In Broadcast - May 2014 - 48

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 31 - MAY 2014

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InSTUDIO

Broadcast Solutions OB Clears The
Boundary For Top Cricket Matches
It is difficult to imagine an outside broadcasting services supplier being more involved in the world
of major league sports events than Broadcast Solutions...

B

48

roadcast Solutions worked
towards the completion of the
ICC (International Cricket Council)
World Twenty20 competition
in early April - broadcast in 5.1
surround for the ﬁrst time - it was
also preparing to move its cricket
coverage from Bangladesh to the
UAE and India to cover the Indian
Premier League (IPL).
Alongside the IPL, Broadcast
Solutions will also be handling
golf tournaments in Malaysia and
Indonesia, a football cup tournament
across two venues in Vietnam, a
badminton tournament in India and
further a cricket competition in the
West Indies. Directly after these
events, the company will relocate
to Brazil for the 2014 FIFA World
Cup in June and July, while readying
for the Asian Games in South Korea
during September and October.
Founded in 2000 and now
operating from centres in
Singapore, the UAE, India and the
UK, Broadcast Solutions' status as
a 'global supplier' of HD outside
broadcast services and crews is fully
justiﬁed. And the recent addition
of new Lawo mixing and routing
systems to its inventory comes as
little surprise.
The story began with a contract
secured in 2013 to provide
production facilities for the 2013,
2014 and 2015 editions of the IPL to
serve clients including STAR Sports,
Ten Sports and the Board of Control
for Cricket in India (BCCI). For the
first tournament, the company
ﬁelded nine OB kits and purchased
three Lawo mc²56 digital broadcast
consoles with HD Core technology
for this purpose. A further six Lawo

systems used at this event were
hired for the job.
This year, Broadcast Solutions
provided all broadcast facilities -
including cameras, EVS, comms
systems, audio systems, video
engineering equipment, vision
mixers and the engineering crew
- for the three venues in the UAE
and the eight venues in India used
in the tournament. In addition, the
company has purchased six further
Lawo mc²56 16-16C-0 consoles with
HD Cores and DALLIS system I/O.

Flying Start
Broadcast Solutions' spor ts
services are based on ﬂyaway OB
systems, which enable individual
production environments to be
set up anywhere in the world regardless of how complex the
requirement. Since it has been
relying on Lawo systems, these
have been deployed at the IPL 2013,
domestic and international cricket
matches in India, the Hockey Indian
League and this year's ICC World
Twenty20 in Bangladesh.
Explaining the choice of Lawo
mc²56/HD Core systems, Alex
Prüstel, Broadcast Solutions Deputy
COO (Singapore), highlights the
ﬂyaway nature of their operation:
"We need a solution that gives
us a surface that is not big, but
allows access to all functionality
of the system along with a router
system that allows remote access
via external controller, and at the
same time, full access to the router
from the surface. We also need
to produce 5.1-surround audio
without any additional effort and/
or equipment.

Broadcast Solutions provided all broadcast facilities for the three venues in
the UAE and the eight venues in India used in the cricket tournament

"In addition, we must be able to
take productions from one system
to another, even when the hardware
conﬁguration is not the same, and
we require operational functionality
that is almost self-explanatory, so
e can use cricket specialists who
might be not familiar with such
complex systems."
"Using the system as router and
mixing system gives us high-quality
surround capabilities," he adds. "It's
a good experience."
On top of these requirements, the
systems must also allow for later
expansion, if it should be required for
other productions, and be absolutely
stable. Weight and size were also
taken into account, as these affect
shipping/production costs.
"After we ﬁnished the ICC World
Twenty20, we directly began
production of IPL 2014, which will be
held in UAE and India," Prüstel says.
"We will use eight Lawo units - seven
mc²56 consoles and one mc²90 - to
make sure that we do deliver the
same high quality from each venue."

the venues," Prüstel explains. "This
ensures that we produce all matches
to the same level of quality and at
the same standard."
The Lawo mc²90 console that will
be used is to be provided by a rental
company in Abu Dhabi in an OB
truck. "This truck is a former TV-Unit
truck, which is still the only one in
the Western Hemisphere with such
a big Lawo system," says Prüstel.
As well as the Lawo audio
systems, Broadcast Solutions has
begun using a number of Lawo's
V_pro8 to provide an 8 x 8 video
matrix and 384 x 384 audio matrix,
and cost-effective SDI embedding/
de-embdedding.
Broadcast Solutions' claim to be
"the foremost supplier of HD outside
broadcast equipment... well-placed
to support the growing demands of
broadcasters across the world" is
unlikely to be challenged.
The company might also add that
its experience of technical systems
makes it uniquely placed to make
the best choices - such as those it
has taken from Lawo.

Tournament

Up close - Lawo's mixing and routing system

The IPL tournament will play out its
ﬁrst leg in the UAE, at the Dubai
International Cricket Stadium, the
Sharjah Cricket Stadium and the
Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu
Dhabi, before moving to India for
its second leg and grand ﬁnal. This
will involve setting up production
facilities in a further seven or
eight venues.
"As cricket production needs a lot
of knowhow about the match, Lawo
allows us to use fewer operators
(mixers) and move them around

The Lawo console gets put to work

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