Fieldcraft Studios Uses Quicklink For Marathon

The Marathon des Sables — a grueling, 256 km, six-day race in the south-Moroccan desert — has recently been completed by the British 71-year-old, Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Fieldcraft Studios took up the task to film live media segments of what has been called “the toughest footrace on Earth” to be broadcast back to the United Kingdom. With the blistering heat, sending live media back to base from the remote Sahara whilst maintaining a professional broadcast was always going to be difficult without the right equipment.

Quicklink donated the Mac Live software to Fieldcraft Studios to help send the live broadcasts back to base. Liz Scarff from Fieldcraft Studios reveals why they chose the Quicklink Live: “We needed a reliable, easy to use piece of software that would enable us to produce numerous high-quality live broadcasts for the BBC and other major broadcasters”

The Quicklink Software LNG Mac Live features Adaptive Mode — which automatically sets the bitrate depending on the bandwidth — and Resilient Mode, which allows you to adjust the error correction before broadcast. Designed for the journalist always on the move and needing the flexibility and ease of use, the Quicklink Mac Live features an H.264 codec enhancement when using Thunderbolt.

“We took an SDI 1080 50i output from the Canon C300 into a Black Magic ultra-studio mini recorder via thunderbolt into the Mac Book Pro which was then encoded with the Quicklink Mac Live software.”

Fieldcraft Studios used the Mac Live over the 6 day period in the Sahara. The software produced excellent results according to Liz Scarff, “We were working in extreme conditions to produce the Live Broadcasts from the Sahara Desert with Sir Ranulph Fiennes and using QuickLink Live made the job easy. It really was a click and connect experience.”

The Quicklink software LNG Mac and Windows Live is available as a free trial from Quicklink here.