The Challenge
Over 5,500 celebrities and fans alike flock to New York Comic Con to geek out about the latest comic books, movies, toys, and more. Since its inception, Entertainment Weekly has been covering the action-packed event, giving viewers exclusive interviews and insight scoop on all things Comic Con. This year, Entertainment Weekly hosted 30 social media live streams back-to-back from their suite at Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego California to their cinema cameras on location in NYC Metro. Producing a high-caliber event in a hotel suite posed major challenges — limited space for production equipment and the onsite staff. Unreliable bandwidth at the hotel compounded the problem which could cause delays and low-quality streams. The team needed to find a way to stream the content in a more efficient way.
The Solution
Entertainment Weekly tasked Take2Productions with the production and overcoming the anticipated challenges. The team deployed 4 ISO cinema cameras to LiveU’s LU800 encoder to capture the different angles of the interviews, as well as have it be the primary audio source. Once the feed was captured, it was sent to the broadcast studio where it was delivered to Entertainment Weekly’s social media platforms. The crew also remotely recorded ISO interviews so they could edit clips at a remote production studio, thus limiting the staff on site. The team also had 4 LiveU units for connectivity to assure they didn’t lose sync and the stream would never buffer.
“LiveU’s ultra-low latency and ultra-high video quality continue to impress even our most demanding clients. LiveU’s fast and in-sync streams provide the ability to seamlessly edit between camera angles to create ultra-rich social media livestreams that are reliable with beautiful image quality. Integrating LiveU into our livestream broadcast studio has truly elevated our broadcasts on so many levels.”
- George Barnes, Director at Take2Production