In Broadcast - October 2017 - 58

58

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 7 - Issue 10 | October 2017

InStudio

Sky Sport HQ - Single Source
Qvest Media has handed over technical infrastructure to Sky Deutschland,
ushering in a new era of live sports production at Sky Sport HQ...

S

ky Deutschland began the 2017/18
Bundesliga season in August 2017
with its new sports production and
broadcasting centre Sky Sport HQ.
Through its own production site, Sky
now offers the entire world of sport
from a single source, such as live
sports broadcasts, Sky Sport News HD
on free TV and the new sports portal
skysport.de. Technological advisory in
the development and planning phase,
the design of the systems architecture,
as well as systems integration, delivery
and commissioning of the broadcast,
production and IT infrastructure were
carried out by Qvest Media.
The Unterföhring media site in
Germany, has one of the most
modern and largest broadcast IT
infrastructures for live sports in
Europe. It allows the broadcaster to
produce all sports content in-house
and to distribute it via a wide variety of
distribution channels - such as linear
TV, OTT services and via web and
social media portals.
Besides fully fitting out two live
studios, interconnected control rooms,
various editing suites, ten dedicated
voice-over booths and 16 additional
voice-over stations with audio-visual
equipment, the infrastructure also
has eight production control rooms
(PCRs) and an occasional channel
playout control room (OCPCR) with
an interconnected audio control
room (ACR) as well as two TX control
rooms for controlling the four 24/7
main channels and ten occasional
channels. Apart from ingest - with
up to 60 EVS recording channels
and the construction of an 84 sqm
studio LED wall for analyses, graphics
and game scenes - the new system
landscape
also
has
numerous
technological innovations which, in
this shape and size, are so far unique
in Sky's live sports production.
Features related to the IP backbone,
the studio and graphic workflow for

Production islands

augmented
reality
and
coverage during conference
productions mark a new
era in live production at Sky
Deutschland.
"Together with Qvest
Media, we have prepared
and
implemented
a
detailed plan for the entire
infrastructure - starting
with essential core systems
and workflows through Sky Sport HQ,
Sky Deutschland
to
general,
technical
equipment and implementation within feed ingest, export functionalities,
the facilities. This customised solution quality control and transcoding. In
has helped us to greatly facilitate this case, the installation of XT and
everyday production," says Alessandro XS live production servers from EVS
Reitano, Vice President of Sports provides up to 60 ingest channels
Production at Sky Deutschland.
and 76 live signals for the required
capacity to manage incoming and
Robust Workflow
outgoing content. "In this development
One of the central workflows at process, it was particularly important
Sky is live sports production and the to take Sky Deutschland's pre-existing
accompanying enhancement of live infrastructure into consideration and
broadcasts with additional information integrate it into the new overarching
and on-air graphics. Therefore, concept," says Markus Heinen, Head
Qvest Media analysed and defined of Systems Integration at Qvest Media.
the necessary specifications based "The choice in the area of media asset
on Sky's requirements. In addition, management therefore was in favour
various systems and applications from of a system by Vizrt, not least in order
Vizrt are used in order to ensure a to connect this to the existing Avid
fast, comprehensive and robust studio infrastructure."
workflow of the eight PCRs. Live
signals - such as, in the case of Sky, Collaboration
for live football, tennis or Formula One
An additional feature which Qvest
broadcasts - are controlled through a Media developed together with Sky
touchscreen user interface of the Viz is the collaboration of production
Mosart studio automation system. The teams during live sports broadcasts.
applications Viz Pilot and Viz Opus As a result, the Conference Area was
also enable a comprehensive range of created in an open area specifically
possible uses for graphics during live designed for this purpose. This has
productions. Close integration with more than 12 identically equipped
the remaining graphics systems and production islands on which teams
applications, such as Libero, Arena and of three can each produce a live
Multichannel from Vizrt, also provide a conference. This is particularly suitable
high degree of automation for graphic- for the production of sports events
supported analysis rooms and on-air which take place simultaneously at
integration of graphic elements. Using several venues, such as the Bundesliga
augmented reality, Sky is also opening or UEFA Champions League. Live
up a new dimension by integrating feeds from the various three-person
graphic virtual elements such as a teams are switched to the running
"virtual window" for LED walls. The conference programme via the master
new technology uses tracked camera control room, according to demand.
data to create perspective animations.
In addition to the conference in the
Due to future in-house productions main programme, the viewer is offered
and the increased amount of data a choice of up to ten further sports
this entails, Qvest Media convinced its meetings via the occasional channels
customer to use an original MAM. All as events-based broadcast channels
workflows are therefore based on the through the use of an OCPCR. The
central MAM system, such as file-and- Imagine Playout Server is used for the

four main channels and is controlled
using Imagine ADC Automation.
On a technological level, the use of
a real-time network based
on a decentralised router
for more than 1,250 Riedel
MediorNet sources and
sinks is also particularly
remarkable.
This
is
controlled by means of a VSM
broadcast control system
from Lawo. The fibre-based
IP backbone has almost 150
individual router nodes and
is so far globally unique
in this configuration level.
Consequently, Sky has a high degree of
flexibility and redundancy possibilities
for transporting audio and video
data and for processing tasks such as
embedding and de-embedding in its
entire production network.
IP-Networks
An exceptional feature of this
project is the integration of audioover-IP networks based on Dante
with audio production by Lawo. Qvest
Media therefore ensured that the
manufacturer was open to integration
of the Dante protocol while avoiding
the use of its provided standard
protocol.
The central IT backbone uses 10Gbit
and 40Gbit Nexus 7710 core switches
from Cisco, complemented by Nexus
FEX2248TP-E and Catalyst 4948 access
switches. The infrastructure also has
a 735TB central Isilon storage solution
and virtualised servers based on HP
BL460c blade servers and VMWare
vSphere6 with a block storage based
on an EMC Unity 300F for using virtual
machines and databases. Content is
archived to a Quantum LT07 library
controlled by SGL Flashnet.
After around ten months of
construction, an intensive staging
process and several live test
productions, the ultra-modern system
infrastructure was put into operation
on July 1, 2017 in close collaboration
with Sky and Qvest Media.

Technical infrastructure at Sky Sport HQ
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.qvestmedia.com/en/ http://www.skysport.de https://www.qvestmedia.com/en/ https://www.qvestmedia.com/en/
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