Lights Out Xtreme Fighting held LXF23 at Thunder Studios on March 22, 2025. My transmission assignment was to deliver the live program in both English and Spanish, with an independent backup feed for each language.
That turned one event into four paths that had to remain easy to identify and monitor: English primary, English backup, Spanish primary, and Spanish backup. The goal was not simply to create duplicate streams, but to keep each language available if a device or connection changed during the event.
Separating feeds, devices, and connections
The workflow used three Teradek Cube encoders and one LiveU unit to send the four Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) feeds. The venue's house internet carried the primary traffic, while an on-site Starlink system provided a separate backup connection. Signal distribution from the production truck fed the encoders before the network paths diverged.
The workflow kept the language, primary, and backup paths clearly identified, while the Starlink backup did not depend on the venue's house internet. That made a problem easier to isolate without treating every visible symptom as a failure of the source program.
Verifying the complete route
Before going live, I checked the equipment, confirmed each destination, and used confidence returns to verify that both languages were arriving through their intended paths. This mattered because a healthy encoder display only proves the signal left one device; the return confirms that it survived the route and remained usable downstream.
Clear labels and a small, deliberate network were as important as the individual encoders. Four similar feeds can become confusing under show pressure, so the operating plan had to make the language, priority, device, and connection behind each path immediately understandable.
Redundancy the team could operate
All four feeds were verified before the event and the transmission workflow ran through the live production. The assignment reinforced that redundancy has to be more than a second output on a diagram. It becomes useful when the backup is meaningfully independent, continuously visible, and simple enough for the team to act on without hesitation.
Bilingual distribution added another reason to be disciplined. Every technical decision had to preserve two audience experiences at once, and both deserved the same level of preparation, monitoring, and recovery planning.