De Tune Helps Public School Take Client Events Virtual with Grass Valley’s Cloud Production Platform

Los Angeles-based live entertainment and media company, De Tune, has chosen Grass Valley’s recently launched GV AMPP cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) platform to support completely virtual, live event broadcasts. De Tune first deployed GV’s Agile Media Processing Platform to help Public School, the creative agency owned by Czarnowski Collective, successfully – and quickly – pivot the corporate theater-style events it runs for clients to the virtual world.

“We wanted a truly decentralized production approach with a true engineering centerpiece that you can count on to be consistent while driving multiple outputs from a single user interface. GV AMPP does that; we can use it to look at all the other aspects of the workflow to ensure they are behaving as we expect and keep pushing out content even with the inconsistencies of the internet,” commented De Tune’s Founder and CEO, Michael Thuney. “This type of cloud-based approach is truly globalized, meets our clients’ needs even beyond the restrictions of COVID-19 and gives us more utilization on the people and equipment; now I can have my team at home and available to work on more shows during the week.”

In its first project with Public School, De Tune leveraged the GV AMPP Master Control application to create a master control room in the cloud with full redundancy, accessible anywhere in the world. The workflow supported three hour-long events, delivered to six countries across EMEA, the Americas, and Asia, featuring 40 presenters around the world, located in their respective homes with no on-site tech support. Live feeds, with translations and closed captioning, were delivered to a global audience of 5000 over CDNs. Using GV AMPP Master Control, a 24-strong De Tune team, located remotely, was able to seamlessly manage 37 terabytes of live video and data in the cloud.

Johnathan Barhite, executive producer at Public School, commented: “Due to COVID-19, we doubled down on our virtual events and needed the right cloud SaaS partner to come on board with us to supply the right tools to make that happen. Thanks to the combined experience of our production partners and the capability of the Grass Valley solution, we’re able to give our clients new opportunities and access to HD livestreams with full broadcast switching and graphics tied to our CDNs all via the cloud.” 

GV AMPP is central to the GV Media Universe concept, a comprehensive ecosystem of cloud-based tools, services and partners that revolutionizes the way live media is produced. GV AMPP is the first cloud-based offering specifically designed for broadcast, giving customers a simple way to unlock flexible, distributed production workflows, easily and rapidly scaling cost and features up or down as needed.

“Adaptability and flexibility are critical to the success of our customers’ businesses. This project with De Tune shows how GV AMPP allows live content producers to leverage the power of the cloud and decentralized workflows to get high quality live content on air even in the most challenging circumstances,” added Sydney Lovely, Grass Valley’s senior vice president, technology & networking. “We’re delighted to have them as the first partner to offer a managed service based on the GV AMPP platform. The deployment allows De Tune to take on the constraints of lockdown head on and to help expand its production capability to stay ahead of the curve as we move into a new media environment and the project with Public School is just the first of many successful De Tune productions leveraging this solution.”

All aspects of this continuous 24-hour broadcast were based in Azure and AWS, bringing in live presentation streams from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and China.