How Slow TV' watching moose migrate is accelerating live cloud workflows at SVT By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 10, 2024 - 08:00
Print This Story
Credit: Den stora lgvandringen/SVT
The slow meandering trek of herds of moose doesn't have much in common with the turbocharged power, noise and control of rally cars but right now in Sweden, they are virtually joined at the hip.
Swedish broadcaster SVT's month-long round-the-clock live broadcast of The Great Moose Migration (Den stora lgvandringen) was the latest test of an organisation-wide digital transformation project that will soon encompass the next leg of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
It's a slightly insane project, says Dennis Buhr, SVT head of production development, chatting with SVG Europe about the remote production initiated for this year's Great Moose Migration. It's not that common that your show is 500 hours long.
About the Moose Migration
Every spring, for thousands of years, Sweden's population of moose (or European Elk) in V sternorrland in the north of Sweden migrates across the same tracks in the forest to get to greener pastures. Since 2019, SVT has live-streamed the action' over several weeks.
This great moose migration' has proved hugely popular with the public ever since with viewers rising from a million in 2019 to about nine million this year on SVT Play alongside more than 300,000 chat interactions an increase of 30% on 2023.
The show has also been broadcast live on Twitch reaching nearly 15 million views around the world. Men aged 16-25 seemed to enjoy the respite from hardcore gaming.
Den stora lgvandringen is a slightly insane project. It's not that common that your show is 500 hours long.
The livestream is now a national springtime phenomenon and a classic example of Slow TV' which this year is also being aired on Finland's YLE and RTL in Germany.
It's always been a huge technical struggle to get this to work in a forest with a wild river and at time of year that turns from winter into spring with huge ice melts, says Buhr.
SVT lays thousands of metres of cable across the forest area to connect 30 camouflaged cameras and 28 mics. In the past, these feeds were all sent to a remote production gallery built on site.
This year the Moose Migration has gone truly remote.
New cloud-based workflow
First and foremost we decided to keep all our production staff inside our TV building in Ume , says Buhr. Immediately that cuts down the costs of having staff on site for a month.
In this new setup, the cameras (a mix of Sony PTZ during the day and Axion surveillance cameras at night) and mics are converted from SDI to IP by VideoXLink and transported as H.264 streams over the internet to SVT's hub at Ume , a 3-hour and 250km drive away.
Two cameras in this year's production were positioned next to a wild bear spot. Unable to run either power or fibre to that location they used solar power and a Starlink satellite internet connection.
At Ume the rest of the IP streams are captured into Agile Live, a software-based system jointly developed over a number of years by SVT and Agile Content. Image mixing and overlay graphics are performed by operators in Ume with rendering done on-prem in Stockholm 650km away.
The technical cloud workflow of this is not particularly difficult, says Buhr. The actual work is the shift in mindset we have gone through at SVT. We have had to rethink production.
He elaborates, You can't stream high-res images everywhere as you are used to. You have to think about who needs to see what, when, and in what quality. You need to understand and communicate the advantages of it rather than comparing this workflow to how it used to be done.
This year's production has brought together SVT broadcast engineering with its IT teams. Many, it seems, had never met before, yet here they are working to deliver the production together.
All of a sudden you have meetings and you see people inside the organisation you do not regularly see. They might be responsible for computer services in whole other areas of the business. They are experts in networks, computer hosting and IT security. Everyone gathered to make a TV show. That was a new thing for me - and for everyone.
I've been doing broadcast for 22 years and this is the first time I've seen computer guys getting a credit on the show. It made me extremely happy.
The culture clash between IT and broadcast worlds that is often mentioned as a management nightmare didn't materialise. Or, if it did, everyone treated each other professionally and understood the overall mission.
We have had our discussions shall we say, but it has not been a hassle more of a learning curve, says Buhr. Early on we asked for a feature from the network department and gave them four days' notice. They said, You can't have this short a time span.' But when you work in live TV with the red light about to flash, four minutes is a long time, let alone four hours. That was one cultural difference but people have genuinely been getting on very well and understand it is a joint venture.
Having previously trialled the arrangement on a local sports production, the 2024 Great Moose Migration is by far SVT's biggest proof of concept to date of its transformation project Next Generation Online (NEO).
NEO is an organisation-wide glass-to-glass approach to making production and distribution under the same roof. It is aimed to be 100% software, based on COTS servers and standard IT using the internet.
It's a huge scope but we started early, in late 2018, and now we are live with a working product.
The same set-up will be used by SVT to produce the ERC Bauhaus Royal Rally, part of the WRC calendar, on June 13-15 at several different loc
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
05/07/2024
Since launching a major marketing branding campaign on Super Bowl Sunday this year, the local streaming service Zeam has spent the first half of 2024 working to...
05/07/2024
Birds Camera Solutions, a specialist in cable camera systems for sports broadcasting, has developed the Aerial Green Analysis System in collaboration with Agrow...
05/07/2024
Fishtank (https://fishtank.live), an interactive streaming platform and 24/7 social experiment, marks one million viewers and $3 million in revenues using Livep...
05/07/2024
Vizrt, the leader in real-time graphics and live production for content creators, shares several new senior appointments which aim to enhance customer security,...
05/07/2024
When independent filmmakers Freddie Wong and Matt Arnold approached Bongani Mlambo about their new film, We're All Gonna Die, the Zimbabwean cinematographer...
05/07/2024
Vizrt reinforces security, sustainability and channel business with new senior a...
05/07/2024
Racquet Studios & Panalux Join Forces to Offer Virtual Production Services in Ne...
05/07/2024
What If We Got A.I. All Wrong?
Michael Cioni July 5, 2024
0 Comments
Will A.I. take our jobs? If you work in production and this question has crossed ...
05/07/2024
The results of UK general elections are always eagerly anticipated and can make ...
05/07/2024
The upgrade enables rt1.tv to optimise its media workflows with AI-powered Avid solutions
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: July 5, 2024
The upgrade enables ...
05/07/2024
Both were re-elected with an absolute majority at the EBUs General Assembly in Cyprus
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: July 5, 2024
Both were re-elected wit...
05/07/2024
The statement follows the result of the UKs General Election
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: July 5, 2024
The statement follows the result of the UK's ...
05/07/2024
The Lines of Entertainment Could be Blurring
Andy Marken July 4, 2024
0 Comments
Millions of girls, like from the university mostly. If we could get ...
05/07/2024
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Film Evil Does Not Exist Shot and Graded with Blackmagic...
05/07/2024
By Craig Anderton
You've probably seen ads for packs of MIDI chords that claim to help you write hits that will make your listeners' jaws drop in amaze...
04/07/2024
Each episode begins with U&Dave giving the studio audience £250,000 to share bet...
04/07/2024
Great-Ish News as Dave Gorman returns to U&Dave Four brand new specials for iconic hit comedy show examining modern life will air later this year Stand-up comed...
04/07/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({...
04/07/2024
As head of international technology at ITV Studios, Rob O'Brien is always on the lookout for new technology that can allow the company to work more flexibly...
04/07/2024
The following case study was created by Blue Lucy partner Amber Technology and first published on their website.
A major national sporting body overseeing mult...
04/07/2024
April 2024: It's been a week, and we've all now seen everyone's takeaways on the trends that emerged at NAB. Here at Blue Lucy Towers we like to do ...
04/07/2024
International production studio, rights business and channel operator, Blue Ant Media, has chosen Blue Lucy's BLAM platform for media supply chain automatio...
04/07/2024
According to Time Magazine, more than half the world's population will go to the polls in 2024. The fact that the UK's election also coincides with Inde...
04/07/2024
ITNs Jenny King and Jon Roberts talk to TVBEurope about the work thats gone into...
04/07/2024
Arena Television collapsed at the end of 2021 with debts of £280 million. At the time it employed 63 members of staff principally based at its offices in Redhil...
04/07/2024
Amid a hotly contested presidential race and major battles for the control of the U.S. Congress, AdImpact has raised its projections for political ad spending i...
04/07/2024
MwareTV, a leading cloud-based multi-tenant platform provider, has brought Sree Sivanandan on board as VP India and South-East Asia. He will act as consultant t...
04/07/2024
24i, the video streaming platform expert, is pleased to announce the appointment of Sebastian Braun to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Braun s promotion to CEO e...
04/07/2024
Rohde & Schwarz has provided its R&S PRISMON multiviewer to the 3/24 Channel, 24-hour news channel of Corporacio Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (3Cat). The u...
04/07/2024
Supponor, the world's leading technology provider in virtual advertising for sports, has today announced record deployment figures for its award-winning AI-...
04/07/2024
International production studio, rights business and channel operator, Blue Ant Media, has chosen Blue Lucy's BLAM platform for media supply chain automatio...
04/07/2024
Dejero Smart Blending Technology at the heart of Quality's all-remote multi-sport production, covering 23 sports from multiple venues, in four Emirates, fo...
04/07/2024
Media Stream Wave Uses Blackmagic Design Live Production Workflow for Coachella ...
04/07/2024
Hitomi Broadcast Announces SMPTE ST 2110 Compatibility for MatchBox
Brie Clayton July 3, 2024
0 Comments
IP interface for lip-sync and latency measure...
04/07/2024
DaVinci Resolve Color Grading Tricks I have never talked about before!
Kasia Jarco July 3, 2024
0 Comments
Here I show a couple of advanced coloring t...
04/07/2024
Astera Awarded Best in Show at Euro Cine Expo 2024 posted: 04/07/2024
Best of Show award for Asteras LunaBulb
After a successful exhibition at Euro Cine ...
04/07/2024
Published On: July 4th, 2024
data-orig-src=https://www.sgo.es/wp-content/uploads/ac_products_header.jpg width=800 height=500 class=lazyload wp-image-0 />
[SP...
04/07/2024
Wuppertal July 4, 2024
Riedel Intercom Systems Enhance Communications Across B...
04/07/2024
Back to All News
Netflix presents the trailer for Elites final seasonPlay Video
Play Video
Entertainment
04 July 2024
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard...
04/07/2024
The recently opened ADM Club in Da Nang is one of the biggest bars in Vietnam. Luxuriously appointed, with stunning interior design, the venue hosts a wide vari...
04/07/2024
RT Investigates and the Sunday Independent announce major new joint investigati...
04/07/2024
GeForce NOW is bringing 22 new games to members this month.
Dive into the four titles available to stream on the cloud gaming service this week to stay cool an...
04/07/2024
Drug-like inhibitor shows promise in preventing flu Scripps Research scientists have developed a potential drug-like molecule that blocks the first stage of typ...
03/07/2024
AI's integration into journalism has sparked a mix of enthusiasm and scepticism across Central Europe, according to research led by Thomson Foundation in co...
03/07/2024
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about starting each year with th...
03/07/2024
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Just ask Emma Roberts, star of t...
03/07/2024
L3Harris is on pace to equip the U.S. Navys F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet aircr...
03/07/2024
Codemill, a leading developer of cloud-native media applications, is pleased to ...
How Slow TV' watching moose migrate is accelerating live cloud workflows at SVT By Adrian Pennington 
