Red Bull Switzerland Leads the Race with Virtual Production
Red Bull Switzerland picked Sony’s cloud-based Virtual Production service to live-stream the 2018 Alpenbrevet motorcycle race.
- Red Bull Switzerland needed to live-stream high-quality footage of Alpenbrevet race to social media platforms
- Mountain location posed challenges in deploying production infrastructure
- Traditional live production demands major upfront investment in on-site hardware and personnel
- Sony Virtual Production offers frictionless ‘on-demand’ production workflow
- Access via laptop to cloud-based pro-quality vision mixer and production tools
- High-quality content acquisition using camcorders and robust 4K wireless transmission
- Cost-effective, convenient alternative to capital-intensive live production
- Flexibility to capture and distribute content quickly, without needing costly physical infrastructure at remote locations
- High-quality live-content streaming to Red Bull social media platform
Sony's Virtual Production was the perfect solution for our event as it gives us the freedom, flexibility and agility to capture and distribute content quickly, without having to deal with the logistical nightmare of installing physical infrastructure in these remote locations.
Hubert Zaech
Production Manager, Red Bull Switzerland
Live from the Swiss Mountains
Sony’s Virtual Production solution was the winning choice of Red Bull Switzerland to live-stream the Alpenbrevet 2018 one-day motorcycle race in Switzerland to social media. Sony Virtual Production is an on-demand Cloud production service, providing a complete toolset for multi-platform content creation and delivery.
More Agile, Frictionless Workflow
Reliable, high-quality live production has traditionally required serious investment in local production infrastructure and a supporting cast of talented creatives and technicians. An agile and cost-effective alternative, Virtual Production by Sony offers a frictionless production workflow with ‘any time, any place’ access to a cloud-based professional vision mixer. High-quality content created in the field can be delivered quickly to social media, websites, apps or CDN platforms.
No Obstacles to Quality Content
“Over the years, our Alpenbrevet event has become an important date in the calendars of casual motorcycle racers across Switzerland and Europe,” explains Hubert Zaech, Production Manager at Red Bull Switzerland. “While the scenic route of the race is a big draw for our participants, it poses a significant challenge for our broadcast team, who want to capture and live-stream the event across the globe.” The remote mountainous location posed no obstacle to Red Bull Switzerland, who used Sony’s Virtual Production solution to live-stream the entire race to social media. The whole event was captured and broadcast using only portable camcorders with robust 4G wireless connectivity and a single laptop to access the Virtual Switcher’s intuitive interface.
Professional-quality Production, on Demand
With Virtual Production, users pay only for what they need, when they need it. Camera crews on location used wireless transmitters to feed a Virtual Production switcher hosted in the Cloud via Amazon Web Services. Logging in to a pro-quality vision mixer from any Web browser allows users to switch camera feeds, add graphics, logos and captions, and stream the output to a range of different platforms, including YouTube and Facebook Live. Find out more at www.pro.sony/virtualproduction