LiveU: an end-to-end solution for remote live productions

LiveU and Grass Valley are joining forces to offer a cloud-based solution for remote live productions, enabling customers to simplify their processes in an efficient, agile and customizable workflow.

LiveU and Grass Valley have announced that both companies have teamed up to offer an end-to-end solution for remote live productions in the cloud. Leveraging LiveU and Grass Valley cloud-based tools and workflows, the pre-integrated solution streamlines remote productions and accelerates the time to air for live content, enabling customers to simplify their processes and automate live and non-live news and sports productions in an efficient, agile and customizable workflow.

Avi Cohen, LiveU’s co-founder and COO, said, “With the ongoing shift to cloud production, we are committed to helping our customers maximize these new efficiencies, delivering our live video solutions as-a-service with pre-integrated workflows. Our collaboration with Grass Valley offers customers a highly efficient, flexible and scalable set of tools for going live from the field, providing greater flexibility to adapt to the needs of each and every story, giving a richer viewing experience. Remote live production can be orchestrated from anywhere via LiveU’s and Grass Valley’s integrated cloud environments, or using a hybrid model of choice, integrating high-quality live video feeds with smart automated production capabilities.”

Grass Valley’s GV AMPP

The collaboration facilitates live production, and news and asset management, in specific ways, helping to simplify the processes and speed up live broadcasts with compelling content. Here are some examples presented by LiveU:

• High-quality live feeds can be sent from any of LiveU’s field units for remote switching and live production using LiveU’s cloud solution with Grass Valley’s GV AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform), the first cloud-based SaaS platform for broadcast to fully leverage the power of elastic compute. Built for the cloud from the start, GV AMPP is specifically designed to overcome broadcasters’ long-time reliance on costly and inflexible hardware-based media systems and provides a modular approach to everyday media workflows.
• Live feeds from LiveU units can be integrated into the GV STRATUS news and asset management tool to streamline the remote news gathering and production workflow. Utilizing LiveU’s live video metadata to automate the process and provide metadata enriched assets within GV STRATUS, users can quickly search, browse, edit and publish content – live or file – using a range of smart search criteria and via the smart rules’ engine.

On LiveU joining the Grass Valley Technology Alliance (GVTA), Tim Shoulders, CEO and president of Grass Valley, said, “As our customers strive to deliver the captivating content and high production values that consumers demand, the GVTA gives them access to trusted solutions that are tested and configured to ensure interoperability with Grass Valley’s solutions – one of the major hurdles our customers face when deploying multi-vendor systems. We are delighted to see LiveU join the GVTA and the first implementations of our joint solution in the field.”

Coverage of the US Presidential Election

LiveU offers a comprehensive all-cloud ecosystem for live news and sports productions, combining LiveU software-defined hybrid cloud solutions with its next-gen management and distribution platforms and a rich set of production tools. The company recently reported that it broke major usage records on US Election Day, with a 35% increase in LiveU field units and an over 30% increase in the number of simultaneous live feeds compared to the 2016 US Presidential Election.

The company played a pivotal role in the live coverage of the US Presidential Election. With a mix of LiveU portable transmission solutions, including its flagship HEVC units, bonded LU-Smart app, and LiveU Matrix, the company’s IP contribution and distribution solution, around 700 broadcasters from around the world were able to provide comprehensive live news and updates of the highly publicized election worldwide.

“LiveU experienced an unprecedented 16,540 live streams on Election Night,” said Mike Savello, LiveU VP of Sales, Americas. “This year has challenged our broadcast customers to approach live newsgathering in unique ways. The pandemic has changed studio environments, crew allocation, budgets, and workflows. What has remained consistent is LiveU’s ability to provide high-quality, flexible solutions that news organizations can rely on, especially to cover high-profile news and events.”