The 2024 Paris Summer Games marked a significant shift in the broadcast industry, highlighting the rise of remote production. While past Games saw on-site production with finished products sent back to broadcasters' home countries, recent years have seen a growing trend towards a mix of local and remote production.
The pandemic accelerated this shift, leading to a significant increase in remote production during the 2021 Tokyo Games. The Beijing Winter Games further solidified the effectiveness of remote production, proving that many aspects of production could be performed remotely.
This trend is driven by three key factors:
- Increased Bandwidth Availability and Reduced Costs: The availability of sufficient bandwidth has become essential for remote production. The volume of signals transmitted for remote production is significantly higher than for sending a finished show, requiring numerous links between sites. The increase in bandwidth availability and the reduction in costs have made remote production more feasible.
- Well-Documented HDR Workflows: The 2024 Paris Games saw several broadcasters planning to incorporate HDR productions, necessitating well-defined HDR workflows. In the past, local production was essential for HDR as it required careful visual coordination between camera shaders and producers. Recent developments have resulted in standardized workflows that support local and remote production, including SDR work products for legacy distributions.
- The JPEG XS Codec: The JPEG XS codec tackles the challenge of latency, a traditional obstacle in remote production. By significantly reducing latency, the codec enables more natural communication and collaboration between on-site camera operators and technical directors in the studio.
Imagine Communications' Selenio Network Processor (SNP) plays a vital role in this shift, supporting the JPEG XS codec and providing UHD and HDR conversion capabilities. This technology has enabled many broadcasters to adopt remote production workflows.
The 2024 Paris Games represent a significant milestone in remote production, demonstrating its effectiveness and potential for the future of sports broadcasting.