Brompton rides into its next decade on the virtual production wave

from TVB Europe 93 October / November 2022

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Season four of Star Trek: Discovery was shot on Pixomondo’s large volume LED stage in Toronto, which included Brompton Tessera SX40 4K LED video processors

LED is now well established as a replacement for green screen in broadcasting. Video processing specialist Brompton Technology has experienced the rise of this market in its first ten years, as chief executive Richard Mead tells Kevin Hilton

In the last ten years, LED and virtual production technologies have made serious inroads into the broadcast market, changing not just how TV programmes look but also how they are made. Companies supplying systems for this still relatively recent way of programme making range from established names to operations that launched straight into the new field. Among those in the second category is Brompton Technology, which has been celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

Brompton Technology was established by product development and manufacturing company Carallon in 2012 to produce LED video processing products. Carallon itself was founded in 2004 by seven engineers who had worked previously at Flying Pig Systems, developer of the Wholehog lighting console range. It was set up to develop control systems for the entertainment industry, working on a contracting basis with leading brands such as ETC and Harman.

When the founders of Carallon started to come up with their own ideas for finished products, they decided these should be marketed under the banner of associated but separate companies. “It would have been confusing to have Carallon as a service provider to other manufacturers and also selling its own products,” explains Richard Mead, originally chief executive of Carallon and now chief executive at Brompton Technology. “And we recognised that their strategies might well diverge with time.”

The first ‘spin-off’ was Pharos Architectural Controls, which specialises in lighting controllers. This was followed by Brompton Technology and then SixEye, a developer of remote management devices that allow system integrators to manage installations from the cloud. Brompton’s first product was the Tessera M2 LED processor, which has been followed by a full range of processing, distribution and receiver card units.

“From the very beginnings of Tessera LED processing, performance on camera was a priority,” Mead says. “Although live events were our primary market, many major live events are televised; our very first high-profile event was the Academy Awards in January 2013. So we put a lot of time into on-camera performance and have done a lot of work for broadcast.”

What has changed over time, Mead says, is the shift from LED screens as merely an element of a set to now being used to create a virtual background for production. “Previously, green screen would have been used. There are now different challenges because it’s not just about the LED screen looking ‘good’ anymore, it is necessary for the image to look ‘real’. This aligns well with our company approach because our focus in recent years has been on achieving accurate colour rendition and maximising dynamic range.”

The move on from LEDs being video walls behind a presenter to helping create entire virtual sets was already underway pre-2020 but accelerated rapidly during the pandemic. This has reached a point where broadcasters, facilities and producers are now thinking in terms of utilising available technologies to dramatically change how they work, something Brompton has been experiencing first-hand. Mead observes that “virtual production is a term that covers a lot of ground”, with two main approaches to using LED screens as green screen replacements. “A lot of studio-based television or video production is now using virtual sets that are generated in a 3D engine presented on an LED screen backdrop behind the talent, often with an LED floor below,” he says. “Where the camera’s view extends beyond the LED screen, the virtual set can be extended in computer graphics and this can all now be done in real time.”

This usually comes under the general heading of extended reality (XR), which Mead points out is about cost-effectively creating a custom set. Sports and news broadcasters have heavily exploited XR in recent years as a means to ‘build’ studio backdrops that feature creative design while also offering an alternative to physical sets and travelling to overseas locations. Brompton systems are being used for such applications, with recent examples including Australian broadcaster Seven Network’s coverage of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo and this year’s Beijing Winter Games. The latter featured LED backdrops supplied by CT Group (part of NEP Live Events) running with two Tessera SX40 processors.

The other application of LED for virtual production is in more filmic work, or in-camera visual effects (ICVFX), where larger LED volumes

Ed Sheeran’s latest tour used 1,100 square metres of a variety of ROE Visual LED panels, all powered by Brompton Technology LED processing add backgrounds ‘in-camera’ through either a generated 3D environment or plates. “The goal is to get as close as possible to ‘final pixel’ with what is shot on camera, though typically there is still work happening in post,” Mead says. “The advantages here are time and cost savings in terms of the amount of visual effects work done in post, plus the big creative benefits of seeing something closer to the final result in-camera.” Mead adds there is a “fast growing market” for LED in virtual production, with Brompton actively supporting customers working with both techniques. “I won’t claim we anticipated quite how dramatic the growth in demand for green screen replacement using LED was going to be,” he says, “but we had the right technology at the right time to take advantage of the opportunity. Going forward we aim to service our two core markets of live events and film and TV production in parallel. Our recent investment is about scaling up to ensure we do that well.” The latest move in the financial growth of the company, announced in July this year, was a £5.1 million investment from Connection Capital. Mead said at the time it was necessary to “scale up rapidly” to meet the increase in demand for its LED processors. Securing investment in this way also illustrates the divergence in business strategies between Brompton and Carallon, which became an employee-owned concern in 2020. “Brompton has gone the route of private equity to allow it to accelerate its ambitious growth plans,” Mead explains. “It continues to use Carallon as a supplier and greatly values the expertise it brings. But they are entirely separate companies that happen to share a common heritage.” Brompton Technology has carved out its own identity and market over its first ten years and, as virtual production Bild Studios’ MARS Volume is powered by Brompton Technology’s Tessera LED continues to expand throughout processing broadcasting, that will doubtless continue into its second decade. n

KICKING OFF THE DUTCH FOOTBALL SEASON ON TIKTOK

The Johan Cruijff Schaal has a special meaning for Dutch football fans, not least because the trophy is named after the Netherlands’ greatest ever football player. The season opener, played between the winners of the Dutch Eredivisie and the KNVB Cup, kicks the new season off in style and this year, ESPN Netherlands broke new ground by streaming the match live on TikTok.

ESPN seized the opportunity to explore the webbased graphics platform, Singular.live, through its graphics partner, Reality Check Solutions (RCS), who designed a graphics package purpose-built for social media platform TikTok.

Using Singular enabled ESPN to manage its whole graphics production without any friction with existing SDI video workflows. Singular’s Adaptive Overlays also made it easy for the RCS team to create a custom 9:16 format for the graphics.

RCS created a bespoke, adaptive composition for streaming on TikTok in 9:16 as well as providing a web-based control interface that allowed ESPN to easily add branded overlays without the expense or challenge of requiring dedicated hardware and operators on-site. SINGULAR FACTOR

THE BENEFITS OF A LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIP RCS has worked with ESPN in the Netherlands since it first developed an ambitious remote graphics operation for live Eredivisie production almost a decade ago; one of the first of its kind.

Since then RCS has managed the broadcaster’s requested switch from Vizrt to Ross XPression and the relationship has grown to include projects across multiple sports, and innovations such as HDR.

The Johan Cruijff Schaal was the first time RCS delivered a graphics package and workflow using its expertise in Singular for ESPN.

“RCS was historically known for its expertise in Vizrt but we are now adept at delivering solutions across myriad platforms,” explains David Peacock, who led the project for RCS. “We partner with innovative clients who come to us with confidence we can deliver the perfect solution for each project, whatever the technical challenges. ESPN listens to our ideas and demands the highest quality results. Thanks to our long-term relationship there is a level of understanding and trust that creates a highly effective working relationship.”

Providing a high-quality live graphics workflow that is entirely webbased and requires no dedicated hardware, Singular offers an easy way for clients to quickly add new productions without significant capital expenditure or headcount. It also fits seamlessly into existing workflows and adds remote capabilities natively. As the only live graphics platform accredited for sustainability by BAFTA’s albert consortium, it can also be a significant factor in helping broadcasters reduce the environmental impact of their live productions.

Andrew Heimbold, Singular CEO, says: “Singular is seeing adoption from a wide range of clients around the world. Whether it is to supplement existing productions, spin up new complementary content creation or provide a web-based redundancy solution Singular is proving its worth at scale. We are working on some exciting projects that will be launching in the next six months and these will further showcase what Singular can do both in traditional productions and next-gen virtual environments with adaptive and interactive graphics.” n

BUILDING A NEXT-GENERATION M-CDN BALANCING TOOL FOR VIDEO STREAMING

Already leveraging NPAW’s CDN Balancer, European online video streaming service Viaplay was looking for a more flexible multi-CDN load balancing solution to optimise content delivery and costs based on perceived end-user experience and business requirements.

Viaplay and NPAW struck a product improvement partnership to further develop CDN Balancer, turning it into a highly resilient solution to switch between CDNs based on reliable network performance, regional needs, and service-level agreements with CDN providers, all powered by NPAW’s data on end-user experience and video quality

With the new CDN Balancer, Viaplay is able to make the most of its CDN utilisation while ensuring a better viewing experience for its customers. Key advantages for Viaplay include: • Creating and applying various CDN switching configurations based on a comprehensive set of rules, optimising for quality, price, region, or type of content, among others • Having a reliable, highly resilient content delivery system that can operate with real-time network and quality of experience data • Optimise according to CDN volume commitments by minimising peak traffic costs and overage billing

THE NEED FOR SMART MULTI-CDN BALANCING As Viaplay Group’s premium online streaming service, Viaplay finds itself in the midst of a full-scale international expansion. Having recently launched in the Netherlands, it now has over 5.5 million subscribers around the globe and expects to be available in 21 countries by 2023. In this context of growth, optimising the delivery of content is a key area of focus for the company.

Working with multiple content delivery network (CDN) providers allows Viaplay to have a more robust content delivery infrastructure to serve its customers, as individual CDNs can be vulnerable to outages and drops in performance. Switching between CDNs results in more reliable availability and higher video quality, major drivers for higher viewer engagement and lower churn.

But how that switching is made is important as well. A smart, data-based balancing tool can greatly increase performance, reduce delivery costs, and lead to greater user satisfaction.

BUILDING CDN BALANCER FOR VIDEO STREAMING Prior to working with NPAW, Viaplay relied on a CDN balancing system based on the domain name system (DNS), the most common type of load balancing solution available today.

Although easy to implement, DNS-based technologies are mainly meant for static data and have severe limitations when it comes to video streaming. End-user identification is not accurate, CDN performance cannot be tracked in real-time, and they support very few quality of experience switching criteria. Plus, they represent a single point of failure: in the case of DNS failure, the entire balancing system goes down.

Viaplay needed a highly resilient solution built for streaming video on a global scale. The tool should operate in real-time and offer the flexibility to set CDN balancing rules according to the quality of experience and business requirements for each region. To achieve that, Viaplay and NPAW

fed the NPAW Suite’s real-time quality of experience data into the CDN balancing process.

With the new CDN Balancer and its M-CDN Selector, Viaplay now has an API-based balancing solution that can optimise the delivery of content based on the company’s various needs. “We have worked with NPAW to develop a powerful, exible, and resilient multi-CDN balancing solution to meet our business needs. e NPAW team has been very helpful throughout the process, adapting to our needs and bringing in all their quality of experience expertise,” explains Niklas Hammarbäck, product manager at Viaplay

THE BENEFITS OF CDN BALANCER With CDN Balancer and its multi-CDN Selector tool, Viaplay is able to create and enable di erent CDN balancing con gurations based on a comprehensive set of network rules that permit deep customisation. Viaplay can choose to allow or exclude CDNs based on any combination of network rules like country, internet service provider (ISP), type of content, user segment, and more.

What is also advantageous about CDN Balancer is that it allows Viaplay to con gure CDN loads based on real-time, vendor-agnostic quality of experience insights. Content delivery can be optimised according to the end user’s perceived quality of experience, considering issues like bit rate, video playback errors, bu ering, and in-stream errors to render the best viewing experience possible. e NPAW Suite’s CDN Selector allows Viaplay to increase e ciency across regions, cutting down costs and optimising the ful llment of each CDN provider’s quotas. By working with NPAW, Viaplay has also managed to limit throughput per CDN and ISP, reducing peaks in bandwidth demand and being able to have a deeper discussion about service pricing with CDN providers.

“CDN Balancer not only helps us tailor our CDN consumption to each of our audience segments’ needs, but it also lets us control costs and allocate our infrastructure resources in a way that’s not only bene cial for us, but gives our end users a better streaming experience,” adds Hammarbäck. ■