Have just completed our first run of live streaming events for motorsport using a remote studio rather than having to either build one on site or build a van/bus.

We predominately have been covering motorsport and doing post production for the past 5 years, next year we step into live streaming more often.

After trialling many options we ended up with the following:

3x vMix installs running on AWS (DO NOT use HP Anyware/PCoIP!) - 1 switcher for cameras, 1 producer for final output and 1 director station, unfortunately I've been struggling to find a replay operator, when we find that person we'll have 4 vMix installs in AWS.

1x vMix install running on a laptop at the venue in the commentary booth, this handled the local commentator camera input as well as audio, plus received the remote commentator who was based in Sydney. The audio from both of them was also output to the venue. The delay between what was happening on track in real time, to what the commentators were talking about on their screens wasn't hugely noticeable, plus the local commentator could essentially jump ahead if needed.

4x Cameras around the track sending their feeds via LiveU Solo cloud to a HAIVISION Cloud system, which the vMix instances then accessed for footage.
1x Camera in car running off a KiloView P2
1x Interview camera (Which we only used for a little while but have plans to expand this next year) which had audio going from the hand held mic to the camera, into the stream, and then audio from the camera being fed to the venue.

The stream was all controlled remotely using Streamdecks and Companion on Raspberry Pi.

The stream went out via CASTR to our own website.

I've got a few tweaks to make with the AWS setups such as removing all traces of the HP Anyware/PCoIP system.

This was the result: (slightly cut down to remove a few long delays etc)

Honestly .. it was very bad, luckily the team has been doing it all "off air" so much they can take minimal instruction and just get the job done. I was looking at Unity Intercom but there were limitations with hardware etc that I wasn't keen on.

COMMENTATORS:
I tested IFB for the commentators prior to going live but something changed between the test and the day and none of it worked. We had had USB audio interfaces and it appears that Windows may have swapped them and when I reconnected them it just wouldn't work. We also had to output and input from the local venue audio desk and I'm not sure that we got that setup right.

We had a backup of voip phones to talk to them when they weren't on air, or they could answer and just listen to what I was saying.

For the interviews, he just ran with what he was told and the camera operator signalled to him as the camera op was on radio.


CAMERA OPERATORS:
We use an ICOM radio solution that allows us to talk via IP over a VPN to them. There's obviously a delay with what the director sees and what the ops see, but its mainly direction on who to watch rather than micromanaging the operators as they all have been doing it long enough to know what we want captured. The delay is about a second which is obviously a long time in motorsport but we were able to make it work quite effectively for most things.


FUTURE:
I've got a plan in place for next year where all the audio will be in our own rack mixer (Wing or X32), which will then link in with a Riedel Artist setup for the IFB plus commentator panel etc that then allows the remote commentators to be able to join in the conversation off air and then the production room will be able to talk to them all. We'll also be able to integrate the ICOM radio solution into the Reidel Artist setup for complete communications. Due to cost this will be implemented as we can afford it, but the first stage will 100% be having all the audio managed in our own rack mixer and giving the venue a feed from that rather than them giving us a feed for commentator booth.