The DreamCatcher Bravo Studio live production replay platform from Evertz is being used by EA Competitive Gaming for its EA Sports FIFA 21 Global Series and Apex Legends Global Series broadcasts.
EA Sports FIFA 21 Global Series is an international tournament comprised of hundreds of matches played online using PlayStation4 and Xbox One. Over several months, more than 1,000 competitors go head-to-head in the hope of being crowned FIFAe World Cup 2021 champion and claiming a portion of the $3 million in prizes Electronic Arts Competitive Gaming Entertainment (EA CGE) division will hand out to competitors.
Apex Legends Global Series is a competitive online and live event ecosystem produced by EA CGE and Respawn. Played on PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox One, the Apex Legends Global Series competition format places teams around the world against each other within five global regions.
EA CGE division uses DreamCatcher Bravo Studio as the preferred live production tool to match the scale of its largest events due to its ability to virtually operate in any public or private cloud environment over a low latency, low bandwidth interface.
Using NDI, SRT, RIST, RTMPE and RTMPS protocols, multiple sources in different formats can be sent to a DreamCatcher Bravo Studio in the cloud, where EA CGE operational staff can log in to access feeds, produce live shows, isolate replays, edit highlight packages and send produced content to a media asset management service or distribution platform in the cloud for playout to content distributions networks – all from the comfort of their own homes.
“DreamCatcher Bravo Studio was extremely easy to set-up and seamlessly integrated with our existing cloud-based production solutions,” said Brian Bredenbeck, senior technical production manager, competitive gaming content & programming for Electronic Arts. “With hundreds of thousands of viewers watching around the globe, the reliability DreamCatcher Bravo Studio provides is reassuring, especially with Evertz support always available and quick to respond to issues.”
“DreamCatcher Bravo Studio has exceeded expectations in regards to latency requirements for operator control, as well as the overall quality of the product streamed to viewers,” added Bredenbeck. “The platform successfully produces 1080p 59.94/60 formats without issues, and the dynamic features and tools allow our operators to create unique viewing experiences audiences can’t find anywhere else.”
The Bravo Studio cloud cluster deployed for the recent Apex Legends Global Series competition event, the largest of EA CGE’s productions, was an extensive, entirely cloud-based live production cluster supporting 36 total 1080p inputs split between 16 NDI inputs and 20 SRT inputs. A total of nine operators supporting seven DreamCatcher replay stations and two logging stations produced the live event controlling 11 NDI outputs. All operation staff were operating remotely using their DC-Anywhere interfaces with full DreamCatcher controller integration. A content management station was also added to this event providing a centralised signal acquisition/distribution and content import/export functionality.
The fully featured DreamCatcher Bravo Studio live production replay system has zero hardware requirements, but does support multiple monitors and an optional DreamCatcher controller.
“DreamCatcher Bravo Studio provides innovative tools for live production in the cloud, enabling EA CGE to embrace new workflows while still being able to reliably reach fans with engaging original content,” said Vince Silvestri, Evertz VP of software systems.
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