduct production remotely from camera sources. The lightweight design lets the team add multiple cameras without significantly increasing data requirements, capturing the action from multiple angles for a dynamic viewing experience.
An unexpected advantage of a cloud-based approach is how much easier it was to share content with external media outlets. Unlike relying on an OB van with weak internet, the cloud enables local TV stations to access content straightforwardly. This not only streamlines distribution but also enhances value for local sponsors.
The result was an immersive broadcast – almost 12 hours streamed over four races – that transported viewers to the heart of the event. “Ateliere Live allowed us to deliver a quality production with less data and power requirements. This efficiency made all the difference given our bandwidth and power generation constraints,” Per noted.
Building connectivity in the middle of nowhere
A significant challenge was overcoming the lack of internet. Using Starlink for satellite internet provided the high-speed connectivity required for streaming, but the team also relied on supplementary 4G Intinor networks for redundancy. This hybrid setup ensured stable production despite the demanding natural environment.
With limited on-site resources, real-time updates like competition results were managed remotely. Ateliere Live enabled integration of GPS timing data into HTML-based graphics from Sweden, providing essential information to viewers including lower thirds with athletes’ names and country flags, and start and results lists, without requiring a high-bandwidth connection. This cloud-based approach allowed staff to work seamlessly from various locations while ensuring information was accessible in near real-time.
Ateliere Live’s media synchronization across the internet separates low-delay editing versions from higher-quality distribution versions. This allows production staff to work anywhere with a reasonable internet connection, enabling distributed production from virtually any location.
Transforming the “impossible” into reality
Power reliability was another concern. Relying solely on generator power created continuity risks. AWS’s cloud-based instances allowed the team to maintain program continuity by running the entire production in the cloud, reducing the risk of disruption from on-site generator failures. AWS instances running Ateliere Live also offered energy efficiency benefits, as the GPU approach minimized the overall environmental footprint. By offloading processing to the cloud on efficiently designed software, the team ensured a stable environment that could continue even if local power sources faltered.
The EMTBOC broadcast proved that even in the harshest environments, innovative technologies like Ateliere Live and cloud-based production can deliver exceptional live-viewing experiences. From Starlink-enabled internet to cutting-edge GPU technology, these advancements are paving the way for reaching global audiences—no matter how remote the setting.
