HELO for CELCOM AXIATA Malaysia Open 2019

Last April, Macking Domain handled the live-streaming production with AJA HELO for the CELCOM AXIATA Malaysia Open 2019 organised by Badminton Association of Malaysia.

CELCOM AXIATA MALAYSIA OPEN 2019
CELCOM AXIATA MALAYSIA OPEN 2019
The requirements were simple:
  1. 1080/60p Video
  2. Audio from each court (there were 4 in total)
  3. Inserting live scoreboard from each court
  4. Stream to YouTube

Firstly our main equipment list is as follows:
  1. AJA HELO H.264 for Streaming
  2. AJA HD10AMA (discontinued)
  3. Analogue Audio Embedder
  4. AJA HA5 HDMI to SD/HD-SDI Video and Audio Converter
  5. BirdDog Studio NDI for NDI Encoding
  6. Newtek IP Series VMC1 for live switching 4 SDI inputs and 4 NDI inputs
  7. Blackmagic Multiview 4 HD for 4-stream previews.
CELCOM AXIATA Malaysia Open production workflow
HELO + CELCOM AXIATA Malaysia Open 2019 Production Workflow
Watch a behind-the-scenes video

WORKFLOW SUMMARY

  • Our INPUTS comprise of two parts – SDI videos and NDI videos with embedded audio.
  • We connected 4 Sony video cameras from the courts to the Newtek VMC1 via SDI.
  • After that, we took the scoreboard feeds from the laptops of each courtside. The feeds then went through a process of being encoded to NDI. Part of this process included embedding the audio from the courts via the AJA HD10AMA.
  • In addition, for every pair of the badminton courts, the embedded audio signals were coming in as an NDI stereo channel via the BirdDog. We then split them into 2 separate mono channels on the TriCaster and routed all 4 mono channels correctly to the right scoreboards.
  • From here on, every “court production” used 1 M/E each which encompasses 1 camera feed with the corresponding scoreboard feed. Each M/E was then routed to each SDI output on the VMC1.
  • We then connected All 4 SDI out from the VMC1 to 4 units of AJA HELO for the live-streaming on YouTube. At the same time, we were also recording higher resolution videos unto the SD cards in HELO.
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open

PRODUCTION SUMMARY

The Malaysia Open 2019 ran from 2-7 April, 9AM to 11PM on some days. As a result, all the equipment ran well for the amount of time they were running every day that week. Above all, all 4 units of the AJA HELO ran the streams consistently with no hiccups.

We are happy to report positive feedback from the client for the amount of work we were putting into the production. This includes the Blackmagic Multiview for previewing the feeds to YouTube. We even assisted them with additional clips that we inserted in between games which helped in the increase of their subscriber count to 80k within a week. Overall, the high quality of the production helped in the success of the streams. Even the fans appreciated the free viewing of the games.