D Look runs Video Transport in the field on cute custom hardware
D Look is a streaming company in Brazil run by Pedro Oliveira, an engineer, who had spent many years in sports production with ESPN — having worked on 5 UEFA finals, 5 Super Bowls, 2 Olympic Games and 2 World Cups.
His primary interest, however, has always been streaming from the field — he was one of the first people in Brazil to do this back in 2008. Over the years Pedro has developed his own streaming backpack, bonding technology and a portable live production switcher.
In 2014 we developed a custom application for Pedro that received an RTMP signal and played it out to SDI:
That software you guys developed helped me do a more professional output for the broadcast channels.
A while ago Pedro discovered Video Transport and decided to try it in a remote production scenario:
What’s really amazing about Video Transport is the ability to use multiple cameras in the field — this is what makes the difference… 2 or 4 cameras synchronised — that is really impressive.
The problem with streaming from the field is, of course, connectivity:
One thing that’s really important is that I will never, or almost never, have access to fiber optics connection on this type of event… It’s an old stadium in the middle of nowhere… It must be with a bonded solution, it must be with a mobile connection.
LiveU offers a similar solution, they send several backpacks to the field; with Video Transport the approach is a bit different:
You can use the D Look customized streaming backpack with 4 inputs — as long there’s enough bandwidth, you’ll be good. This allows to achieve the same result at a fraction of the cost.
Here’s a quick video that Pedro made on site during a rugby match that was broadcast to TVNSports: Video Transport ran on a custom-made portable PC with Pedro’s bonding technology being used for connectivity.