In March 2020, The People’s Court’s production was paused due to the pandemic and its production team started exploring ways of producing the show remotely.

Says Scott Ratner, Senior Editor at The People’s Court, “Very quickly we came across the Quicklink solutions which included the necessary features for our particular production workflow that other systems lacked. Namely the ability to record each contributor independently at full resolution, and to be able to connect to and manage many participants throughout a shoot day.”

A ST500 (Studio-in-a-box) was deployed to court reporter Doug Llewelyn’s home in North Carolina to be set up in his home library. ST500’s and ST150’s were also deployed at the court’s judge in Florida where a remote studio setup was installed.

The ST500’s (Studio-in-a-box) allowed the show’s producers to gather professional, high-quality contributions. The inbuilt camera, lighting and audio were able to be controlled remotely from a secure web browser. The solution is an all-in-one, easy-to-use portable unit incorporating a Panasonic PTZ camera, inbuilt lighting, LCD touchscreen and audio interface.

For interviewing litigants located in their homes, the Quicklink Studio (ST55) was used to gather high-quality contributions from desktop, laptop, mobile and tablet devices. The solution allowed The People Court to easily send a guest invite via email, SMS or WhatsApp and have the litigants intuitively join without the requirement of installing any apps or software.

Jamie Billet, Supervising Editor at The People’s Court added; “We experimented with Zoom, Skype, and other video conferencing solutions, but there was no way to record full-frame and full-resolution video for each person. We settled on Quicklink to connect and record the streams from our professional cameras filming the judge and the rest of our cast, as well as the phone or laptop cameras connecting our litigants.”

Ratner added; “The Quicklink solutions made it possible for us to produce an entire season of People’s Court remotely. In March we wrapped production of season 24, recording more than 300 cases and 150 shows totally remotely utilizing hardware and software from Quicklink.”