case study 2022 pdf
ITV Sport broadcasts the UEFA Euro 2020 in a hybrid xR studio set-up
For ITV Sport’s coverage of the UEFA Euro 2020 championship, disguise Certified Solution Providers White Light relied on the disguise Extended Reality (xR) platform to deliver a hybrid extended reality and real-life studio space where the broadcaster could present the match coverage in real-time. In this case study you will learn how White Light drew on their extensive background in broadcast and xR to design a robust solution for ITV Sport, powered by six disguise rx II and three vx 2 media servers.
27.6 million
viewers
The challenge
ITV Sport called upon White Light’s Innovation & Media Solutions team and facilities provider, Arena, to design an innovative yet robust hybrid xR studio which, for the first time in history, placed a real studio set inside a much larger virtual studio without the challenges that come with using green screen.
Diving into the unknown didn’t come without its challenges. The team was faced with seamlessly integrating a real and virtual world within a live multi-camera studio setup, along with third-party AR graphics, during an entirely live broadcast.
The solution
White Light deployed a fleet of six of the latest disguise rx II render nodes, along with three vx 2 media playback servers to produce a powerful, fully redundant and integrated media system to run the whole studio. Working with the rx II real-time rendering nodes, White Light could easily scale render power for the complex Unreal Engine real-time scenes by simply adding more render nodes on a 25gb IP network.
“disguise’s RenderStream infrastructure gives us an uncompressed, high-quality live stream from Unreal Engine into disguise. With seamless integration into the broadcast media system, we can control the physical and virtual environments together in real-time, giving us slick, unified control of the whole hybrid studio.”
Andy Hook, Technical Solutions Director, White Light
Equipment
Credits
- White Light Technical Solutions Director:
Andy Hook
- White Light Project Manager:
Harry Greenfield
- White Light Media Solutions Specialist:
Alex Loftie
- ITV Sport’s Senior Director and Executive Producer for Major Events:
Paul McNamara
- ITV Sport’s Technical Supervisor:
Paul Bateman
- Unreal Engine Content Production:
Kevin Cooney & Team
- Directors of Photography:
Chris Hollier, Andy Cottey
- Gaffer:
Gafin Riley
- Set Designer:
Paul Sudlow
- AR Graphics Providers:
Alston Elliott
- Onsite Broadcast Facilities Provider:
Arena
- Physical studio build:
Monkey See Scenery
- Studio facilities:
Maidstone Studios