Appear, the global leader in media processing and delivery technology, has announced that JPEG XS encoding in its X Platform was used to successfully deliver live 3D virtual reality (VR) content for a major sporting event that took place earlier this summer.
Deployed in partnership with production company Mobilelinks and fan experience technology provider Cosm, JPEG XS provided the basis for the successful delivery of live VR content for the event’s beginning and ending shows, as well as for live 3D VR content across five major sporting events (boxing, basketball, beach volleyball, gymnastics and athletics) three times each day throughout the entirety of the event. The companies also supported the delivery of video-on-demand (VOD) content for 30 additional sports throughout the event.
In the run up to the major sporting event, there was appetite to deliver more immersive content experiences, like 3D and VR. But supporting these content formats in live streams presented a challenge, as the only connectivity between the main sporting venues and the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC) 80 kilometres away was two dark fibre lines—and these needed to carry all video content from the event, including 10 camera channels in 4K.
JPEG XS encoding represented the ideal solution to deliver 3D VR content on the available bandwidth, thanks to its prioritisation of low latency and high quality, while also providing practical levels of compression. As the production company on the ground, Mobilelinks deployed JPEG XS encoding in Appear’s X Platform hardware within its outside broadcast compound. The X Platform was also deployed at the IBC.
The combination of JPEG XS and SMTPE ST 2110 in a fully redundant network was a flexible and reliable solution to meet the delivery needs of this project. By implementing 2022-7 over the network, Mobilelinks could support a high redundancy level with seamless switching, which was imperative in the event of hardware failure on any of the physical links and switches.
From the OB compound, the X Platform JPEG XS encoders compressed live video feeds at a lossless rate so they could be transmitted to the IBC with minimal latency. From the IBC, the live VR content could be delivered to VR headsets across the globe, where users were able to access the immersive content via the Oculus Venues app. Cosm was responsible for developing the VR content within the app, and used 3D lenses on two cameras at each event to create the 3D VR content feeds.
Martin Simons, Head of Encoding at Mobilelinks
Appear’s X Platform JPEG XS encoders ticked all our boxes—not only is it the best in class from a technological perspective, but its compact hardware is likely to become a go-to solution for remote production in the future.
Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO at Appear
Contribution and remote production for any live sporting event is technically complex—add in the delivery of live VR content during a pandemic, for a high-profile event like this, and the complexity intensifies tenfold.
