Live production in India heads for the cloud

Master control rooms and outside broadcast vans have, for some time, been synonymous with high-quality live production. However, over recent years, we have seen a gradual shift from this model. The days when your production crew had to sit together in one control room surrounded by expensive hardware are gone.

During the pandemic, broadcasters and production companies across India had to reimagine how they produced live programming and those who embraced the shift toward remote production and cloud-based workflows continue to enjoy the benefits.

India reaps the benefits of cloud production
There are three principal benefits that are emerging from the cloud production use cases we see in India.

Cost effectiveness
One of the most common benefits of a cloud-based production workflow is eliminating the need to maintain significant infrastructure assets, such as OB vans, equipment rooms, and servers. Following the pandemic, and given the volatility associated with the global and domestic economy, the budgets of many broadcasters and production companies continue to come under increasing pressure.

This is leading many to recognize the benefits of switching from a CapEx model to an OpEx model (from owning their production equipment to a more flexible leasing or usage-based model). A cloud-based approach removes the costs associated with technology obsolescence and can flex with your needs.

Scalability and flexibility
Production companies and broadcasters need to ensure that diverse audience segments are catered for, no matter the format, language, device type, or platform. The recipe

for success to meet the ever-increasing demand for content lies somewhere between scaling vertically (in terms of volume of content) and horizontally (in terms of adapting content to the array of platforms, upon which the content is consumed). A cloud-based workflow will afford you this flexibility and scalability, while reducing or avoiding the upfront costs associated with a traditional onsite and hardware-dependent approach.

As consumption habits continue to gravitate toward online and mobile, it becomes increasingly important to go beyond linear broadcast platforms, and distribute content to the preferred platforms and devices of audiences. Distributing content to a fragmented digital and social media landscape is critical to winning the battle for new audiences.

The ability to create content once, and reuse it (and re-monetize it) many times over, particularly over digital platforms, is more important than ever. A recent report by global advertising and marketing agency, Dentsu, predicts that digital advertising spend in India in 2023 will, for the first time, account for more than television advertising.

Reduced dependency on physical spaces
Establishing a cloud production workflow is a viable strategy to reduce the dependency of broadcasters and production companies on physical office space. Creating the flexibility to operate remotely via the cloud removes the risk that major incidents, such as pandemics or earthquakes bring your live productions to a standstill.

The cloud powers collaboration, with content shared far easier across remote teams who can work on projects jointly. Indeed, that collaborative approach also applies to LiveU. We have established multiple partnerships with other major industry players – including Avid, Blackbird, Grass Valley, and Vizrt – to enhance productions and collaborations and we recently acquired cloud-based video production provider easylive.io. The easylive.io live streaming production studio is now being actively integrated into our holistic cloud workflow.

Producing live Esports in the cloud
Established in 2015, India-based NODWIN Gaming plays a pivotal role in growing the gaming and Esports ecosystem, both domestically and internationally. The company brings expertise and solutions in all aspects of the Esports industry, including tournaments and events, influencers and content, and marketing and activations.

Working with easylive.io’s cloud production platform, NODWIN Gaming’s team has successfully delivered professional live streams (in 1080p/60fps) of various Esports tournaments and shows to multiple destinations simultaneously (including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and OTT platforms). Working in the cloud enables them to localize feeds and ensure a multilingual stream workflow. The solution also provides a full-stream redundancy without any broken feeds, independent of local internet connections and local technical issues.

The future of live production is in the cloud
Cloud-based production solutions have become increasingly popular in live video production because they offer a more cost-effective, flexible, and scalable alternative to OB vans or other on-premise production infrastructure. The improved collaboration potential and remote working opportunities can also fuel innovation and further cost efficiencies.

Cloud production brings other advantages, including enabling you to produce more content and re-use content in infinite ways. You are no longer bound by rack space, available power, availability of specialized hardware, or requiring your entire team to be in one physical space.

As we continue to be challenged to innovate and create more live content on smaller budgets, cloud production will become even more pivotal to live broadcasting in India.