Big Show, No Control Room: Do Live Production Anywhere

Live production—where every second counts and mistakes are less welcome than rains at a beach wedding. Traditionally, working in live production has meant relying on massive on-premises setups—tons of gear, meticulous planning, and lots of logistics. But with cloud-based live production, you can achieve the same results without the flop sweat seeping through your clothes. In this blog, we’ll explore how cloudSwXtch can become your go-to solution for handling for managing high-stakes live events with ease.

Why Move to Live Production in the Cloud?

Let’s consider the challenges you face with traditional live production. You’re dealing with large-scale events, like major sports broadcasts, that require a ton of resources. You're hauling around equipment, setting up on-site, and hoping everything runs smoothly. It's not for the faint of heart. But with cloud-based solutions, you can virtualize your entire setup. No more truckloads of gear—just log in, and you’re ready to go.

cloudSwXtch allows you to deliver world-class production from anywhere, whether you're working in the cloud or a dedicated facility and supports everything from SMPTE 2110 uncompressed video, JPEG XS, and diverse sources like SRT, RIST, multicast, or unicast. No matter the live production challenge, you’ll have the tools to handle it.

Achieving Enterprise-Quality Production in the Cloud

One of the biggest concerns with moving to the cloud is what it might do to quality. Can you really achieve the same high standards as on-prem setups? The short answer: absolutely. In our demo video for Live Production, cloudSwXtch showcases its ability to deliver high-quality video with incredibly low latency. For example, sending HD video from a RED camera into the cloud for live transformation by Cinnafilm’s Tachyon LIVE. Using our cloud environment as dynamic media content hub, we adjusted video resolutions and frame rates on the fly, before sending on to endpoints. The 1080P 50fps live video from the RED camera was converted to 1080P 60fps, with motion compensation, without a hitch.

The latency of packets through cloudSwXtch is less than three milliseconds per hop. That’s practically real-time, helping to ensure that your live production is as responsive as it would be with any traditional setup. Plus, it can fully saturate NICs in the cloud, meaning you’re getting maximum performance without sacrificing quality.

The Flexibility of Cloud-Based Live Production

Cloud-based production is all about extending your workflows. Using cloudSwXch, you can migrate your current workflows as well as expand them into and through the cloud, taking advantage of its elasticity without compromising the quality of your production. Whether you're running a live event that requires burst capacity or managing multiple streams from different locations, you can place your operations team wherever you need them, giving you flexibility in how and where you manage your live production. (Using cloudSwXtch, you can also take advantage of business continuity capabilities, like high availability across multiple regions, to ensure that your operations are never disrupted.)

Live Multicast in the Cloud

In legacy cloud production setups, live production can feel like a slow, linear process—like mailing a letter and waiting for it to arrive. But with cloudSwXtch, it’s a, ongoing conversation. In our Live Production demo video, we demonstrate how EVS Cerebrum can communicate with endpoints in the cloud and on-prem via NMOS ISO-4 discovery and ISO-5 connection management. From selecting a RED camera on-prem to sending a nearly 500mbps stream from ground to cloud, cloudSwXtch handles it all with ease.

With this SMPTE ST 2110 configuration, not only do you get the live video stream, but you also get detailed information such as the NMOS SDP. This means you see every detail—every nick and hair of the image—at an extremely high quality that matches traditional on-prem setups.

Check out our Demo Video Library to Learn More

Using cloudSwXtch, you can extend your workflows, achiever enterprise-quality production, and maintain the flexibility to produce world-class content from anywhere. Check out our Live Production in the Cloud Demo Video, where we take a closer look at how cloudSwXtch transforms live production, from real-time video resolution adjustments to seamless integration with existing workflows, or go here to see all demo videos.

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