MCR – Gravity Media

The International Federation of University Sports chooses EMG Italy for the live distribution of its upcoming events

Founded in 1949, FISU, the International Federation of University Sports, was created to spread the values of sport in the university world. The belief that health and well-being are closely related to the practice of sport has inspired so far students who tomorrow will be active members of our global society. The occasion of these sporting and educational events is also to provide the opportunity to connect and exchange experiences with other students from all over the world, in an environment that is both collaborative and competitive, as life teaches us.

The winter edition of the FISU World University Games once called the Universiade, took place in America in Lake Placid, New York State, and involved over 2500 athletes, coaches, judges and referees from 50 countries for 11 days. 12 sports are on the field in this event which combines high-level sports with educational and cultural moments on 10 different sites and almost 100 competitions and exhibitions.

A collaborative project

EMG Italy has designed and implemented an innovative Master Control Room inside the Cologno Monzese production centre, entirely dedicated to FISU, in technical-operational collaboration with SES, a leader in global connectivity solutions, and EVS for the international distribution of signals. The new Master Control Room is in fact at the forefront in terms of technical configuration; thanks to these partnerships, it allows the control and distribution of live channel streaming and also the management and creation of content on a cloud platform for rights holders and takers from all over the world.

“We are very pleased with the results of this project,” says Dominique Curchod, Head of Television at FISU, “when you are responsible for distributing an event, you tend to favour security over technological evolution: moving from a full satellite to an entirely SRT one was a complex challenge. Three factors drove us to go ahead: first of all, the SRT system has more advantageous costs than the satellite; then, after using the RTMP system for almost six years, we have verified and tested the stability of the public Internet around the world, especially the crucial points of the outgoing and incoming connections. Finally, the existing technology at EMG Italy, which has also been in operation for several years, and the conditions offered were more than enough to convince us”.

Lake Placid, FISU World University Games 2023

Starting from the various sites of the Lake Placid event where the various sporting competitions were held, four international host broadcasting feeds and related backup feeds were “packaged” and then sent via the Internet via SRT protocol to the production center by EMG Italy. The operations centre on the outskirts of Milan and the dedicated MCR, therefore, acted as a hub for the reception and subsequent distribution of all signals to Europe, the countries of East Asia, China, South America, Africa and Oceania.

“On this occasion”, says Luca Bertoldi, Technical Department Manager of EMG Italy for the FISU project, “we were asked to manage 4 redundant program signals, together with 4 other backup feeds, but we are suitably oversized and therefore ready to handle even many more. All the signals have travelled from the US production up to us on the public internet, through two different service providers and through the SRT protocol which carries signals in H264 and H265. All this has allowed us to receive an excellent low-latency compressed stream that we have easily conveyed over the internet. We chose the SRT protocol because it was created to convey quality feeds on the public internet and in this case, it would have been impossible for us to use dedicated fibre optic lines directly from Lake Placid. Otherwise, we would have had to use satellite links with certainly higher costs”.

Live distribution and content management

The EMG Italy production centre has a series of master control rooms of different sizes given its specialization in the management of television signals: the configuration flexibility makes it possible to manage contributions and distribute them in any television signal and makes it practically ideal for all sporting events. On the occasion of the FISU Games, the four signals arriving from the USA convey images of four different disciplines taking place at the same time and enter a matrix which allows switching them in order to decide what to broadcast. An hour before the broadcast, the MCR receives some special alignment signals that allow to verify the synchronism between the audio and video and to be ready for the next broadcast.

The signal is also recorded simultaneously on EVS MediaHub devices which make it possible to upload live video streams to the cloud. These contributions are made instantly available to rights-holding takers as the signals themselves are recorded, while the ‘Near Live’ mode allows editing stations to package the highlights without delay. EMG Italy’s MCR directly provides for the delivery and distribution of the “live” signals and, again using the SRT protocol, allows you to reach multiple destinations simultaneously by relying on a cloud platform.

“More in detail”, continues Luca Bertoldi, “the 4 signals arriving from Lake Placid enter 4 SRT decoder receivers which take care of the conversion towards SDI, then they continue in the matrix and at the same time they are displayed on multiview screens. This visual check allows one to choose which signals to send to the two main destinations: one is the delivery platform to EVS MediaHub, created using a special encoder, where SES has supplied the system that allows sending streaming flows to the EVS platform; the other destination is delivery to the takers which is managed through various coding systems: a first main coding generates a flow, thanks to the encoders, which allow the signal to be delivered to a cloud platform. From here the signal is forwarded to all destinations and without limiting the number of flows we can send. Therefore, the choice of cloud operation is linked to scalability which in this case becomes practically infinite. If we had had to carry out the distribution directly from the production centre, it would have been essential to have sufficient bandwidth to manage all the flows and dedicate many high-performance encoders. The cloud platform allows us to generate a main and a backup stream which we then distribute to all takers, while still maintaining control over every single connection.Such an operation allows us to have a dedicated profile for each taker user, with its own IP address and with the same encryption”.

A versatile Master Control Room

The MCR that EMG Italy has dedicated to FISU has been designed and perfected precisely to be versatile and easily adaptable to every need that will arise in the live events organized by the Federation in the coming years. In addition to already being complete with distributed coordination systems useful in real-time interactions with event venues, it can be easily integrated with commentary booths for localization in various languages, and in-situ workstations for highlight editing, which in this case they weren’t necessary. “Furthermore, distribution on the public internet” concludes Luca Bertoldi, “allows the entire process of managing contributions and distribution to be more efficient. The SRT we chose is an open source standard protocol that allows creating low latency video streams with good error correction.”

The international MCR for University sports will be run in Milan by EMG Italy, in cooperation with SES and EVS

A brand new state-of-the-art broadcast operation hub for the International University Sports Federation (FISU) has been developed by EMG Italy in cooperation with SES, the leader in global content connectivity solutions, and EVS, opened at the production centre in Cologno Monzese, near Milan city area.

Capable of running up to 8 incoming live feeds and potentially endless outgoing feeds, the powerful Master Control Room has been designed to manage the channels for FISU TV and the worldwide distribution towards all rights holders and takers involved. The main solutions deployed include a combination of a cloud-based platform for distribution, management and creation of contents and highlights, and SRT technology for receiving and broadcasting feeds.

Operations started with the Lake Placid 2023 FISU Winter World University Games, which ran from January 12th to January 22nd. The live streams covered 12 sports, 10 competition venues and almost 100 races and exhibitions that involved 2500 athletes and coaches from 50 countries for 11 days.

“The effort is big, but we are excited to start this new adventure,” said Claudio Cavallotti, EMG Italy CEO. “We’ve been working many years along with FISU, starting ten years ago in Trento up to the wonderful edition in Naples in 2019. This is a great achievement for our technical team, as our MCR will be the main international hub of all FISU broadcast operations from 2023 to 2027.”

The MCR that EMG implemented in Cologno allowed to manage up to four redundant simultaneous feeds from Lake Placid to be received, monitored, converted, and recorded. The distribution centre then provided these four redundant signals to SES for wider distribution, to CCTV Beijing (via CMG), to Qazsport in Almaty, to Eurosport for linear and digital services, to EVS MediaHub for online broadcast access in Japan, Europe, and other buyer agencies.

Additionally, EVS, the leading provider of live video technology for broadcast and new media productions, supported EMG Italy with the deployment of a dedicated MediaHub instance for FISU. The cloud-based platform extends the reach of live events by enabling online publishing and distribution of non-linear and near-live content to rights holders globally.

Thanks to the powerful search engine of MediaHub, the FISU media team and rights holders can easily browse, clip, and edit content as it is being produced remotely. The platform also provides them with access to a consolidated, constantly updated archive for enriching their storytelling. The EMG Italy MCR can also provide a full catalogue of services to cover the entire production chain, including commentary booths for live remote voice-overs, audio mixing, multichannel monitoring, ingest, editing and a dedicated technical and production team.

The Indoor Technical Operation of EMG Italy is the department that deals, among other things, with “Remote Production” or “tv production from a remote venue”, a practice that involves personnel in the field, commensurate with the production plan, and technical equipments connected in a bidirectional way to remote operational structures already existing in the broadcast production center.

This procedure is nothing new for EMG: it started several years ago as pioneers, long before the pandemic, thanks to cutting-edge technical structures, today it is considered as consolidated also for Italy and perfect for television production, especially in sports and in different disciplines.

Expressed in this way, this concept is however very reductive, given that, in fact, RP has much wider possibilities and, despite having started in the broadcast and media area, especially television and video, today it involves many other markets.

The demand for remote production is stable and growing from adjacent sectors such as corporate, educational, industrial, cultural, where different workflows that started in a pandemic, today more modern and more in step with the times, must respond to new needs for flexibility and commitment, truly commensurate with resources.

Broadcast center and production site

The Remote Production theme really allows you to change the way content is produced and distributed and is particularly valid for OTT digital distribution platforms.

Even yesterday’s problems in the evolution of this model, such as the availability of bandwidth and the obligatorily low latency, are now worries of the past. IP networks today are efficient, cost-effective for the production model and allow even complex production models to be carried out.

The same troupe can easily move between different locations in a short time (also due to the very short setup times and use of small mobile vehicles) and therefore optimize logistics; the final product still enjoys all the quality guaranteed by the same production center that uses centralized broadcast equipment capable of managing high-level and cost-effective productions.

REMI

Remote production or “REMI”, Remote Infrastructure, today also known with different meanings and variants, such as Remote Operation, Remote Distributed Operation and others, is made possible by the latency, now very low and by the availability on the market of equipment of adequate cost, as complete mini-control rooms and high quality H265 encoders operating on optical fiber, on Wi-Fi and on telephone radio links.

In addition to the ability to perfectly adapt the technical structures used based on the real scope of the event, there is an increase in the production workflow, which is much more streamlined, and therefore the possibility of producing more monetizable content on today’s multi-platforms.

Born for minor events, today the RP is really adequate for any meeting and level of production; therefore, from the “covid context”, many variants have evolved today with many advantages, also thanks to new levels of security, content encryption, latency and bandwidth availability through optical fiber and radio frequency on 4G and 5G.

EMG Italy has been on the market for years with many remote productions in Italian Serie C Football that we deal with in these pages, but also in Volleyball, Beach Volleyball and Basketball and more that we will address in a future study, shortly.

Speaking of basket and remote production, EMG Italy has recently won an important contract for the next three years.

Enrica Busin, Head of MCR & Playout, tells some details about Lega Pro Calcio Serie C: “The Italian Serie C football championship involves 60 teams with as many as 30 matches every weekend for round matches. EMG Italy takes care of all these productions remotely and, depending on the standard that is required, the commitment can be single-camera, double or tri-camera. The connections between the production “venue” and the broadcast center are certainly crucial in this configuration and the various crews use a large number of equipment. These are devices known as “backpacks” which, connected to the cameras, use a proprietary protocol to transfer high quality signals. The signals are transported simultaneously using 4G and, where present, the IP network.”

Mono and bi-camera

EMG Italy, for several years, has been using a wide range of equipment for transmission and reception of signals. The backpacks for the acquisition and transport of live signals, which have been in operation for years, now include the newer models in the Pro version, which can use up to 8 internal SIMs from different telephone operators.

Every weekend over 30 of these backpacks are hired on the field in all of the three production standards. On the playing field, in addition to the cameramen, there is always at least one commentator, usually placed in the stands. All the video signals, the audio of each camera, and the audio of the journalistic commentary arrive at the MCR of EMG Italy in Cologno Monzese.

The layout of the cameras is quite static and provides, in the mono-camera, a camera that takes wide-angle shots of the whole field, positioned in the stands. In the bi-camera configuration, both cameras are on the stands at the top: the first takes wide-angle shots with wide fields, while the second deals with narrow fields and game details.

Tri-camera

In the tri-camera configuration, the third camera moves on the sidelines; therefore, he adds even more engaging images and often also deals with the integration of additional clips captured in the pre and post game.

The commentator journalist is usually placed in the press area or in a special commentary booth, where available, depending on the configuration of the stadiums which, of course, are much simpler than those of the A and B series. Its set usually includes only a headset with a headset microphone and the dedicated audio coder.

Sometimes in tri-camera configurations, and at least once every weekend, a double audio commentary with the second pitchside commentator is also required. In the integration, there are 2 commentators in position plus a third on the sidelines. This complicates the setup a little, which also requires the presence of a special sound engineer, with an audio mixer.

The set-up

Convened about two hours before the match, the operators take care of the assembly of the stands and cameras, the set-up of the commentary station, make the fiber connections on pre-existing cables that allow a backup link (the network connection is carried out on the backpack with Ethernet cables) and start the backpacks with the main 4G connections.

The signals arrive at the MCR in one of the two EMG Italy offices (the one in Cologno Monzese, the other is in Milan) where the video and audio integrity is checked and the colorimetry is checked and corrected in the bi and tri-camera setups.

In the headquarters of the production center, for each game, a special dedicated “producer” directs each event thanks to a system that takes care of the audio and video mixing functions and integrates the graphics signals. At the same time, it allows you to broadcast the highlights of the game through live replays, using the same signal being recorded. In the tri-camera configuration at the stadium are created: 1 video signal with 2 ambient audio signals + comment (single or double). All these signals are carried by the backpacks and received by other devices called Stream Hubs.

Grafica e MCR

Serie C is broadcast on Eleven Sports’ OTT, with 8 games per weekend three and two-camera. All the graphics, created internally by the Boost Graphics specialists of EMG Italy, are integrated into the live from each of the 25 control stations that deal with the C Series.

Every weekend about ten matches are held on Saturdays and twenty on Sundays, so in addition to the staff in the MCR room, 10 “video mixer” specialists are hired on Saturdays and 20 on Sundays in the various control stations.

Stefano Branduardi part of the Indoor Technical Operation team declares: “I take care of the MCR which involves the preparation of the various equipments that allow you to import the required contributions and mix them, to set the effects in the cuts, to check that the graphics signal arrives in the machine and that everything works correctly first, and then go in production. In the field, backpacks are used which, thanks to the possibility of using 2 different transmission systems (mobile + Ethernet network), guarantee the possibility of having a back-up on the transmission. This translates into a guarantee of reliability in any context of live sports production”.

In a future article on Remote Production we will report the point of view of the technical director Francesco Donato and how EMG Italy applies this production procedure in other sports: volleyball, beach volleyball and now also basketball over the next three seasons.