Portuguese broadcaster SIC deploys Sony Networked Live remote production solution to support cost-effective regional news
Solution enables production from central facilities without need for local production resources
Weybridge, UK, 5th October 2023 – Sony, together with its media network specialist subsidiary Nevion, has delivered an IP-based remote production solution to Portugal’s SIC. The solution allows the broadcaster and media company to produce regional news cost-effectively, by reducing the need for OB-trucks, and on site production hardware and staffing requirements.
SIC was looking to expand its regional news facilities in Porto. To keep costs down and increase competitiveness, SIC needed to find a way to optimise equipment use and the production workflows. For this, SIC turned to Sony, which had previously delivered the migration to IP of its main production facilities in the Portuguese capital Lisbon in 2019.
The new solution designed by Sony and Nevion and delivered together with local partner Dec.Imagem Sistemas de Vídeo Lda, is based on Sony’s Networked Live solutions. Networked Live is an ecosystem of solutions, products, services and partners that combines ground and Cloud processing with network connectivity to transform the logistics and economics of live production. It enables resources (places, people and processing) to be connected, used and shared optimally in productions – regardless of their locations.
The solution, which went live in September 2022, allows SIC to produce from its central Lisbon facilities live content captured in in Porto – approximately 270 km (170 miles) away. It is built on two fundamental elements: acquisition and media transport.
For the acquisition in Porto, SIC picked Sony’s HDC-P31 compact PoV (Point of View) system cameras. Small, lightweight and offering superb full HD image quality, the versatile Sony HDC-P31 is ideal for a wide range of broadcast production applications where a small form-factor system camera is required. While the cameras have been deployed in Porto, all technical operations, including camera control, take place remotely in Lisbon, using the existing studio infrastructure for typical camera control workflows using the Sony RCP-3500.
The media transport of video and audio signals from Porto to Lisbon is handled by Nevion Virtuosos, the software defined media nodes. The signals originating in Porto are carried as IP transport streams (TSoIP) over a wide area network (WAN), with JPEG 2000 video encoding and SMPTE ST 2022-7 protection. Return feeds are also transmitted from Lisbon to Porto over the same infrastructure.
“We have been working with Sony for several years, so the company and its subsidiary Nevion, were the obvious choice to deliver this critical solution for us” says José Lopes, Director of Operations and Technologies at SIC: “For our remote studios in Porto we picked the HDC-P31 PoV camera because it is small and lightweight yet maintains the signal processing capabilities and the broadcast signal quality of Sony broadcast cameras. And for the media transport between Porto and Lisbon, we were convinced that Nevion’s Virtuoso provided the performance and reliability that we needed. The impressive track record of both companies in project delivery was also important to us, given the tight deadline we were working to.”
“Increasing production capabilities can be a complex and risky exercise, especially when wider area connectivity is involved” comments Rob Thorne, Category Head for Networked Live Solutions, Sony Professional Solutions Europe. “ This project underlines the joint value Sony and Nevion deliver with Networked Live Solutions, and the benefits this can bring to our customers. We are experts our customers can trust to transform their production workflows.”
Find out more about the benefits of remote production with Sony Networked Live at pro.sony/networkedlive
About Dec.imagem
Dec.Imagem is a video reselling and system integration company in Portugal and it was established with this name in the year 2000. Dec.Imagem target market is Broadcast, Production and Post Production companies, Telco operators that carry the video signals, and Institutional video market. The relationship with Nevion started many years ago when Nevion was still called Network Electronics. Dec.Imagem is also a system integrator for Sony Electronics.
About Networked Live
Sony and Nevion’s Networked Live is an ecosystem of solutions, products, services, and partners that combines hybrid on-premises and Cloud processing with network connectivity to transform the logistics and economics of high-quality mission critical live production. It does this by enabling resources (places, people, and processing) to be connected, used, and shared optimally and seamlessly in productions – regardless of their locations. For more information, see: https://nevion.com/sony-nevion/
