THE CLIENT
ORF (English: the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation), is the Austrian national public service broadcaster. It is Austria’s largest media provider, operating four national television channels and 12 radio stations, as well as a range of websites.
THE PROJECT
Gravity Media was engaged to support ORF with the implementation of its remote live production workflow at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
THE APPROACH
We supplied a comprehensive broadcast setup at the Olympic Broadcasting Services’ International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Tokyo, as well as at the ORF Olympic TV studio in Tokyo and six further installations spread across selected Games venues.
The main programme feed was cut at the ORF Production Centre in Vienna.
THE OUTCOME
From 21 July to 8 August 2021, ORF successfully broadcast 500 hours of live Olympic coverage. The bulk of the Games was shown on ORF 1 and ORF SPORT, with additional events live–streamed via ORF.at.
ORF had access to over 55 events at the Olympics, ensuring that almost every competition with Austrian participation could be seen live. For visually impaired and hearing-impaired sports fans, a large part of the ORF Olympic broadcasts were also audio-commented or subtitled.
Austria won seven medals at the Games, including a cycling Gold in the women’s individual road race. This eclipses their 2016 performance, where the country won just one bronze medal.
The CUSTOMER
The ATP Masters 1000 Series is a demanding schedule of 10 events taking place across the world covering Cincinnati, Shanghai, Indian Wells, Madrid, Miami, Monte-Carlo, Montreal, Paris and Rome, concluding with the World Tour Finals which since 2009 has been staged in our home town, at the O2 Arena in London.
Over 50 broadcasters across the globe take coverage of the series include ABC, CCTV, ESPN, Fox Sports, Sky Sports, CBS, TVE and Eurosport.
The approach
Gravity Media provides broadcast equipment, production facilities, systems integration and scalable flyaway solutions.
The solution delivered by Gravity Media employs state-of-the-art digital flyaway rigs consisting of audio and video routing, distribution, communication, CCU and monitor gallery rigs. These rigs are configured prior to arriving on site and are then integrated with other key elements and installed by specialist Project Engineers.
Supplying up to 80 crew members at any one location, 24/7 technical resources and full operational and logistics support, Gravity Media have provided this type of project management across all ten venues since 2000 for ATP Media.
The broadcast requirements that Gravity Media is responsible for include:
- The delivery and on-site integration of scalable pre-configured flyaway production rigs to create the same production experience, no matter the location
- Supplying up to 80 skilled production crew members, as well as food and amenities for them at each event
- The logistics of moving the entire broadcast infrastructure between locations as far-flung as Shanghai, Indian Wells, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Montréal and Rome
- The provision of up to six production control rooms
- Multichannel ingest server for archiving and file distribution
- Centralised camera control for 40 cameras
- Centralised slow motion area for all courts
- Full on-site technical and operational support
the Outcome
In addition to the work it does with ATP Media at each event, Gravity Media also provides on-site production facilities and equipment to ATP World Tour and ATP World Tour Finals rights holders including Sky Sports.
Dominic Gresset Head of production for ATP Media said “We opted for Gravity Media to provide equipment, facilities and technical support for the Tennis Masters Series and subsequently the Masters Cup because we are confident in their capabilities to create the same broadcast environment anywhere in the world. They have demonstrated their expertise and professionalism time and again throughout the Tennis Masters Series tournaments that have taken place this year”.
THE PROJECT:
The PyeongChang Games saw a record 92 nations compete in 15 sports over 16 days in venues across the county. On the face of it, this would be a daunting challenge to support, but it all came down to careful planning and meticulous attention to detail.
Central to the plan was creating a workflow that could manage several different EVS operators, each working for different companies and streaming media to different countries. Each of the five operations had its own Production Control Room, so unlike a regular outside broadcast – such as a live football match – it was the equivalent of setting up and running several complex events simultaneously.
THE APPROACH:
Gravity Media – then branded HyperActive Broadcast – began by drawing up schematics to help shape the workflow. Starting small, focusing on one operator at a time and how best to manage its needs, our technical team gradually built up the picture into a full-scale layout that would cover each operator and result in a seamless broadcast setup.
By exploiting some great new pieces of kit – such as EVS’s IPWeb, which allows clients to access their IPDirector database and transfer and edit content remotely – Gravity Media was able to create a cost-effective solution for multiple clients wanting access to their media.
Once Discovery had given the green light, the Gravity Media logistics team made sure that every piece of equipment headed for PyeongChang was working properly, stress-tested and packaged safely.
We prepared over six tons of kit in all, including 70 x EVS XTAs, 29 x IPDirectors using a million gigabytes of storage, the EVS IPWeb, Ingest Funnel, APP servers, DNS Servers, Cisco 7000 Series, IPD Database Servers and XSquare Database Servers.
On arrival in South Korea in December 2017, the equipment was unpacked and configured for the job. This included multiple ingest funnel machines for each venue, allowing the operators to transmit directly to the International Broadcast Centre. This then allowed their media to be available across the EVS network, allowing authorised crew access to it at any time. This was the most cost-effective solution: instead of having to send people half-way around the world, clients could remote in and manage their media from wherever they wanted.
THE OUTCOME:
In February 2018, the Winter Games began. Gravity Media engineers were on hand, supporting multiple Production Control Rooms, assisting the Media Management team, and providing operational assistance.
Discovery was able to broadcast one of the biggest sporting events of the year without a hitch. Viewing figures indicate opening-weekend events were viewed by 212 million people across Europe, watching 373 million hours of video between them.
The project was a huge undertaking, but one that was deemed extremely successful against all measures. Gravity Media was able not only to improve the efficiency of the Winter Games broadcast through using such kit as the EVS IPWeb and funnel machines, but we were also able to help Discovery make significant savings by supplying Gravity Media kit and engineers.
