5G-SOLUTIONS Cooperative Media Production

Overview of the 5G-SOLUTIONS Trial on Cooperative Media Production 

Cooperative Media Production has become the new standard for production companies. Wireless at-Home/cloud production solutions allow broadcasters to reduce costs of producing live shows from a centralised studio instead of on-site production. At-home production solves inefficiencies and reduced support of live events by sending only the camera and audio teams to the field, whereas production is done at the professional studio facility. In this use case, several cameras are each connected to cellular transmission devices, including bonding devices to provide the utmost reliability and bandwidth. LiveU TV provided bonding video encoders-transmitters which used its Precision Timing feature to allow synchronisation of the video streams. Video quality is up to 4K from each camera provided by Fothnet-NOVA. Partners taking part in the trials between October 2020 and June 2021 are: LIVEU TV, Forthnet-NOVA, University of Patras, Centre Technologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) and Nokia. 

The trials were aimed at measuring uplink bandwidth and latency under different conditions and sub-scenarios, using LiveU units, Forthnet-NOVA camers, the 5G-VINNI testbed at the University of Patras, Nokia's cross-domain service orchestrator (CSDO) and APP-ART's visualisation system (VS) to collect the trial key performance indicators for 5G. Multi-camera feeds at low (<0.6 sec to allow remote interviews), consistent latency and uplink bandwidth validate and evaluate 5G-bonding using multilink bonding, multilink with WiFi, multilink of 5G with 4G, etc. combinations the uplink contribution at various network conditions such as cell-edge, and impact of uplink congestion on said performance. Several products are used, LU600 and LU800, which have multi camera built-in capabilities.

5G Empowerment 

5G is required to solve issues of current on-site production through remote solutions with only the cameras and the cameramen working on-site. 5G is expected to provide higher uplink bandwidth, consistency, latency sustainability and overall uplink “guaranteed” SLA/QoS for multiple uplink cameras/feeds. This is expected to be done with SA with slices/services, PN and NPN networks. 5G can turn the impossible to the possible. High upload bandwidth is required for live multi-camera production at high quality video (full HD, 4K and 8K). Latency stability is required to support this synchronisation as well as to allow the remote production studio to output the live streams in confidence.

5G Key Performance Indicators

The following KPIs were met during the trials:

• 5G Latency Target: ˂20ms. Measurement method: Measure 5G RAN and network latency.
• E2E Uplink stream latency target: ˂0.6s. Measurement method: Video capture, compression and transmission to the cloud/studio and decoding. 
• 5G latency sustainability Target: ˂~1% fluctuations over ˃3 hours of continuous transmission durations. Measurement method: Application and network parameters in various scenarios. 
• Uplink bandwidth per camera Target: ˃40Mbps, consistent over  ˃3 hours transmission. Measurement method:  Tranmission with LiveU LU800, single and bonded 5G (same operator, based on what is available in 5G-VINNI. 

Videos and Demos

This video shows the 5G-SOLUTIONS use cases for broadcasting and media. 

Accolades

One of the ten winners of the 2021 5G-IA Trials Working Group annual competition, featuring in the 5G Infrastructure PPP Brochure - Trials and Pilots. 

Use Case Data Summary

Location: Greece

Dates: October 2020 and June 2021

Partners involved:  LIVEU TV, Forthnet-NOVA, University of Patras, Centre Technologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) and Nokia. 

EC funding reference: H2020-ICT-2018-3; ICT-19-2019 - Advanced 5G validation trials across multiple vertical industries.

Funding cycle: June 2019-November 2022.

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