Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), Korea’s largest public broadcaster, delights audiences across the region with a broad range of content, including live coverage of international sporting competitions. As it began preparations to relay a high-profile global sporting event held in Beijing, China, in March 2022, pandemic-era challenges prompted KBS to rethink its traditional production approach. Rather than rely on dispatching local crews and broadcast facilities as it had in the past, KBS leveraged a cloud-based broadcasting system to enable remote production. To bolster monitoring and return signal configuration for the transmission, the company established a workflow comprising an AJA BRIDGE LIVE multi-channel live video solution for remote production, contribution, collaboration, streaming, and delivery.  

Previously, KBS leveraged an SRT-equipped workstation or IP equipment to support monitoring and return signal configuration for remote broadcasts. This approach, however, resulted in less than desirable picture and sound quality. In exploring alternatives, bandwidth proved a key consideration for the KBS team, as moving to the cloud would require a stable receivable bandwidth of at least 100Mbps. 

Offering encoding and decoding of H.264, H.265, MPEG-2, JPEG-2000, and NDI codecs up to UltraHD 60p, AJA BRIDGE LIVE is able to easily manage the bandwidth required for a live cloud signal. Park Kwon-Soon, technical director, broadcast systems department, KBS, shared, “BRIDGE LIVE provides incredibly stable network bandwidth for our workflow, which is essential in live broadcasting environments. It’s durable and delivers truly exceptional performance, unlike anything we’ve seen before.” 

Since introducing BRIDGE LIVE into its workflow, KBS has leveraged the device regularly for its Integrated Broadcast Broadband (IBB) service, as well as domestic and international broadcasts. In addition to operating cable/satellite/IPTV channels through its subsidiaries, KBS plans to use its cloud-based remote solution in broadcasting future landmark sports events.

In reflecting on the new capabilities of KBS’ workflow, Kwon-Soon added, “BRIDGE LIVE gives us more flexibility across the production chain with support for multiple channels of input/output, as well as a wide range of streaming protocols, such as RTMP, HLS, and SRT. We’ve just begun to uncover its potential and can’t wait to continue exploring its broad feature set.” 

About BRIDGE LIVE
Developed in cooperation with streaming software experts Comprimato, BRIDGE LIVE is a turnkey solution built for critical streaming and contribution applications with high performance 12G-SDI video encoding/decoding, stream-based transcoding, with flexible 12G-SDI I/O, comprehensive metadata and closed caption support, all within a compact 1RU form factor with redundant power supplies. www.aja.com/products/bridge-live.

About AJA Video Systems
Since 1993, AJA Video Systems has been a leading manufacturer of video interface technologies, converters, digital video recording solutions and professional cameras, bringing high quality, cost effective products to the professional broadcast, video and post production markets. 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.

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