Newsletter from 25/03/2014
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MOBILE PRODUCTION
Formula One Coverage Flies Away with Presteigne Broadcast Hire
Leading facilities and rental company Presteigne Broadcast Hire has won a contract from BBC Sport to provide its on-location technical resources for its coverage of Formula One motorsport. The equipment, which includes the capabilities for live production and delivery as well as fast turnaround editing, packs into three containers for shipping in cargo aircraft. The flyaway kit designed by Presteigne Broadcast Hire includes production control facilities to create the unilateral coverage, switching 15 feeds from the host broadcaster with three wireless cameras covering the presenters in the pits and paddock. Live production equipment also includes radio microphones and wireless in-ear monitoring for presenters. Presteigne Broadcast Hire also provides a technical crew to support the team at each location.
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Formula E Selects Vislink to Deliver HD On-Board Video Transmission Systems
Vislink announced that its Gigawave on-board camera and live video transmission systems will be used at the new fully-electric FIA Formula E Championship to capture real-time close-up action from the race track. Formula E kicks off in Beijing in September. The championship will form 10 rounds taking place in cities around the world, and will run through to June 2015. The series will see 10 teams (each with two drivers) going head-to-head in a race to be crowned the first ever FIA Formula E Champion. With Vislink’s Gigawave technology, spectators around the world will benefit from full high definition footage from on-board the cars.
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FreeRide World Tour Deploys Blackmagic Design Live Production Workflow
Blackmagic Design has announced that the Swatch FreeRide World Tour by The North Face, which showcases the world’s best skiers and snowboarders executing stunts and runs at the top of Europe and North America’s biggest mountain ranges, is live streaming competitions using a Blackmagic Design broadcast infrastructure, including the Teranex 2D Processor and ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher. A self contained production unit is constructed at the top of the mountain hosting one of the tour’s four European stops. Three tons of broadcast equipment is helidropped on to the mountain, where a 14 person production crew assembles the unit in a heated tent to protect from freezing cold winds of up to 100 km/h.
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Robe For Rose Bruford Concert Lighting Project
Robe teamed up with top Lighting Designer / Director Dave ‘Bickie’ Lee to make the latest moving light technology available for ‘The Concert Lighting Project’, a practical module being taken by students on the BA (Hons) Lighting Design course at leading UK theatre and performance college, Rose Bruford. The initiative was co-ordinated by Hansjorg Schmidt, Programme Director for Lighting Design at the Kent based college and by Ashley Lewis and Petra Sefton from Robe UK in Northampton and was also supported by rental company Siyan - who themselves have a reputation for nurturing emerging young LD talent – and console manufacturer, Avolites. Says Hansjorg, “With Robe and Siyan getting involved this year the students were able to have a much larger lighting rig to work on and it was a fantastic opportunity for them to test drive the absolute latest Robe kit as well as working with someone of Dave’s caliber and experience”.
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Bringing Local Debates to Life
TVSUD is a local French television channel, founded in 2011, which broadcasts across the cities of Nimes, Montpellier and surrounding areas. As well as programming on news, culture and local interest stories, the channel also broadcasts live events. In order to produce broadcast quality content, for both live reports and content for pre recorded items, TVSUD’s technical team relies on a compact flyaway kit built around a Blackmagic Design broadcast workflow. With a reliable mobile broadcast unit in place, the technical team is constantly innovating with its broadcasts, in order to produce engaging and illustrative content to give an inclusive feel to the programming; a critical element for regional broadcasters.
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A State of Trance 650: grandMA2 Discovers New Horizons
A State Of Trance (also known as ASOT) is the title of a weekly radio show hosted by prominent trance DJ and producer Armin van Buuren. The success of the show has also spawned several live dance events around the world. The show is celebrated live each year in different locations around the globe with a lineup of the most exciting trance artists, and recently took place at Utrecht in the Netherlands. This year the show (A State of Trance 650 – New Horizons) will be staged in eight more cities ranging from Moscow to Buenos Aires.
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SPORTS
EVS and HBS Reinforce Their Collaboration For Brazil
EVS, the leading provider of live video production systems, and FIFA’s dedicated host broadcaster HBS have extended their long-standing collaboration to work on the 2014 FIFA Wold Cup™ in Brazil. HBS will deploy and integrate EVS’ advanced technologies, including live multi-format production tools, central media exchange and multimedia distribution platforms. This will enable HBS to make the best of the live action instantly available for production and distribution. HBS designs and runs the entire host broadcast operation for FIFA, including the production and integration of services. It will provide the broadcast feed from all 12 event venues, covering 64 matches. The broadcast infrastructure is made up of three key workflows: live production at the different venues across Brazil; a centralised broadcast media server and file-based media sharing systems; and a new multimedia distribution platform.
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AJA Technology Extends Worldwide Coverage of 2014 Winter Paralympic Games
The Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, held from March 7-16, marked AJA Video Systems' third collaboration with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to provide broadcast solutions for the international distribution of live and on-demand coverage of the games. IPC’s ParalympicSportTV team delivered 300 hours of HD content to audiences worldwide using eight AJA Ki Pro Rack recorders; an AJA KUMO 32x32 compact router with a KUMO Control Panel controlled through its webserver over LAN; an AJA FS2 dual-channel converter and frame synchronizer; and four AJA Hi5-3G Mini-Converters. “AJA equipment played a huge role in our Paralympics coverage again this year; we couldn’t have pulled the project off without it. KUMO truly formed the heart of our pipeline, allowing us to distribute our internal signal to every single piece of equipment,” said Ingo Schneider, Head of ParalympicSportTV.
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IAAF World Indoor Championships 7-9 March, Sopot, Poland
Held in March, this was the most important athletic event this year. Sportsmen from 150 countries took part in those perfectly organized Championships. Event was broadcast to some 30 international TV stations and some of them like Eurosport, BBC, TV Globo and TVP (Host Broadcaster) created their own studios in the Ergo Arena in Sopot. Event was also shown on the four giant LED screens located above the main playground. The event from television point of view was organized and televised by Polish TV. Four productions OB-VANs were engaged in this production. Polish TV, HD 16 camera van was working as the main production centre and all running competitions coverage.
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DiGiCo Takes the Ice for 2014 NHL Winter Classic, Stadium Series and Heritage Classic
This year, for the first time, the National Hockey League (NHL) programmed four regular season games into outdoor venues in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, scheduling the 2014 NHL Stadium Series between the previously established NHL Winter Classic and NHL Heritage Classic series of outdoor games. Tasked with mixing the live musical entertainment at the games in all three NHL series for broadcast on the NBC networks, Ron Reaves called on production provider Clair Nashville to supply a DiGiCo SD10 digital audio mixing console with two SD-Racks. Reaves, who mixed the music and fed it to NBC’s broadcast production engineer, who added it into the audio mix, reports that the DiGiCo system’s Optocore fiber optic transport capabilities were critical to its successful operation at the Winter Classic.
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SHOWS
Robe for Rudimental
Leading lighting designer Jonny Gaskell chose Robe moving lights to be right at the centre of his design for the latest UK leg of BRIT Award winning band Rudimental’s ongoing tour. Gaskell has been working with the chart-topping rising stars since 2013. This tour has been ongoing since last summer as their success and popularity continues to rise exponentially on the back of their debut studio album, ‘Home’ and their energetic live performances. The Robe count on this tour which played theatres and arenas included 28 x ROBIN MMX Spots and 34 x ROBIN LEDWash 600s which were the backbone of the rig.
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Adlib Burns for Ellie Goulding
Liverpool based Adlib supplied an L-Acoustics K1 / KARA sound system – plus some of their new K2 as side hangs at London’s O2 Arena - for BRIT Award winning Ellie Goulding on her recent high profile UK arena tour, working with engineers Joe Harling (FOH) and James Neale (Monitors) and Production Manager Rebecca Travis. Adlib has worked as the audio supplier for Goulding’s live work for some time. Tony Szabo (KSE) was the Systems Engineer for the K1 system as specified by Joe Harling, with whom Adlib has also worked with previously on Lana Del Rey. Michael Flaherty and Steven Montgomery were the other audio crew members. The main system for the two week tour comprised 14 x K1 speakers a-side with 4 x KARA downs at the bottom as the main left & right arrays, with side hangs of 8 x K1s and 4 x KARA downs, together with a centre cluster of 4 x KARAs.
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Pasquale Quadri Receives the 2014 MIPA/PIPA Lifetime Achievement Award
Pasquale Quadri, founder and chairman of Bergamo-based Clay Paky SpA, received the prestigious lifetime achievement prize at the MIPA/PIPA awards held in Frankfurt during Musikmesse, the most important international exhibition of musical instruments and professional sound equipment for the entertainment industry. The ceremony took place on 13 March 2014 and the winner was chosen by an overwhelming majority of the jury, which consisted of journalists from all around the world, representing more than a hundred industry journals. This is the fifteenth time the annual MIPA awards have been presented. They have been extended this year, for the first time, from the world of musical instruments to the field of stage lighting and sound (PIPA awards). The fact Pasquale Quadri is the first person from the lighting industry to receive this prestigious award is therefore particularly significant.
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PRODUCTS
Next-Generation XS Server Exceeds all Standards for Fast-Turnaround Production
The new XS server from EVS provides unprecedented speed and flexibility for studio ingest and fast turnaround productions. Its flexible, ‘à la carte’ multi-format capability and channel configuration mode make it the most adaptive solution for any type of studio and mobile production operation requiring a high level of reliability. The boosted connectivity of the new platform guarantees new XS operators the industry’s fastest media access and exchange. The new server enables highly productive workflows with its 4RU and 6RU versions. The 4RU high-performance server provides a full open configuration mode to cope with mission-critical live TV program production and its multiple standards. Features – such as multiviewer capability and1080p support – can be easily added.
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Optocore and Partners Steal the Show with Three-Way Comms Network
Following the development of new software, enabling Optocore devices to be connected directly to the Optocore-DiGiCo fibre loop, the German specialists created an ambitious network at this month’s Frankfurt Prolight+Sound which threatened to steal the show. The two companies — along with Clear-Com — certainly ring fenced the opening morning with successive ‘virtual’ press conferences, where the media thronged to the stands — first to see DiGiCo MD James Gordon hosting, with marketing director Dave Webster speaking remotely from the Optocore stand, followed by Bob Boster, MD of Clear-Com, who was beamed in from the Optocore stand as Simon Browne anchored the press call from Clear-Com’s stand location.
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Electra Partners Adds Calrec to the Mix
Two electronics companies with their roots in the Swinging Sixties are again to be fused together in a deal by investment firm Electra Partners. Last year Electra bought Allen & Heath (from D&M Holdings), which started making mixing desks for musicians in 1969 for bands like Pink Floyd and The Who and now supplies equipment used by acts including Adele and Rita Ora. It has now paid £14million for Calrec (to D&M Holdings), which was formed in 1964 and supplies audio mixing consoles used by TV and radio broadcasters including the BBC, Sky and Al Jazeera. This is a relatively low valuation for Calrec Audio, which according to public records made an after-tax profit of $4.73m on revenue of $29.33m for the fiscal year ended March 31 2013.
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Vislink PLC Acquires Pebble Beach Systems
Vislink plc, the global technology business specialising in high performance wireless communications products and services for the broadcast, defence and security markets, today announces that it has completed the acquisition of Pebble Beach Systems for a total consideration of £14.9 million, comprising £12.9 million payable in cash and £2.0 million represented by the issue of 4,700,904 new Vislink ordinary shares at a price of 42.545 pence per share, being the average mid-market closing price of Vislink's shares for the last 25 business days before, but not including, the day of completion. Pebble Beach Systems has been purchased with in excess of £5.9 million cash on the balance sheet, resulting in an effective net consideration of £9.0 million.
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