Game on for sport OB firms

Broadcast

Outside broadcast suppliers are in a race to upgrade to Ultra High Definition and IP as the technology teeters on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/game-on-for-sport-ob-firms/5101596.article

This is one of those bumper years for live sport with the Rio Olympics and UEFA Euros dominating the summer schedules, but the bread and butter of domestic outside broadcasts is getting shaken up too.

With Sky prepping a UHD service before the start of the 2016-17 English Premier League (EPL) season and with most of its outside broadcast contracts - not coincidentally - up for tender, suppliers are racing to get their assets in order.

“We are gearing ourselves up so that when we get to the stage of renegotiation we can prove we have the expertise, kit and the roadmap to fulfil the needs of a HD/UHD simulcast,” says Eamonn Curtin, commercial manager, Telegenic. “We've been at the forefront of testing for UHD since 2013 when we went to Brazil and shot the Confederations Cup [in 4K].”

Telegenic shares Sky’s existing EPL contract with fellow incumbent NEP Visions. It was the main contractor to both BBC and ITV for the Six Nations, covers rugby (U20s, Aviva Premiership, and Junior World Cup) as well as rugby league for Sky and BT Sport, and is sending four of its trucks to the Euros (Marseilles and Nice) as part of UEFA's host coverage.

The company recently purchased fourteen Sony HDC-4300 cameras for its T25 truck. These are capable of shooting not only 4K, but also HD and super slow motion footage for live broadcast.

“At the moment we are not in position to build any new trucks since we heavily invested over the last few years but you can expect another push for investment from us and other companies over the next year,” adds Curtin.

By deciding not to take the plunge into 3D, Arena Television had the necessary reserves to pull the trigger on three new large mobile UHD facilities totaling £20 million. Its has a 38 match per year EPL deal for BT Sport (in HD) which expires at the end of the season.

“We tend to build a truck every 18 months and the tipping point has now come to move into UHD,” explains MD Richard Yeowart. “We didn’t think 3D would move mainstream and we got that right. What that meant for our business is that we were better positioned when the next major upgrade came along.”

The most experienced 4K live supplier, by some margin, is Timeline. It has completed over fifty OBs for BT Sport making production in the format “mainstream” according to MD Daniel McDonnell. “We turn up, switch on twelve cameras and do full match coverage whereas others are still testing workflows and it's still kind of a special thing.”

Timeline's 4K truck is not solely committed to BT and McDonnell is seeking music concerts and opera productions, overseas as well as in the UK, wanting to acquire at a higher resolution.

A large part of the hesitency in committing to 4K equipment is the unsteady state of gear which works with transport mechanism IP. Standards to move audio and video around in a live environment have not been agreed and key items from video switchers and audio desks, monitors and routers are only just being tested working together. What's more, RF links and super slow-motions – core elements of a conventional OB – are not yet possible in 4K.

Having built its facility using circuits which require four lots of HD signals to be routed around (Quad-HD), Timeline's next investment is likely to be IP.

“IP technology is on the cusp,” says McDonnell. “The standards are up in the air. We want to make sure we can use best of breed technology – a matrix from one company, cameras from another, switcher from another – rather than be tied to a single manufacturer's way of working in IP.”

CTV's sole 4K truck also works in Quad-HD but the company is looking beyond that to IP. “We want a full end to IP chain without limits and we haven't seen any [manufacturer] with that solution,” says Hamish Grieg, technical director. “We want interoperability so that we can put any IP tool in place for use now and in future. We don't want gateways where you need to convert the feed to and from IP.”

CTV will continue its regular outings for Match of the Day and field facilities for Sky's coverage of England test matches against summer tourists Pakistan and Sri Lanka, alongside its perpetual contract for European Tour Productions' golf, but its biggest event of the year is The Open at Royal Troon. It will array 130 cameras including 24 RF units to cover every single shot from every hole on every day of the championship for NBC (also ETP and Sky) - an unprecedented degree of saturation.

CTV has also plumped for fifteen of the Sony HDC-4300s, part of a larger order by parent outfit Euro Media Group. “We evaluated rival models from Hitachi, Grass Valley, Panasonic and Ikegami,” informs Grieg. “While there were pros and cons for each, the Sony is backwards compatible, meaning that it can work in HD SDI today but will also accept IP inputs.”

Arena has gone with a dominant vendor to outfit its three triple expanders. OBX, OBY and OBZ are destined to be the first all IP UHD HDR (High Dynamic Range) trucks perhaps anywhere in the world. “They are primed to go beyond 4K to 8K should the industry go in that direction, or they can cope with High Frame Rates. It’s a very expensive but future-proofed investment,” says Yeowart.

He says his crew are having to learn about how to rack (change focus) UHD cameras and what it takes to monitor an HDR feed in different areas of the truck.

“As communications get faster IP will allow broadcasters access to the data stream back at base for remote production,” says Yeowart. “It means we can employ IP engineers at Redhill [Arena’s HQ] for remote diagnostics. That changes the way the industry works. Once a truck has an issue on site now you have to deal with it locally, but the ability to remotely monitor on the road will be incredibly beneficial.”

Timeline has devised its own remote production editing platform which will allow editing staff to create sports highlights packages away from the broadcast centre. “The idea is that all rushes are held centrally and logged remotely and that the edit could happen anywhere – at a venue, in an office, at home,” explains McDonnell .

Telegenic is taking a watching brief on the technology. “While other companies are using it as their USP, there is still a lot of kit that's required for an effective IP chain,” says Curtin. “We have to take remote seriously,” he adds. “You still need cameras, fx mics and reporters pitch side, but in time the production gallery, sound mixer and vision switcher could move to a central location. Potentially that means not having a fleet of big trucks but specialisms.”

Tier 1 events like Wimbledon will still be worked with large vans on site but remote production will increasingly put pressure on traditional OB firms to adapt.

“Do you need the big edit suite and big integrated vehicles and tape trucks when perhaps there is a model around providing gallery services by the hour,” suggests Bevan Gibson. CTO for ITN which provides the technical production for Channel 5's Football League coverage. “It's getting to the point where I want to pick up the phone to a OB team at a venue and ask them for an encoding specialist who can get low latency high quality pictures from a certain camera back to us. That's something OB providers have not got into but it's where the industry is going.”

SIDEBAR: Changing the sports workflow

The nature of outside broadcasts is changing as broadcasters roadtest IP connectivity to cut costs yet distribute richer live content.

“Perception is a big thing these days. It is not acceptable for public service broadcasters – even if it’s actually more efficient editorially – to be sending large numbers of people overseas during major events,” said BBC Sport's technical executive, Charlie Cope [during a webinar organised by the EBU].

For live events, IP can mean more centralised production reducing the cost of crew on site but also the ability to do more at a venue should the occasion demand it. An example might be the Euros. “Heaven forbid that one of our home nations actually does well during the Euros; there’s then an aspiration to follow them as they progress through the competition,” said Cope. “If you’re able to be flexible about moving a studio operation into a local gallery, clearly that gives you last minute flexibility.”

The cost-benefits of IP also support the BBC's move into airing more women's sports, said Cope. “As rights become more of a challenge we have to think outside the box in terms of how we deliver that content.”

Like the BBC, Sky Sports has been trialling IP production for several years, gradually adding complexity into the mix. It has tested IP on Formula One principally to reduce cargo weight, on the presentation graphics and virtual sets of Monday Night Football, and for Soccer Saturday for which 30 reporters are kitted with lightweight satellite and bonded cellular links, to stream live video over IP.

For last year's US Open tennis Sky left the entire production team in Isleworth, performing a full remote production during the two-week tournament.

“Why build an expensive edit platform at the outside broadcast when you have all those facilities at Sky?” Gordon Roxburgh, technical manager, Sky Sports told a BVE seminar. “This workflow kept the majority of the production team in their environment, where they produce tennis week in, week out. It also let us better resource the OB, to put extra cameras court-side, so we could cross to our reporters who could use Sky Pad [a high-brightness touch screen], so players could analyse their matches.”

For the World Championships of Ping Pong at Alexandra Palace in January, Sky covered 111 matches over three-days with six remote controlled cameras (plus roving RF link) with no on-site studio and a limited OB crew including camera engineering and sound supervision.

“Instead of being stuck behind a wall of monitors in an OB truck or a gallery the executive producer was able to freely move around the venue, confident he could communicate with all the crew and monitor the transmission on his iPad,” explained Andrew Finn, senior director, Sky Sports. “We do this on a lot of programmes now, as it not only saves a fortune on facilities, but it looks and feels far more inclusive of the event.”

Whisper Films on the F1 starting grid

Within a couple of days of winning the contract to produce Channel 4's Formula One coverage in early January, Whisper Films had to commission an OB supplier since the window to ship equipment to Australia was just one week away.

“Normally when rights change hands you get six months or more to prepare. We had eight weeks,” says Sunil Patel, Whisper MD and executive producer of F1 coverage. “That [timeframe] was a major reason we worked with Presteigne. We inherited their set up and fly away kit already built to manage this operation.”

Presteigne Broadcast Hire had been supplying fly-packs for the BBC's F1 coverage since 2009. The limited turnaround time left little room to change the kit's specification although editing is switched from Apple to Adobe and the production will make use of four RF cameras rather than three plus a Sony F5 to lend a glossy look to features.

Since Formula One Management dictates the race coverage itself and demands that broadcasters only leave its feed after the podium interviews, the biggest difference Whisper says it will make will be in on-screen talent. They include David Coulthard and Susie Wolff.

Although, the Channel 4-backed indie scooped the three year, 10 race a year contract from under the noses of more established sports producers like IMG and North One, the company has hired seasoned F1 staff to bolster credentials. Former Match of the Day chief Mark Cole joins as head of television and former BBC F1 editor Mark Wilkin is also onboard.

Patel says the company, hitherto known for brand-funded sports content, proved its mettle producing a weekly NFL highlights show leading up to the Superbowl for BBC2.

“We will be looking at other rights once F1 is up and running,” he reveals. “The pressure comes from our own high expectations. We are duty bound to keep fans entertained and to improve coverage where we can. The pressure to succeed because we had this high profile win doesn't come into it.”