Live Streaming - Horse Racing

We've been doing streaming of normal playout channels for ages but with new partnerships opening up we've started to move heavily into the live sports field and on Sunday 23rd we streamed out 3rd live horse racing event.  The event was Arabian Horse Racing from Royal Windsor Racecourse and this was one of our events with one of our newer partners Racetech.  Neither WRN Broadcast nor Racetech's business's have any real overlap areas so where they are heavy and excellent on the OB side we can compliment that with both live and multi-platform delivery.

Typically some racecourses don't have great connectivity available hence we are using solutions delivering the video back over either bonded 3G/4G to Ka-Sat backhaul solutions.  We then decode this at our London HQ and process through our streaming platform and deliver into the CDN.  We then give Arabian Racing Organisation(ARO) a weblink.  They publish this link behind a button on their webpage and it's a simple click through and the members of ARO can watch their horses compete from anywhere in the world.

This has gone down fantastically with the members and offers them an easy way to view their favourite racing without the need to travel the often long distance to a course.

The Windsor event was a little different as it was being often to a 3rd party for live transmission onto TurfTV.  This meant the added complication of sending our pictures and audio to an uplink trunk.  The truck was provided by Globecast and was on-site way before us.  The uplinks engineer was great and really flexible which was good as often is the case the uplink truck was across the car park from the OB and the tie lines between the 2 parking spots were a little thin on the ground and all unlabelled.  It took some time of trial and error with signal generators and monitors figuring out the various video and audio tie lines we needed.  Luckily we didn't need many just a pair of SDI feeds and 4 mono audios, a pair for programme audio and a pair for Talkback RX and TX.

Having the uplink was useful as it meant that at our London NOC we could simply downlink the feed rather than use the 3G/4G solution.  This wasn't because we don't trust the 3G/4G feeds it's simply easier to use a satellite feed if it's available.  So on Friday we got all the Globecast call sheet with the downlink parameters and booked our steerable dish and one of our satellite receivers as took the racing feed that way.

This was a bigger than usual ARO meeting.  ARO meetings are usually performed with the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter truck that was built especially for ARO meetings.  It has limited cameras installed as ARO typically only use a single camera.  As this meeting was a bigger meeting it included 4 camera's and photo finish so a bigger Racetech truck was onsite, MCRSD11.  This truck can easily handle the day as it's typically used on big meetings.  It's the last Standard Definition (SD) truck built by Racetech as all subsequent trucks are High Definition (HD).

As expected the day went without any technical hitches at all.

Next Streaming events for ARO are

Sunday 7th September - Hereford
Sunday 28th September - Wolverhampton

WRN Broadcast and Racetech Live Arabian Racing Streaming

Formula Electric Final Simulation

Well a few weeks ago after a few meetings at Formula Electric Head Office we went to Donington Park race track to participate in the Formula Electric final race simulation before it all heads to Beijing for the first race of the series and season on 13th September.

Paddock Entrance

We were there offering a proof of concept showing various methods to deliver enhanced programming including multiple camera angles and datafeeds into an iOS application or web page.  As time was short we worked some ling hours and used some pretty innovative technologies to return all necessary vision feeds back to our London HQ for processing and onward delivery into the application back end.

Pit Lane Garage

Formula E Car in Reception 

Production Monitor Stack 

Well here we are a whole year on

Yes, it’s now a whole year to the day since i had my pancreatic surgery, it’s actually probably about the time I came round that I’m writing this now.  Well I’m still here, I made it through although it’s been a long year of slow healing.  Maybe one day I won’t feel as though I had the surgery but a whole year on things can still be difficult sometimes although not that I’m complaining things could be a whole lot different.

On Saturday Lisa and I went to the cinema to watch The Inbetweeners 2 which as billed is a really really funny film and is everything you expect including some very good line.  On Sunday Lisa, Josie and I went to the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue and saw The tiger who came to tea.  The seats weren’t too bad and Josie had a great time she loves the book at bedtime so we thought we would take her to see it for real.

Time Lapse

I’ve been playing with a GoPro 3+ Black edition today and I have to say the image quality is fantastic.  You see a lot around now with people doing time-lapse stuff so thought I’d have a go.  I put the camera on the window ledge in time-lapse mode with it set to take an image every 10 seconds.  Once i thought the outdoor light had changed enough I pulled the camera in to see the results.  They were excellent.  I’ve ended up with a quicktime of approximately 15 seconds which is 2.16GB so I’ll put it below at a compressed rate.

Oh yes I forgot to say.

So after last years hospital dramas etc I decided to change jobs.  It was always in my mind to change jobs once i was feeling better however things fell into place and I got a good job much close to home for a great company called WRN Broadcast.  I’ve been there 6 months in a few days and I’m having  thoroughly good time.  WRNB are a London based managed services television provider and you can check them out at www.wrnbroadcast.com

Here’a few pictures of the new office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: WRN Broadcast, Managed Services

Josie's got a bike.

 

Well as you can see above Josie has got her first bike.  Her Nanny and Granddad bought it for her a few weeks ago.  She’s very fond of it and it has a little compartment at the front where she can put her toys.  She can’t figure she has to do a complete rotation when peddling yet but she’ll get there.

Technorati Tags: Josie, Bicycle, Pedal

She's Growing up

Josie isn’t too far of being 4 now I suppose.  She’s certainly growing up and very much knows what she does and doesn’t want to do which at times can be challenging.  With the long summer hours she’s taken to getting up between 0500 and 0600 which can make for a very long day.  She often doesn’t want to come and sit with us in bed either, she wants to go downstairs for breakfast.  Here she is below at LegoLand in Windsor, Berkshire, UK.

 

It's been 9 months

It’s been a while now since the last post.  Probably over 9 months.  I did write on the iPad but it doesn’t look like it published correctly.

Well it’s now 31st July 2014.  Almost a year since my surgery!  Things are getting much better now.  The scar is healed pretty well and the pain has of course gone.  The only time’s it’s noticeable are if you eat a bit too much you feel a bit sore and also when sitting up from laying down.  That still hurts a lot.

I’ve been back to hospital several times this year.  I’ve seen the guys in Liver Outpatients again and they are happy and have a CT scan (with contrast) booked early September with follow up on that mid September.  I’ve also seen an Endocrinologist for the other growth on my Adrenal gland.  They are pretty happy this is nothing bad but after an initial consultation suggest it’s generating a hormone making me absorb too much salt.  The book me in for a saline suppression test which apparently either confirms or denies this.  

I had the test mid-june and it’s pretty boring as it’s a 4 hour visit where the simply insert a cannula and let 2 litres of saline pass through you over the 4 hours.  They take blood samples before and after and can apparently tells what’s going on from the results.  I have a follow up on this mid October so we shall see then.  The consultant is very good as he understands I’m in no rush for further surgery right now and he doesn’t seem to suggest I’ll need any as maybe it could be treated on the blood pressure drugs but maybe in the long run it’s best to remove whatever it is.  They say it could probably done via keyhole so much better than fully open like before.