With ten world leading broadcaster Champions and six vendor Participants, this Accelerator project initially set out to design, evaluate and test an early-stage proof of concept for 5G Remote Production.

While the ability to carry out much of the planned physical testing was halted during the global pandemic in 2020, the project team was able to develop ideas and theoretical architectures for a host of broadcast uses cases, identified through a Use Case Research workstream along with many invaluable discussions with broadcasters, vendors, mobile networks and academic institutions.

Additional workstreams focused on developing insights, knowledge and understanding of 5G Infrastructure; Camera Gateways and Devices; Spectrum and New Innovation such as AI enabled cameras, drones, lighting and other state of the art digital production technologies.

The cancellation of the IBC show in September 2020, presented an opportunity to put concepts and architecture theories into creative action through a live 5G enabled remote production, bringing Amsterdam to IBC’s virtual Showcase across 4 locations. These included the RAI Amsterdam, IBC’s office in London and a performance from a rising MTV star from a boat on an iconic canal in Amsterdam using AI-enabled cameras, as well as shoreside outside Viacom’s Amsterdam studio HQ and aerial drone shots all via 5G.

Small 5G Non-Public Networks have not yet been built and tested for any purpose but media production makes the ideal use case, this project will tune the network to support higher uplink than available on public networks. This is the first stage for full 5G remote production which will follow in future projects. 

This project has become a hub for broadcaster learnings, insights and dialogue with key eco-system players, as well as a vehicle to put standards theories into tangible practice.  

Champions: BBC (Project Lead), Al Jazeera Media Networks, BT Sport, EBU, ITV, SVT, TV2, ViacomCBS, Yle, Olympic Broadcasting Services

Participants: AVIWEST, Huawei, LiveU, Mobile Viewpoint, NewTek and Sony

Supporting Partners: EE, VodafoneZiggo, University of Strathclyde

Why 5G Remote Production?
Remote production is one of the most exciting and developed of 5G use cases. As a much more efficient method of producing live sports, news, entertainment and events coverage than traditional outside broadcasts, it will allow broadcasters to deploy fewer camera operators to events (although many more cameras) and staff to work on multiple events a day, being located in a centralised studio. This Accelerator project was designed for broadcasters to get an inside track on some of the multi-camera remote production capabilities, challenges and possibilities to come during the very early phases of 5G deployment, and with further key standards completion to come in 2021.

For further information: accelerators@ibc.org