Peter Bridges, on behalf of BBC Sport, reveals to Kevin Hiltonmore exclusive insight into the execution of the comms networking during the Games
TO ACHIEVE the best possible presentation of this summer’s Olympic Games, UK public broadcaster the BBC marshalled its own technology to tailor the feeds from host broadcaster OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) for the home audience. Behind this was the communications system, which allowed everyone working at the BBC’s control areas and studios in the Olympic Park to keep in touch with what was happening. BBC Sport, which produced
coverage for UK audiences, has used Riedel intercoms since 2004 and owns two Artist M frames for outside broadcasts, but this was not enough for the London 2012 operation, so two Artist 128 frames were hired from Riedel. This was needed to cover
three main TV galleries, a gallery running 24 live sport
streams, a commentary line-up area, four EVS play-out workstations, 21 video editing positions, a gallery for BBC News and a master control room – the Broadcast Operations Centre. These facilities were inside the
International Broadcast Centre (IBC) but the studios for on-air presentation were a 10-minute walk away in the middle of the Olympic Park.
The Riedel Artist frames in the IBC were connected over fibre links in a ring arrangement. Because of this, says lead sound supervisor Peter Bridges, everything appeared as “one big system” of 512 x 512 ports. All four-wire connectivity to the Riedel system was completely analogue. Bridges explains: “The four-wire ports on BBC Sport’s existing Riedel four-wire system are all
analogue, so the additional two frames were specified with analogue I/O to keep everything in the analogue domain.” The main difference between the communications system for this Olympics compared to what BBC Sport has used for previous Games was its size. “We had to come up with a different way to manage everything coming in,” Bridges comments. The decision was to rely on a methodology that is long-standing in BBC studios – the principle of the Outside Source (OS) line. The philosophy of this is that a gallery has a defined number of incoming OS lines, with each carrying sound, vision and comms. The source carried by each OS line is freely assignable and effectively allows a gallery to pick its own subset of sources from a much larger set.
Peter Bridges, lead sound supervisor
Bridges comments that the custom BNCS (broadcast network control system) used for the Olympics worked on the basis of ‘packages’ to bundle up all the signals and information for each source. “When someone in a gallery selected a source onto an OS line BNCS would route the signals to the relevant hardware. This provided vision feeds, monitor labels and audios to the appropriate panels.” He adds that while the
programme sound side of the installation was “large but pretty straightforward”, the comms was complicated, particularly the integration of the Riedel system with BNCS. “Some aspects were tricky, others were quite easy,” he concludes. “But we built enough flexibility into the BNCS system to cover all our needs.”n www.riedel.net
For the latest broadcast news
SOUNDBITES
Broadcast manufacturer RTWhas recently moved into a new office, still located in Cologne, Germany. The company now occupies two floors of a building once home to the German staff of Sony Corporation. Phone numbers and email addresses will not change, however, the company’s new mailing address will be: RTW GmbH & CO. KG, Am Wassermann 25, 50829 Köln, Germany. www.rtw.de
SLG Broadcastis now distributing products from Telos Alliance companies Telos, Omnia and Axia on the German radio broadcast market. SLG Broadcast is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland with a subsidiary in Rastatt, Germany. www.slgbroadcast.comwww.telosalliance.com
Harman’s Studer has appointed Danmon Svenska ABas its authorised distributor for Sweden. Located in Täby outside of Stockholm, Danmon Svenska is one of four companies the Danmon Group. It supplies single products or complete turnkey systems along with technical advice and after sales support. www.danmon.sewww.harman.com