A better production layout

Hi there folks!
I work for a live production company that does a lot of amateur and pro-am sports. We cover everything from lawn bowls and baseball to dirt oval racing and beach volleyball.
One of the avenues I'm looking to improve upon, is our setup and packdown. Our current kit has allowed us to be agile on a budget, but it also introduces lots of points of failure which I'd love to eliminate.
I'll attach a diagram of our current setup, and I'd love to hear what we could do to make it more concise, regardless of price.
The flow atm goes from the cams to the DeckLink Duo which is being used by WireCast for replays and bugs. We used the ATEM Mini for the vision switching, using input 8 as a DSK which WireCast is outputting to. The LiveU gets the result from HDMI Out 2, and sometimes we also split that HDMI output to a monitor for the commentators so they can see what the people at home are seeing, including any replays and scores.
As you can see from the diagram, it's about 8-10 SDI cables, and about the same number of HDMI cables, which is a lot of plugging and unplugging, and a lot of cable mess on the desks of wherever we setup. Not to mention all the USB cables necessary to power all the equipment and connect it to laptops etc.
Any advice or hardware suggestions are welcomed, the faster we can make setup and packdown, the better, and the less cables we can connect/disconnect, the better also.

trying to bump this up, would appreciate any ideas!

The reality is that individual SDI and HDMI cables are pretty much the standard, most cost-effective, way of doing this for very small, low-cost, set-ups, but they have risks of failure (HDMI isn't as robust as HD-SDI either).

You could rationalise some of the mess if you go to switchers with separate control panels and rack mounted processors, allowing more pre-wiring and less mess on your desks (having signal cables going to control panels is never nice)

If you are running your camera SDI cables via a common cable route then you can use fibre solutions that let you run multiple SDI connections over a single fibre cable - but these solutions are probably too expensive. (Barnfind are one supplier I hear good things about - but there are much cheaper options via AliExpress that I have zero experience of. We use Rattlers, Sheds and Pythons usually)

As with all things the triangle of features, cost and speed applies - you can have two of the three but not all three. (You can have it quick and good but not cheap, good and cheap but not quick, or quick and cheap but not good)

Appreciate the reply!
Will confirm that fibre isn't the best situation as we're generally outdoors or routing our cables through windows or doors as the pro-amateur orgs generally don't make provisions for broadcast equipment at their clubs cos we're not there 90% of the time.

I think the main issue I'm trying to solve is having as much as I can pre-wired in a rack so that set up and pack down are mostly a few cable affair, and not a 50 cable affair.
The biggest problem I see (other than the cable mess) in our setup is our reliance on Wirecast and it needing ISOs coming from the blackmagic SDI card, but no idea how to get a replay system without it.

Hi Fred

If I understood your diagram correctly, the camera are SDI, + ATEM Extreme HDMI + Wirecast workstation wirh DeckLink Duo (SDI inputs)

You need each camera signal for the ATEM and also for Wirecast.

Well, without having more information,
A solution could be: a Video Hub (a CleanSwitch 12x12 or a Videohub 10x10 or 20x20 ) depending on your needs and future expansions.

So, "fixed" SDI cabling on site, or depending on the case you could leave the Video Hub installed and all the cables also (why not) a rack shelf with 4 SDI to HDMI converters + 1 HDMI to SDI converter . All the cables identified, at least, in terms of video you would only need to connect the cables to the ATEM and Wirecast workstation + commentator + LiveU solo.

My 2 cents

I'd stick everything in a wheeled 8U rack and backplane all of the IO, then make a utility loom between the rack and the switcher (power/hdmi/cat/com/etc.,)

Good Luck

Hi Fred..


Check it out, just for reference and/or ideas to help you. the photo show a rack with a CleanSwitch 12x12 I integrated for a client (top image shows the Videohub/ front and back Videohub), the bottom of the image shows other rack (rear connections) with 4 Bidirectional converters inside.

You can install everything in a portable rack or in a Rolling Case, or something permanent on site if they allow it.