From Hollywood movie premieres and celebrity concerts to esports tournaments and reality shows, BC Live Productions helps bring the wow factor to live productions around the world.
Musician-turned-live producer BC Live CEO Brett Collins started the company in his living room and has since expanded to include four locations in and around Los Angeles that also offer a mix of on-site and remote live performances. like equipment rental. With features that leave no room for a second take, Collins has made AJA gear an indispensable part of the company’s ever-expanding range.
Collins noted, “We rely on many of the AJA products we receive from Key Code Media, both in production and in our rental pool. We use Fiber in many projects so that we can transmit audio and video over long distances, so FiDO mini converters are great for video transmission, and the transition to 4 channels is very convenient.
“We also do a lot of work with KUMO routers, and the Ki Pro GO H.264 multi-channel HD recorders are great when customers need files right now—they can just grab a USB drive and leave as soon as the program is over. ”
While the BC Live team initially developed remote workflows for their international corporate clients before the pandemic, they quickly switched to offering remote packages as work on local in-person performances ceased. Demand for remote kits has skyrocketed, and the company’s solutions have helped get back on the air safely, from talk shows, game shows and reality shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to NBA and NFL content. Using their AJA equipment, the BC Live team can continue to deliver valuable content remotely.
“The pandemic has challenged many production teams, including BC Live, to use distributed ways of working, and now that people have realized that everyone doesn’t have to be in the same place to create content, it’s easier to keep up with consumer demand for content,” Collins explained. “However, as customers become more aware of new features, requests become more adventurous. We try to keep up with the times and anticipate their needs, so we always provide the best possible solutions. Part of that is evaluating new technologies and implementing them where it makes sense, like video over IP, which is now ubiquitous.”
“There are also endless occasions where we need to play different kinds of videos that are easy to navigate with our AJA equipment, even as we enter the world of 4K. Our Ki Pro units are also very popular for rentals,” he added. “In general, using AJA puts me at ease because I know they take their projects seriously and their tools meet three criteria: price, reliability, and elegance.”
Looking to the future of live streaming, Collins is eyeing video over IP. He concluded: “The BNC connection is great for reliability, but with IP video you can also include a lot of ancillary data and it’s incredibly scalable. Luckily, we have excellent network engineers, so the addition of IP capabilities went relatively smoothly and we were able to succeed in the remote world. Each new location or PTN we interact with has its own set of connection protocols so we need to be flexible and make sure we can work with all sorts of formats, vendors like AJA we have every ability to navigate between protocols , platforms. and codecs.
