NEP Group, an outsourced technical production partner for premier content producers of live sports and entertainment, has achieved a milestone in sports broadcasting with the successful live, remote production from Sydney of the IAAF World Relays 2019 held in Yokohama, Japan.

On behalf of their clients, NEP’s multidivisional teams delivered two days of live coverage and competition highlights from NEP Australia’s centralised, internet protocol (IP) and multi-format production facility at the NEP Andrews Hub in Sydney, NSW.

On-location hardware and crews from NEP UK covered the event and 30 high definition (HD) signals – comprising the 17 main cameras, including two Sony HDC4800 cameras in ultra-high frame rate, plus graphics in Yokohama – were linked via diverse and hitless 10 gigabit-per-second circuits on the Telstra Distributed Production Network (DPN) and sent on to Sydney, 7,800km away, using VC 2 ultra-low-latency compression technology.

Production crew and hardware were based at the Sydney Andrews Hub while shading crew were based in Japan.

The finished programming was then transmitted from the Hub to broadcast rights holders around the world.

ITN, Telstra, and NEP’s UK, Japan and Australia teams worked in concert, showcasing the use of IP technology and extreme low latency compression.

President of NEP Australia president, Soames Treffry (featured image) said: “The IAAF World Relays extend the ‘hub and spoke, anyone, anywhere’ concept that NEP’s Andrews Hubs were built on, meaning people can work from any location so long as they’re connected to our network. 

“This milestone project cements the reality of working across multiple geographies and reflects our strategy to deploy permanent facilities in key markets which all share the same resources – both human and technical – to meet critical industry needs.

“It also showcases the breadth and scale of NEP’s client offerings across regions, and we thank IAAF Productions and ITN for their confidence in NEP’s ability to deliver this marquee event via our Andrews Hubs.” 

NEP UK & Ireland president, Steve Jenkins added: “We’ve had a long-standing relationship with ITN and the IAAF, and it has been great to work with them and our colleagues across the NEP Group to offer ground-breaking solutions.

“NEP’s full suite of solutions means we can offer ITN and all our clients agile, fit-for-purpose technical services – whether configured from hub, spoke, flypack or truck.

“Importantly, our clients can be confident that we have the talent and expertise to combine these services and deliver exactly what, where and how our clients need them.

“We’re looking forward to further building on these new technologies and our relationship with ITN and IAAF at the World Championships in Doha.”

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