Live streaming project in 2026
Up Helly Aa in January 2026 was certainly a very different affair…with the worst weather I’ve ever experienced in the period before, during and after those hardy ‘Vikings’ marched around Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January. You know it is really bad when you hope the heat from the torches can dry the camera lens.
The weather during the main event was grim but wind speeds have been much higher in past years however this year it was the direction of the wind…and rain.
Southeasterly was always the direction I feared the most as almost all our cameras are pointing directly into the weather. I could literally see horizontal driving rain for days and days and days…and our shotgun microphones have taken a serious battering this year.
But the show must go ahead we are told….and indeed it did.
This year I have received a number of emails about how we did the live stream, which companies we used, how big the team was etc - some looking for detailed technical information but most just looking for a non-technical overview.
To make this easier to read then I have decided to run with a not-so-technical overview with a caveat that it may drift a little techie.
I have used the most common questions and tried to answer these as concise as possible. If other questions come along I will update this post.
Why do you stream the event live?
The original reason was to engage directly with Shetlanders working and living away from home. It quickly became obvious then, as it is today, from those viewing that there were many deeper emotional connections with the place that were extremely personal in nature.
This will always be the primary audience for the live stream.
How is it funded?
Our headline sponsors are Promote Shetland and NorthLink Ferries and they carry the primary live streams on their social media channels. These streams are free-to-air and will continue to be so as long as we have their support.
What companies do you work with?
We work with local companies to support the core networking infrastructure deployment and the internet connections required to deliver reliable high quality streaming. GTS Central are a local technical services company who install our core network nodes a week ahead of the event…and then have to take it all down again.
Shetland Broadband provides the location for our Master Control Room and builds, manages and monitors the private core (60Ghz) network dedicated to the event.
Shetland Telecom and Shetland Broadband provided the event with external bandwidth to enable the high quality remote production.
Without the level of support provided by those local companies the live streaming of Up Helly Aa would not be possible.
How big is the team?
This is a home grown production with an extremely small core team. This year we took a new approach in a number of areas to make the most of the skills available.
In Lerwick we had two people dedicated to the installation and operation of the audio-visual equipment and the core network infrastructure. In Lerwick we also had our drone operator who was very much involved in the production and technical setup.
Tom Morton is the consummate professional broadcaster who makes the live stream both personal and informative to the viewers across the world with his unique style…and humour.
For the first time we did the vision and audio mixes outside of Shetland - from Glasgow…by media professionals who used to call Shetland their home.
A total production team of 6 but with so many extras that made it all come together. In Shetland there remains the “can do” attitude and that really is the secret sauce.
Thanks to Adrian, Tom, Craig, Greg, Ian, Marvin, Bo, Tony, Vikki, Violet, Tommy, Rory, Philip, Graeme, Callum, Leah and Robert.
How many cameras did you deploy?
This year we were able to deploy a total of 15 video feeds (1080p25) which is the most we have ever had and only possible with the new production workflow. Due to weather issues we were unable to use all of those feeds. We were also able to test some experimental locations that may be deployed next year.
We took sound from 4 key locations along the route.
How did you keep the drone shots stable?
Launching the drone was always 50/50 and right up to the last minute it was looking like we would not deploy the drone this year. We had the view from the Town Hall as the fall-back feed but at the last minute Shetland Flyer was able to launch and provide some awesome shots which demonstrated just how massive this event really is.
Can you provide some detailed technical information for the project?
MCR located in Market Street with line-of-site to the Hillhead which then has line-of-site to the other primary link nodes located around the Burning Site and in King Harald Street. This is a fully managed private link network operating at 60GHz.
Each network node location is used to co-locate cameras and audio equipment. All remote camera and audio feeds are directly dual-encoded at 1080p 25FPS 10-15mbps and 360p 25FPS 500kbps (last-ditch saloon via backup links) using SRT and fed to the MCR in Lerwick and then distributed off-island for vision and audio mix using dual internet links. All our cameras are remotely controlled at the MCR with the exception of the drone which is done by the operator on location.
The local 4G networks are of poor quality and fall apart due to high usage and limited radio and backhaul capacity so they are no longer used for this project.
In parallel each year we test different equipment to see how it performs with a view to introducing it the following year…or not.
We operate a backup 5GHz radio link network which has the ability to use two independant links (satellite and FTTC). We tested it this year - quality was set much lower to make the most of the reduced bandwidth but this was the main fallback should we have a major failure on the core network. In theory, we plan to be able to run with a limited 3-camera production in the event of a major systems failure at the MCR.
All our nodes use big-battery powered inverters (240V AC) to allow us to continue streaming in the event of a power outage. Even these have backup units.
The vision and audio mixes were managed from two different locations in Glasgow allowing the Lerwick team to focus on the technical systems as well as the feeds being sent to NorthLink, Promote Shetland, AP, Reuters, BBC, FOX and the poor Fred Olsen cruise ship that didn’t make the journey this year. A backup vision and audio mix suite was located in Edinburgh.
Our outbound streams were monitored in 6 global locations by our systems engineer in Copenhagen using our SDWAN connections to London, Chicago, Vancouver, Perth, Melbourne and Aukland.
It needs to be noted here that with NorthLink Ferries experiencing it’s worse weather disruption in its history it demonstrated to me why the current workflow being tested this year is the future. When key personnel are unable to travel due to weather related issues we can still use their skills remotely.
All this…for a couple of hours filming in the dark, wild, wet and windy Shetland Islands on the last day of Tuesday every January…
Will this be the last year?
I get this question every year. Every year I answer the same.
“Definitely the last year
..until next year!”
