I always tell people that getting into the live streaming business is not for the faint of heart. There is rarely a production where there is not some sort of “kink” in provided network. However, it’s always nice to have gear that creates some stability to dynamic workflows and difficult operating environments. In Early 2022, I received a phone call from the Production Director for the Big 12 Equestrian Championship being aired on ESPN+. Their dedicated network satellite uplink had been overloaded. The 1gb satellite uplink had its bandwidth overrun by eager on-site photographers uploading raw images of the action every few seconds. “I hear you use cellular bonding,” the Production Director said with urgency in his voice. To which I replied,” I don’t use anything else.” He quickly replied,”If you can get here by morning and get our feed up and running, you’ll be my new best friend.” In my experience, when a person calls and specifically asks for “bonding” solutions, I know this isn’t their first rodeo (pun). For this broadcast, they were going to need 2 feeds running all day delivered via SRT (Secure Reliable Transport). The off-site decoders would beset as “caller”. I packed up my 2 Vidiu Go’s and headed to the location.

Assessing the Networks

     The 2022 Big 12 Equestrian Championship took place at the Diamond Creek Ranch, Fort Worth, Texas. Location Coordinates:  32.504999, -97.421132

     It was a perfect venue for the Equestrian Championship, but a risky place for anyone requiring a solid connection to a cellular 4g LTE/5G provider. Upon arriving, I immediately assessed the cellular conditions across the available network providers. It was going to be close, but I’ve been able to push the limits with my encoders.

My readings were:

Vidiu #1 Uplink Total : 14mbps

1. 3mbps up – T-mobile iPhone 13 Pro Max – 1 bar of 5G (extended range)
2. 3mbps up – T-mobile iPhone 13 Pro Max – 1 bar of 5G (extended range)
3. 2mbps up – NODE #1 – Telna sims via AT&T
4. 2mbps up – NODE #2 – Telna sims via AT&T
5. 4mbps up – Netgear LB2120 Modem (ethernet)

Vidiu #2 Uplink Total : 11mbps

1. 3mbps up – T-mobile iPhone 13 Pro Max – 1 bar of 5G (extended range)
2. 2mbps up – NODE #1 – Telna sims via AT&T
3. 2mbps up – NODE #2 –Telna sims via AT&T
4. 4mbps up – Netgear LB2120 Modem (ethernet)

WORKFLOW DIAGRAM

     We monitored our feeds on the Teradek’s CoreCloud platform using our Verizon 4gLTE jetpack AC791l (19mbps down/2mbps up) on my 2019 Macbook Pro. Upon the conclusion of my speed tests, I felt my bandwidth would barely make the requested specs of 720p/60 @ 9mbps. 

     This is where Teradek’s Vidiu h265 HEVC transcoding takes up the slack. Upon launching Teradek’s Hyperion Cloud Transcoding server, I am able to send a (HEVC) H.265 transmission from my Vidiu Go. Core Cloud then receives my transmission and transcodes it through their Hyperion cloud server, transcodes it to H.264, and delivers the feed through a variety of protocols. In this case, the SRT feed was delivered to the offsite ESPN decoders.

What is HEVC? 

     HEVC allows you to get the most out of your bandwidth. It allows you to either (1) send a video signal at 2 times the quality that you would send via standard H.264 using the same amount of bandwidth…. or (2) use 50% of the bandwidth needed to deliver the same quality transmission of a H.264 video codec. Talk about a game changer! And that’s not all…. with cellular bonding the feed across 4 to 5 uplinks on each encoder, the feed maintains a stable transmission by signal balancing from the location to the cloud server.

     Want to learn more about HEVC and why you need to start using encoders with this technology? Check out this article by Teradek –  the world leaders in wireless transmission. CLICK HERE

Time to Launch

     After we launched our Hyperion cloud servers (formerly called Sputnik cloud servers), we powered on our Teradek Vidiu Go’s and verified the feed to the Corecloud.tv user interface.

(FIG.1)  –  (FIG.2)  –  (FIG.3)

     As we received the feed into core, we were able to optimize our uplink infrastructure by setting a priority hierarchy of each uplink in the Vidiu Go’s user interface. This can be done by accessing the Vidiu Go via the IP address (either via ethernet assigned IP or wifi – (access point or client mode). Once we’ve accessed our Vidiu Go via the IP address, we isolated each uplink and ran an upload speed test 3 times to verify the general available bandwidth per uplink. Then we prioritized the fastest uplink as our #1 uplink, then the 2nd fastest as #2 uplink and so on. Once we finished this important step, we verified our SRT delivery address and port and called ESPN. They confirmed that their decoders started getting received the feed. (FIG.4). We also accessed the address and verified the SRT delivery by using a VLC player on a local Wifi signal. The feed looked great. (FIG.5)

Utilizing Core Cloud’s Monitoring Interface

     Throughout the day, I intently monitored the cellular signal stability.(FIG.7) As I watched to uplink data and bitrate readings, it’s easy to conclude that the transmission would have been difficult to sustain without utilizing the h265 (HEVC) technology. However, with a lower bandwidth needed in order to reach the requested resolution, we were able to keep the signal strong to the decoders throughout the 10 hour live production. (FIG.6) There was a point where I was able to catch a dropped frame,(FIG.8) however upon expanding the bandwidth data, I was able to see that even though the signal suffered a momentary hiccup, the “cellular bonding” quickly picked up the slack and no visible detection was seen on our remote SRT monitoring station. (FIG.9)

     At the end of the day, I met up with the Network systems analyst for a post-production follow-up. He informed me that over the 11 hour transmission, there was “1” dropped packet…. 1!!!

I’ll take that any day.

Check out the web user interface screenshots of the 11 hour feed.

https://big12sports.com/news/2022/3/24/big-12-equestrian-championship-set-for-diamond-creek-ranch