In Broadcast - March 2013 - 66


I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 17 - MARCH 2013

N E W S

InSTUDIO

Live Production & Outside Broadcast
From breaking news stories to major sporting events, broadcasters are looking to the latest technologies
that will give them the edge in an increasingly competitive sector…

By Jim Evans
Contributing Editor

T

66

he awe-inspiring, and completely
distinctive, Opening and Closing
Ceremonies, which spectacularly
book-ended the London 2012
Olympics, were a triumph for the
respective artistic directors, Danny
Boyle and Kim Gavin.
Described as the most creative
yet, to ensure the realisation of these
ambitious concepts, the sound and
lighting designers were also faced
with enormous technical challenges.
Specialising in this scale of event
production for more than a decade,
Australian company Norwest
Productions again teamed up with
their UK partners Delta Sound to
provide the necessary Optocore
ﬁbre signal transport, custom RF
solutions and LAN networking. This
sophisticated connectivity realised
the sound design conceived by
fellow Australian Scott Willsallen (of
Auditoria) - another with a string of
Games Opening/Closing events on
his CV - in conjunction with Theatre
Sound Designer, Bobby Aitken.

The 2012 Olympic Stadium gallery

Norwest’s Project Manager,
Andy Marsh, knew that the
network system required for a
new 80,000-capacity Olympic
Stadium would present challenges.
“We needed to overcome difﬁcult
cable runs,” he said. “The cable
installation took us in excess of
three weeks and was more akin to
installing cable permanently into a
venue. On top of this, the inclusion
of many fully live musical acts adding further size and complexity
to the Optocore and backup
systems - placed a considerable
load on all the experienced audio
engineers involved.”
Optocore has long been at the
heart of Norwest’s main digital
systems - and more than 50 devices
were deployed in an inventory
shared with Delta Sound.
Since the speciﬁcation had called
for all Optocore ‘R’ series devices,
Norwest purchased a number
of these new energy-efficient
converters to accommodate the
design’s high channel and node
count. They added quantities of
DD4MR-FX, DD32R-FX, X6R-FX8AE/8MI, X6R-TP-8AE/8MI, X6P16IN devices to their inventory
- these offer increased features and
efﬁciency, reduced carbon footprint,
power consumption (of 40%) and
cost. Delta Sound also purchased a
quantity of DD4MR-FX, DD2FR-FX,
and X6R-FX devices for the event.
“Optocore is unique in its ability
to matrix a high channel count over

London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony directed by Danny Boyle and Kim Gavin

large distances, plus providing the
redundancy of a ring network,”
states Marsh. “Most signiﬁcantly,
it is extraordinarily robust and
reliable, which is essential to a show
that is playing to 80,000 people
live in the arena and four billion
watching on TV.”
The integration necessary to
meet Auditoria’s detailed and
dual-redundant design involved
deploying multiple Optocore ﬁbre
networks, with full analogue backup, principally for the main PA and
Broadcast systems.
The main 24-node ring collected
and distributed all inputs and outputs
on a 2Gbit network to a myriad of
broadcast and PA locations, and
Optocore also delivered both PA
and monitor feeds, plus timecode
and programme. In total there were
696 I/O channel feeds within the
Optocore topography.
In related news, digital solutions
company DiGiCo has announced
Steve Watson, Simon Honywill
and Rob Collins as winners of its

Olympics UB MADI competition,
which it ran during the Games to
celebrate the efforts of the engineers
involved, without whom the Olympic
opening and closing ceremonies
would not have been heard.
“As a UK manufacturer, we were
delighted to have our consoles on
the events, a total of 13 consoles,
including eight SD7s, plus 12 SD
racks and 13 Purple Boxes, for what
was probably the biggest event
this country has ever seen,” says
DiGiCo’s Managing Director, James
Gordon. “But it’s the work of the
designers and engineers who used
them that truly deserves recognition.
“The UB MADI competition was our
way of doing this, saying thank you
to them and adding a little light relief
during such an intense period of
pressure. The winners picked were
pulled out of the hat to maintain the
British tradition.
“These were deﬁnitely the most
complex shows I’ve ever been
CONTINUED ON PAGE 68

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