The Collectv helps F1 documentary make The Grid
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Editor
| 17 March 2021
Emmy award-winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy The Collectv has revealed its continued involvement in the production process of Netflix’s fly-on-the-pitwall F1 documentary series Formula One: Drive to Survive.
Collectv F1 17 March 2021
The third season of the Box to Box Films production, covering the 2020 Grand Prix calendar, will air on Netflix from 19 March, a week before the 2021 F1 season commences at the Bahrain International Circuit in Bahrain.

Since its first involvement with Formula One in 2012, The Collectv has provided broadcast services to both Sky Sports and Whisper for Channel 4. It has been involved with Formula One: Drive to Survive from the first season and plays a role in ensuring all data from Box to Box’s Ultra HD camera crews is safely and securely ingested, backed up, transcoded, and sent on to post-production.

Box to Box deploys anywhere between six to nine 4K camera crews at each race, which can generate in turn anywhere between 7TB to 12TB of data between them over the course of the race weekend. Given the F1 Broadcast Compound shuts down rapidly after the main race has concluded and gets packed away to move onto the next race in a demanding schedule, The Collectv has built systems to handle the throughput in the timeframe required and that adhere strictly to Netflix’s backup criteria.

In addition, LTO and near-line storage is used on-site, and one or two types of transport drive, typically G-Technology or Lacie are maintained. Material is transcoded into DNxHD 36 before being sent on drives to The Farm in London for post-production. That said, as the production schedule ramped up towards the end of the 2020 season this was switched to a direct 10GbE connection. Taking up two racks in Box to Box’s production area, The Collectv’s system was initially based on rack-mounted Dell 7920 workstations, but has recently been re-engineered around HP Z2s to take advantage of their smaller form factor.

“Our new equipment means that we can be based at the circuit and we can also be based out of a hotel room if need be, which is an important consideration in this era of biosecure production,” explained Chris Sarson, MD and co-owner at The Collectv. “Also, for the last three races last season we added somebody on via a remote connection. As always, we had a person on the ground who was getting those cards, putting them in the card readers, and copying those onto machines. Then when they went off shift, we could have someone back at base transcoding, copying those files off the drives ready to be delivered to The Farm for post. It’s a big saving both in production costs and in efficiencies and is something we’re looking to do more in the future.”

“The Collectv has been an invaluable partner on Formula One: Drive to Survive from Day 1. Their industry leading technical knowledge, coupled with a desire to innovate has ensured they are central to our media management for this series, and several of our other titles” added Tom Rogers, executive in charge of post-production for Box to Box Films.

“The 2020 season tested their innovation to the maximum, and The Collectv proved once again why we continue to partner with them. They adapted our media management processes, workflow and infrastructure to ensure we could operate as seamlessly as possible within the parameters of our Covid secure production plan.”