TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS
LIVE SPORT
cameras and get tallies and do remote control audio mixing and vision mixing. “It also allows lower-funded OBs to be commissioned,
so that’s getting more sport on air, because we can just literally send the camera operators there,” he adds. “So for example we do the Women’s Super League (WSL) football completely remotely. The only people on site are four camera operators – no OB truck and no infrastructure, and all of those cameras come back to us remotely.”
T h e C h a lle ng e Cu p
For Rugby League’s Challenge Cup, dock10 worked with BBC Sport and Telegenic Outside Broadcast to broadcast two Quarter Final matches and two Semi Final matches using remote production for approximately 10 hours in total across the games (which took place in September and October). Both matches for the quarter final round were held at AJ Bell Stadium, Salford with the semi final games at Totally Wicked Stadium, St Helens,” says Adam Balcombe, studio manager at dock10. “Production and presentation VT operation were based in dock10 HQ3 Galleries (VT in Lighting) with presenter Mark Chapman and two pundits in a studio [Pres 2] on the ground floor of BBC Quay House. Alston Elliot (AE) looked after graphics onsite and at dock10 with Rugged Earth overseeing Piero based in Quay House.” The games were transmitted with 5.1 audio. There were seven incoming vision circuits and one reverse vision via NEP Connect Anylive Fibre Network. “These seven were made up of: Dirty BBC Match Feed, Clean BBC Match, Match Cam 1 ISO, Match Cam 2 ISO, High Behind Cam ISO, Switchable Clips Channel and ‘Fruit Machine’ – an AE stats feed that is very useful for the editor and pundits,” says Balcombe. “World Feed came in via satellite as a back-up. Studio cameras and in-vision monitor/ presenter studio monitoring feeds
were routed via BBC and dock10 inter- building tielines. Tallies were sent from the dock10 vision mixer to Quay House cameras. Audio connectivity between HQ3 SCR and Quay House studio came via dock10 stageboxes situated in Quay House, and connected to dock10 via fibre paths.” The TV compound onsite (for the semi-finals) hosted a scanner, graphics truck, NEP Fibre & Generator. There were thirteen OB Cameras working into the match truck, which also hosted the match director. Back in Salford, the Pres 2 studio hosted three studio cameras, while the presentation director, programme editor, sub, PA, presentation graphics operator, presentation sound Supervisor, grams operator, studio manager and two EVS operators were all based in dock10. There was also a contributor via Zoom. COVID restrictions had an impact on the production in the shape of perspex screens used in dock10 Galleries and limits placed on maximum capacity of rooms. “When a gallery is divided up by Perspex screens all of a sudden it becomes difficult to hear things that you would normally take for granted,” says Balcombe. “To get around this the director, editor and PA each had snoop listens of each other on their Riedel talkback panels.” “Covid restrictions at the ground also impacted interview positions for pre/post-match, ” says Balcombe. “Enhanced Match FX was used – as per football – to make it sound like there was a crowd in the stadium.”
T he ne x t g ener a ti o n Talk of 4G of course brings us to 5G. “At the moment 4G is fantastic and we can get a lot of bandwidth through it,” says McDonnell. “But the fundamental problem is if there’s a lot of people on the 4G network, broadcasters don’t have a way of saying, ‘we want that bandwidth for our broadcast’. But with 5G that will change, and you’ll be able to book a slot for bandwidth which is available to you as a broadcaster, and will be a guaranteed service. That will be a big game changer.” BT Sport trialled the world’s first 5G outside broadcast
almost two years ago and Jamie Hindhaugh is also keenly anticipating the ‘network slicing’ service. “Simply put, it’s basically creating a virtual pipe, so that you’ve got uncontended feeds,” he says. “If you haven’t got fibre, what 5G does is give you
[connectivity] but it goes one step further. It enables you to untether your camera. Whereas in the existing world it’s all about making sure you’ve got the right RF points, the right cable points, and so on, [untethering] means you can use the same camera to do multiple different roles, and then when the match starts you can just plug in. I think 5G will revolutionise the opportunities, increasing the creativity and the feel of how you cover a game because one camera can do so much more.” “At Whisper we are excited about what 5G brings
and the increased flexibility it can offer,” says Laura McManamon. “It may mean we can be more mobile with our presentation, look for opportunities away from the F1 paddock and deliver content to the UK from a variety of locations around the world.” At present, while all the major UK mobile networks are
rolling out 5G and about a dozen phones are available, that network slicing isn’t with us quite yet. One route to provide a stop-gap that BT and others are following is to install private 5G networks at venues. “We just did the EE cup over 5G at Wembley by putting
in a private network,” says Hindhaugh. “My feeling is probably within the next 12 to 18 months we’ll see it being used in anger a lot more.”
U H D, H DR an d I P “The move to UHD and UHD HDR has been led by the subscription channels looking to offer a premium service,” says David Shield. “Their plans may have been delayed a little but they will still go forward. I do believe that some content providers may move towards 1080p HDR as a UHD format as it provides much of the ‘wow-factor’
Winter 2020
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