Newsletter from 26/01/2012
Focus on Azerbaijan, Moscow, London and Turkmenistan
MOBILE PRODUCTION
ORF FÜ22 HD
Österreichischer Rundfunk, ORF, ("Austrian Broadcasting") is the Austrian national public service broadcaster. Funded from a combination of a television licence fees and revenue from limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media. The ORF television channels are broadcast terrestrially and via the SES Astra 1H satellite at 19.2° east. Via satellite ORF eins and ORF2 are encrypted, allowing only Austrian residents who pay the Austrian television licence (Gebühren Info Service, "GIS") to watch them. Most of Austria's best known TV stars are working for ORF. According to surveys the most prominent television presenter in the country is former ski runner Armin Assinger who is the host of the "Millionen-Show", Austria's version of Who wants to be a millionaire. Mirjam Weichselbraun, a former MTV presenter is hosting Austria's edition of Dancing with the stars. The most popular comedy show on ORF is "Wir sind Kaiser" ("We are Emperor") with comedian Robert Palfrader playing "Emperor Robert Heinrich I". and inviting celebrity guests to make fun of them. Since years the ORF is famous for its live broadcasts of classical concerts, operas and operettas from various worldwide known open-air stages (Salzburg, Bregenz, Mörbisch) or concert halls (Salzburg, Vienna) but also for its sports productions like the Hahnenkamm Downhill Race in Kitzbühel or the 4Hills Tournament events in Innsbruck and Bischofshofen.
Get the Specs of FÜ22 HD here
BSI Broadcast Sports Inc.
With more than 25 years of experience in designing and deploying camera systems that operate in the most demanding environments, BSI is synonymous with on-board cameras. Whether it is a race car speeding around a track at more than 200 miles an hour or an America's Cup yacht bounding over the ocean, BSI delivers the kind of images that allow your audience to feel the wind in their hair or the ocean spray on their face. BSI pulls your viewers into the thick of the action with camera systems that provide areal-time experience so compelling it should have them buckled in for safety. BSI developed the first wireless on-board camerasystems used in North America and is still the acknowledged marketleader more than a quarter century later. Constant innovation and the application of years of experience to all our on-board products allows us to continue to deliver the best solutions. BSI currently maintains a fleet of ten 53' RF Production mobile units and three support units dedicated to delivering radio frequency facilities to over 200 annual events. The mobile units are custom designed and built with the latest technologies and configuration flexibility that allows to provide exactly the level of service customers demand.
Find the presentation of BSI here
SPORTS
Olympic Games 2012: Athletics
One of the most popular sports that will feature at the London 2012 Olympic Games is also the biggest: Athletics features 2,000 athletes running, walking, jumping and throwing for gold in 47 events. Athletics is the perfect expression of the Olympic motto ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’) – the competition requires athletes to run faster, throw further, jump higher and leap longer than their rivals. For London 2012, all non-road Athletics events will be held at the Olympic Stadium in the new Olympic Park. This state-of-the-art venue, which will have a capacity of 80,000 during the Games, will also host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. The marathon and race walk events will take place in the center of London with start and finish at The Mall.
Read the case study here
BSI executes flawless mobile coverage of US Olympic Marathon Trials
For this particular event, BSI had to address the challenges of maintaining reliable and robust signals within the confines of the narrow streets and tall buildings throughout downtown Houston. Informed antenna selection paired with educated use of COFDM transmission settings allowed for just the right level of robustness in signals while maintaining a high level of video quality at the end of the chain. To maintain high quality and eliminate the inevitable artifacts from decoding and re-compression, BSI left the transport streams intact throughout the transmission chain. Broadcast Sports' Technical Director Clay Underwood said, "Our ability to manage RF signals in the digital domain through the use of customized systems allowed us to tackle all the technical hurdles of this event. The production company, Carr-Hughes, was then free to focus on delivering a compelling story with the amazing shots our mobile units were able to provide."
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DELTA-sport Live at the Africa Cup of Nations 2012
DELTA-sport HD is operated to broadcast the virtual graphics (offside lines, circles, distances, speeds...) for the Africa Cup of Nations 2012 that take place in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea from January 21 to February 12. This is the third participation of DELTACAST in major African competitions, after ACN 2010 and CHAN 2011. DELTA-sport HD 7.0. and its stunning capabilities in true-3D overlay generation, provides an advanced 3D rendering engine that allows integration of complex 3D animated objects and scenes in the field view. DELTA-sport 7.0, with the super clip features, allows to build and playout fantastic game analysis sequences. With those new features DELTACAST is more than ever ahead of its competitors.
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SHOWS
Crystal Hall Approved as Eurovision 2012 Venue
Ictimai TV, Azerbaijan's public broadcaster and host of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, proposed three venue options and expressed its preference for the new indoor arena. The Baku Crystal Hall, which was commissioned by the City of Baku, is a brand new multi-purpose indoor arena with an expected capacity of up to 23,000 spectators. Approximately 16,000 people will be able to attend each of the three Eurovision Song Contest live shows in May. Jon Ola Sand, EBU's Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest says "We are excited to hold the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in a brand new, state-of-the-art concert hall. Now that we have the assurance that the construction will be ready in time, we can look really forward to the contest." The 2012 Eurovision Song Contest will take place on the 22nd, 24th and 26th of May in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. Azerbaijan won the right to host the contest when viewers and professional juries across Europe chose their 2011 entry Running Scared by Ell/Nikki as winner.
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Alfa-Show 4D: A Magnificent Video Projection Show on Vorobyevy Gory
Alfa-Show 4D was conceived by Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, to celebrate its 20th birthday. Viktor Shkipin, Alfa-Bank’s Director of Marketing, explained that the bank has a long tradition of organising magnificent celebrations, including Russian performances by a number of legendary stars. “Our choice of medium for Alfa-Bank’s anniversary celebration was no accident. We consider our bank to be the most technologically advanced in Russia, so we chose the most technologically advanced public event medium available today: huge multidimensional video projection,” Viktor said. The show was designed by world-renowned director David Atkins, an esteemed public event organiser, and his company, David Atkins Enterprises (DAE). Atkins has produced some of the largest and most celebrated shows in the world: the legendary opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Vancouver and Sydney, as well as the World Expo in Shanghai and the Asian Games in Doha. This was David’s first time working in Russia. The event took several months to prepare.
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Martin Audio MLA Boosts Brixton for Rock Legends
Within this Grade II-listed building ghosts of its cinema past remain, and the bulging balcony fascia has proved the downfall of many a sound system, returning the fire power off the stage, and bouncing the sound waves back at the band. To the amazement of FOH engineer Michael ‘Ace’ Baker, Martin Audio‘s Jason Baird and system tech, Mark Edwards, simply notched out this chunk of the coverage pattern in the dedicated optimisation software. “Chickenfoot is one of the loudest bands that have played through the system, so we stood onstage and switched the MLA’s DSP from a setting that didn’t notch it out to one that did, using the tablet PC over the WiFi link,” explained Martin Audio’s R&D director. The difference was plain to hear, with an obvious reduction in reflections off that deep balcony front.
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Hawthorns and Clay Paky Support Sadler’s Wells Street Dance Festival
The top international line-up of dancers was lit by lighting designer Jonathan Samuels who said he was extremely pleased with the Clay Paky equipment. “I found the Alpha Profile 1200 to be one of the most versatile and easy-to-use moving lights that I have ever worked with. The features they provide allowed me to create unique lighting for the 20 or so companies that performed, without having to unnecessarily repeat looks or states.” According to Samuels, time was of the essence. “The time demands on the lighting designer of Breakin’ Convention are immense and having equipment that can react as quickly as the ideas flow is a massive advantage. Finally – here is a tool which works with you and your ideas, rather than one that shapes or dictates them!” “The hip-hop theatre genre is a hybrid of dance, theatre and occasionally rock n roll,” said Samuels. “Having units that can perform well across all of these was a massive advantage and added significantly to the look of the festival.
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PRODUCTS
AMS Pictures with First Grass Valley Karrera Video Production Switcher
AMS Pictures is headquartered in Dallas (with a second location in Austin), where it maintains three production studios (the largest being 3,700 sq. ft), all supported by a single control room, which the staff of 75 uses to produce live-to-tape and live-to-air shows. There are two outbound fibre paths for distribution. The control room is now being renovated to accommodate the Karrera. AMS Pictures is now one of the first production companies to offer full HD production and distribution services in the Dallas area and will use the new Karrera (2 M/E version in a 4 RU rack) switcher for all types of video projects – from corporate and educational productions to original programming (documentaries) for live broadcast and cable television distribution. The Karrera’s size is ideally suited to the dozens of multi-camera studio projects produced each year. Its feature set provides an array of capabilities to increase AMS Picture's business and offer new services, such as native HD production in the 720p and 1080i formats and full SD/HD simulcast functionality.
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Turkmenistan Chooses Vitec Videocom Brands for its New TV Tower
Much of the equipment is pan and tilt heads, pedestals and tripods from Vinten, a global leader in camera supports. Among the 127 Vinten units supplied is the award-winning Vector 750 pan and tilt head, which is the preferred manual head for operators around the world. From Vinten Radamec, the global leader in camera automation, the TV Tower has six Autocam HS102 remote pan and tilt heads, controlled by the compact Multicontroller II. Further camera support is being provided by a number of Sachtler DV12 fluid head tripod systems, along with two Artemis camera stabilising systems. Helping to power and light the station are several hundred units from Anton/Bauer, innovator and premier provider of batteries, chargers, adapters, mounts and on-camera LED lighting systems. Solutions provided include the DIONIC HC battery, which delivers a higher power to weight ratio than conventional NiCd and NiMH batteries.
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HD Upgrade of SWR Playout Center in Baden-Baden
System integrator Wellen+Nöthen is responsible for the upgrade and redevelopment of the infrastructure as well as for the supply, technical integration and implementation of the new HD components. The system integrator will upgrade three of the four SD-based broadcast transmission chains to ensure consistent HD-based broadcasting. This includes the upgrade of the ingest and playout technology for the umbrella program and the regional windows for Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as the HD upgrade of the transmission chain for emergency broadcasting. Wellen+Nöthen is also already preparing the system for the subsequent conversion to HD of the broadcaster Saarländischer Rundfunk. Since the integration is taking place during ongoing broadcasting, the changeover will occur in several stages. Initially, all of the ingest functions will be upgraded to HD-enabled processes and operations, e.g. live ingest, file ingest, media-based ingest and quality control.
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just.REPLAY Supports Super SlowMotion Camera Replays
just.REPLAY is an innovative Slowmotion and Replay Server, developed and manufactured in Sweden. With 3 HD-SDI Inputs and one HD-SDI program output and its Linux-based operation system it offers a flexible and cost effective alternative to existing replay systems in the professional TV and event industries. The user friendly interface gives an overview about in- and outputs, playlist- and editing features and a moving timeline. More than 10h recording time onto a RAID of Solid State Disks and the brand new Superslowmotion option for triple speed Broadcast Cameras are integrated features, more disk space is optional. The just.REPLAY server is designed for users by users to provide the most essential functions needed for most productions and therefor very easy to operate. Even with little experience everybody can learn the workflow in a couple of minutes, slowmotion and replay sequences can be played out even by non-trained staff by using the USB Controller. It´s easy, it´s just.REPLAY!
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BVE 2012: UK's largest programme of free broadcast seminars is set to inspire
BVE is the essential exhibition for broadcast, video and audio professionals bringing you into contact with over 300 of the biggest brands in the industry. Discover inspirational new products from the likes of Source Distribution, Panasonic, Nikon, Sony Broadcast, Harris, JVE, ARRI, Grass Valley, root6 and VizRT.
View the exhibitor list
Get insight into the latest trends and industry developments at the most extensive programme of free seminar content of any UK broadcast and content production show. Our comprehensive programme off 300 seminars deals with a wide range of topics, including: 3D wildlife filming; HTML5 and video; Final Cut Pro X; video file structures; Cloud transcoding and much more.
View the full seminar programme
Getting there is easy
Earls Court 2 is easily accessible from all 4 London airports; Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead and City. Last minute deals are usually available from EasyJet.
Register for free BVE tickets