Capturing the fast-paced action of live sports presents challenges for any seasoned production crew, but the team at Kaleidoscope Production and Services LLP (KPS STUDIOS) manages every curveball it’s thrown with ease. The studio’s multi-camera remote production pipeline is engineered to support the rigorous broadcast and streaming demands of major sporting events held across Asia. KPS Studios Technical and Managing Director Rajiv Mehra sat down with us to tell us more about the studio’s work, including how it uses tools like AJA BRIDGE LIVE and OG-12G-AMA to ensure low-latency audience viewing experiences across a range of destinations and device types. 

Tell us more about KPS Studios. 
We’re a production company based in India that specializes in large-scale, multi-cam productions for high-quality live sports broadcasting and streaming. We work with clients across the Asia-Pacific region and offer a broad range of services, including event production, broadcast engineering, and content delivery. One of our biggest projects to date was facilitating the first-ever remote production for the Durand Cup, a national level football (soccer) competition that includes teams from the I-League, Indian League, and the Indian Armed Forces. 

Describe your role in more detail and how you got into the business.  
I oversee the technical aspects of our sports productions and guide the team in properly executing them. On an average day, I could be setting up equipment, testing signal chains, and troubleshooting any technical issues that arise. I’ve been in the business for 25 years and started out as a technician, then moved up to more senior roles. 

What do you enjoy about your job? 
I love the fast-paced nature of live sports production and keeping up with the rapidly evolving technology behind it. Helping my team improve their knowledge and skill set is also rewarding. Right now, we’re focused on getting up to speed on SMPTE ST 2110, which is maturing to the point where it will become necessary to understand in the next few years. 

How does a typical project flow for your team? 
When working on something like the Durand Cup, we station a team of 25 in each venue, including producers, directors, camera operators, sound engineers, and broadcast engineers. We’re involved from start to finish, so we set up the equipment, capture live footage, and deliver the content to our broadcast partners. I-League is made up of 12 stadiums spread across India, so we leverage remote production to control costs. We bring in camera feeds from each stadium into our master control room in Kolkata, where we process it and add in slow-motion replays, graphics, and commentary for distribution to broadcast networks and streaming platforms. 

Describe your pipeline for the Durand Cup.  
We deployed a range of technologies for this project, including 4K cameras, switchers, routers, and encoders. Our end-to-end workflow involved capturing live footage, switching and mixing the signals, encoding and transmitting the content to our broadcast partner, Sony TV, and delivering it to sports streaming apps Sony LIV and SSEN, and other social platforms. 

AJA gear is a crucial part of our workflow, as it supports seamless low-latency signal processing, conversion, and transmission over long distances. Their technology is affordable, reliable, and delivers incredible performance, plus it’s easy to use, which makes integrating it into our workflow much simpler. We use BRIDGE LIVE as a video encoder on the ground, as a video decoder in our studio, and as a video transcoder for low-latency streaming; it helps us move between SRT (secure reliable transport) and H.265. 

BRIDGE LIVE lets us transmit live footage from each venue to the control room in our production facility in milliseconds and using less bandwidth, given the efficiency of H.265. We can also transcode the signal for high quality television broadcast and streaming. We really like the fact that AJA releases regular updates for BRIDGE LIVE, which include new features and improvements like SRT support, which is huge for us. 

For 12G-SDI analog audio embedding, the openGear OG-12G-AMA card is our go-to. It's easy to use, provides cost-efficient, high-quality analog audio embedding capabilities and is compatible with our other AJA equipment. The density is incredible in that we can embed eight channels of audio whereas most others on the market only support four. This is increasingly important as we’re tasked with embedding more languages into an SDI feed. I also love the openGear form factor because it provides us with a flexible and scalable solution for our signal processing needs that we can easily integrate into our pipeline, and with less cabling and less boxes. It’s plug-and-play. 

What trends are you following, and why? 
We're following the latest developments in cloud-based and remote production, and IP workflows, as all three are transforming the way we produce and deliver live sports content. Remote production is clearly the future, as it can provide tremendous cost savings, while also reducing a production’s carbon footprint. Given greater adoption of remote and 4K workflows, it’s also no surprise that the world is quickly moving toward SMPTE 2110 IP video. While we’re transmitting today in HD, we understand we’ll need to move to 4K in the future, and an IP network provides much better bandwidth than a coaxial cable. We’re looking at how we can make our facility SMPTE 2110 capable this year. 

Tell us more about Kaleidoscope’s future goals. 
Our main priorities will be to continue delivering high-quality live sports content, expand our capabilities in cloud-based and remote production, and explore new technologies and workflows that can help us improve our services.

What advice would you offer to professionals entering the business or those already in it?
Stay curious, keep learning, and be prepared to adapt to new technologies and workflows. Aim to deliver  high-quality live sports content with efficiency and reliability, as it’s paramount. Find the right partner to help you along the journey. In our case, ARK Infosolutions has been an invaluable collaborator, providing exceptional service and support as AJA’s authorized distributor of AJA products in India. 

Their expertise and commitment ensured seamless integration of AJA BRIDGE LIVE and OG-12G-AMA into our workflow, enabling us to achieve low-latency, high-quality remote production. The team at ARK Infosolutions has consistently gone above and beyond, offering timely assistance and technical guidance, making them a trusted ally in our continued innovation in live sports broadcasting.

About AJA BRIDGE LIVE 
BRIDGE LIVE is the broadcast quality, low latency turnkey system for REMI, Synchronous Multi-Channel Video Contribution, Remote Collaboration, Direct to Audience Streaming, and Multi Bit Rate/Format Delivery. BRIDGE LIVE was developed as a collaboration between AJA and Comprimato to deliver the performance, reliability, and ease of use needed for critical live encode, decode, or transcode needs. www.aja.com/bridge-live

About AJA openGear Solutions
For critical broadcast and IP applications, AJA openGear compatible converter cards provide the highest levels of quality and reliability for use in openGear frames including the AJA OG-X-FR. AJA offers cards for video and audio over IP, infrastructure, HDMI/SDI conversion, scan conversion, Fiber conversion and scaling. All AJA openGear cards are Ross DashBoard software compatible, allowing easy configuration and control. An open architecture modular frame system, openGear is supported by a diverse range of equipment manufacturers. The platform offers the freedom to choose technology from a wide range of products to meet the needs of broadcast, production, live events, or distribution. https://www.aja.com/family/opengear

About AJA Video Systems 
Since 1993, AJA Video Systems has been a leading manufacturer of cutting-edge technology for the broadcast, cinema, proAV, and post production markets. The company develops a range of powerful, flexible video interface and conversion technologies, digital video recording solutions, and color management, streaming, and remote production tools. All AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com. 

All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact:
Katie Weinberg
Raz Public Relations, LLC
310-450-1482, aja@razpr.com