GLL Season Four PUBG Finals livestreamed with ATEM Constellation

posted:

17/03/2020

The grand finals of GLL’s fourth series of PlayerUnknown Battleground (PUBG) saw 16 of the world’s best teams, with 64 simultaneous players, battling it out for a $150,000 prize pot

Held at Stockholm’s Metronome Studios, live coverage of the three day event was handled by esports specialists Black Molly Entertainment. “We cover a huge variety of tournaments and competitions, online and offline, but when you have all of the players together under one roof, it gives you the opportunity to create a more elaborate show, with pre and post content, as well as the gameplay itself,” begins David Thåst, EIC at Black Molly Entertainment. “So we can have a lot of fun bringing additional elements into play, whether that’s showclocks or lighting and theatrical touches. That all said, those additions can also make these productions more demanding.”

With so many players battling simultaneously, and 72 cameras in total, the first challenge for the team is making sure they are across everything going on in the hall. “Each gamer station has its own reaction cam, which is managed through a bespoke control system, to bring them into our central production gallery,” explains David. “Then we have a series of seven or eight URSA Broadcast, equipped either with SMPTE/Lemo or as RF links, as our arena coverage package. Three cameras cover the caster and presenter studio sets, and four are deployed around the venue on jibs or as roaming wireless units with RF telemetry utilized through Blackmagic Design’s API.”

At the gallery, an ATEM Constellation, paired with an ATEM 2 M/E Panel and two ATEM 1M/E Advanced Panels produces the PGM and international feed mix. “As well as providing us with a massive amount of inputs and outputs, which is crucial to esports live production, the ATEM Constellation also offers us lots of possibilities when it comes to scaling and incorporating live camera feeds, computer signals, graphics and replays seamlessly,” explains David.

The Black Molly Entertainment team takes on main editorial duties for the series, with GLL’s experts creating a submix for gameplay. “As with any esports event, there are layers of content, as you’ve got to show what is happening in-game while also showing the audience what is happening in the arena itself, how players are reacting and responding,” continues David. “To make sure we’re not cross cutting too much, we use features like SuperSource, DVEs and picture in picture, as this allows you to create a multilayered narrative without breaking up the action.”

As host broadcaster, Black Molly Entertainment takes responsibility for taking feeds out to Twitch as a livestream, as well as packages for international broadcast partners, and David concludes that Blackmagic Design infrastructure is the foundation of all of its esports production workflows. “As well as the ‘standard’ jigsaw pieces, whether that’s cameras or switchers, we also depend hugely on Blackmagic’s range of DeckLink capture cards for our unique tools. All of our encoders, CG and playout systems simply wouldn’t exist and we couldn’t deliver the high quality productions that our esports clients know and rely on us for.”