HITS

Virtual production today essentially means creative teams have gained the freedom to create without the limits that once stood in their way.

That includes the ability of independently owned stages to host hundreds of productions per year, featuring LED walls and advanced forms of lighting and image capture, all cropping up almost as quickly as the new facilities themselves.

These connected stages are generating a massive amount of data.

And that data requires new, innovative ways of being moved around “and boost the connectivity for this sea-change happening with virtual production,” said Lisa Gerber, director of media and entertainment for PacketFabric, speaking during a breakout session at the recent Smart Content Summit event in Los Angeles.

Her and Robbie Yates, sales engineer for PacketFabric, discussed how regular old internet may not be enough anymore to get the job done. “There are reliability issues, capacity issues, a lot of congestion,” Yates noted.

Add on the fact that many of these new stages are in far-flung locations, and the type of connectivity and cloud access that virtual production demands may not be a reality.

A new model of delivering cloud services to these locations is vital to a process which relies on security, high bandwidth and constant transfer and collaboration, the pair said in their presentation, one that requires affordable infrastructure and production-grade networking where it’s may have been previously overlooked.

To listen to the presentation, click here.

The 2022 Smart Content Summit event was held in conjunction with the EIDR Annual Participant Meeting (EIDR APM), and was presented by Whip Media. The event was produced by MESA, in association with the Smart Content Council and EIDR, with sponsorship by BeBanjo, Signiant, Qumulo, Adio, Alteon, Digital Nirvana, Slalom and Rightsline.