Let the Games Begin!
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Riot Games is an Esports innovator and creator of the competitive, PvP, worldwide on-line game League of Legends. Over 67 million international players log-on per month with over 27 million playing each day, and over7.5 million playing at the same time during each day’s peak play time. League of Legends professional team tournaments are held at various locations throughout the world culminating in the World Championship Tournament viewed live on-line by more than 27 million fans around the globe. The professional team tournaments are streamed live from the Westside Media Center and can be viewed on lolesports.com and 40 broadcast partners in 19 languages.
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According to Randy Marzec, Director of Key Accounts at VTP, Inc., the Barnfind Channel Partner in Los Angeles, Riot Games had very specific fiber transport requirements not commonly available from a single supplier: Transport 24 channels of digital coax signals (ASI, SDI, AES, or MADI) in any combination, and 4 channels of analog coax signals (Video, Sync, LTC) in any combination, Point-to-Point with edge routing at both points. Each channel must be user configurable as transmit or receive in any combination at either point. In addition, the system must be field expandable and user configurable to accommodate future facility needs including Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.
“The Barnfind fiber optic transport solution provides everything Riot Games needed,” commented Marzec. “The BarnOne Series frames provide signal agnostic transport with internal edge routing and multi-rate reclocking all in a 1RU rack mount enclosure. The Barnfind platform is scalable and can be easily user reconfigured which provides a flexibility not found in any other fiber transport products. In addition, the price for this Barnfind system was significantly more attractive than that of other manufacturer’s products that were considered for this project.”
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Working with Endi Maricevic, Senior Engineering Manager for Production Associates, the engineering consultant and SI on this project, Marzec designed a system consisting of four 1RU rack mount frames split between two areas in the Westside Media Center. One set of BarnOne BTF1-02 and BTF1-06 frames are located in the Central Equipment Room adjacent to the Master Control Room. A mirror image configuration is located in the Secondary Equipment Room at the back of the facility.
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The BTF1-02 frames are configured with 16 BNC connectors and 16 open SFP ports with an internal 32x32 signal agnostic multi-rate reclocking router. Each BTF1-02 frame is populated with 16 Fiber Optic Transceiver SFP+ modules. The BTF1-06 frames are configured with 8 BNC connectors and 24 open SFP ports with an internal 32x32 signal agnostic multi-rate reclocking router. Each BTF1-06 frame is populated with 4 analog coax SFP+ modules and 12 Fiber Optic Transceiver SFP+ modules. Each BNC connector is user configurable as input or output in any combination. The SFP ports are hot swappable and support any of the Barnfind SFP+ modules in any combination.The system launched in late January and has been in steady use 5 days per week, successfully bringing live broadcasts of League of Legends tournaments to millions of viewers worldwide.
About Barnfind:
Barnfind Technologies AS, headquartered in Sandefjord, Norway, manufactures a multi-function, low power consumption signal transportation platform which supports numerous signals in one frame. Common video and telco formats including KVM, SDTI, SMPTE 2022-6, MADI, ASI to IP, 4K 60p workflows, HDMI, DVI etc. are supported. In addition, there is a full 32 x 32 router in the frame with re-clocking on all outputs (BNCs and SFPs), reference input, full redundancy and the capability to have integrated CWDM/DWDM multiplexing. Barnfind has no-cost control software called BarnStudio which can be downloaded from the website. In addition to this there is also the possibility to use many 3rd party control systems such as Skyline/Dataminer, ScheduALL, LSB/VSM, BFE/KCS, DNF, TSL, and Ross OpenGear/DashBoard etc.
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About VTP:
VTP, Inc. headquartered in Los Angeles CA. with Mid-West Region Offices in the greater Detroit, MI area has been a hardware and software solutions provider since 1979 serving Broadcast, Entertainment, Corporate, Educational, and Government clients throughout the Americas.