The IBC x Google Cloud Hackfest Supported by Formula E kicked off in London Friday July 4 with a stellar cast of ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and RTE engineer teams, supported by Google coaches.
The challenge for the dry-run hack day ahead of the full IBC x Google Cloud Hackfest in September was designed to test the entire linear pipeline, which consisted of a connected series of vendor implementations in a Google Cloud environment - Veo 3 to quickly create some content, then modules consisting of Ateme, DaVinchi Resolve, Norsk Studio and Techx’s Tx Darwin live media processing platform.
The event was hosted at Google’s London HQ, with a separate Dublin location joining remotely. The two Dublin teams - from RTE - went head-to head with the eight London teams, split into groups of five, to test the production pipeline built in the G Hacks platform on Qwicklabs by Google engineers ahead of the main event at IBC2025. With an anticipated 200 participants at the main IBC2025 event, the 50 participants and ten teams made a perfect dry run trial.
The teams were greeted by a scene-setting introduction by Justin Grayston, Head of Customer Engineering, Telco, Media and Entertainment UK & I Google. Grayston explained the challenge for the day, the pipeline design details and other housekeeping details, before introducing the Google coaches, allocated two teams each.
The teams were briefed and then tasked to run their content through each vendor ‘module’ in turn, keeping to a tight timeline for the day as well as progressing through the logical production sequence.
After an action-packed day - and a break for lunch in Google’s rooftop canteen - the teams submitted their videos which were then scored by Google Gemini. The scoring aimed to account for full use of the tools and following the full process, rather than taking shortcuts - due to the testbed nature of the day.
In spite of the furious pace, the output was both technically accomplished and impressively creative, with general agreement that many of the final submissions were near-broadcast quality. The participants were universally positive about the process, working around a handful of minor challenges with enthusiasm.
The full event, the IBC x Google Cloud Hackfest at IBC2025 in Amsterdam will involve standing up broadcast infra to create a FAST Channel in Google Cloud, among other challenges.Participants will have real content from Formula E to use in their hacks, to develop real live sports use cases. Prizes will be awarded across several different categories, and participation is free - register your interest now!
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