Dorna Sports Makes MotoGP Roar With Customized Workflows Productions include product development and testing with Audio-Technica, Grass Valley By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Monday, May 15, 2023 - 11:59 am
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Imagine a sport that attracts a six-figure crowd at every event, self-manages both its entire broadcast and live production all season, picks up and moves its sprawling tent thousands of miles, and does it all again in a matter of weeks - or even days.
MotoGP does just that: 20 races in 17 countries between March and November. In front of about 2.5 million fans, the two-wheeled racing scrimmage can hit 220 mph in the straightaways and an ear-splitting 109 dB on the curves.
Dorna Sports' race master-control room packs up into its own flight case.
On the 1,500-acre campus of the Circuit of the Americas (COTA), in Austin, TX last month, the track's broad curves and tight doglegs and the densely packed production compound of Dorna Sports, the Spain-based commercial-rights holder for Grand Prix motorcycle racing, suggests what it might be like if the Olympics' IBC were to deploy once every few weeks instead of every two years.
This past weekend, the Dorna show was in Le Mans for the SHARK Grand Prix de France.
Dorna has been pulling it off for three-plus decades, since acquiring the exclusive commercial and television rights of the FIM Grand Prix World Championship in 1991. Its MotoGP productions deploy more than 180 cameras and scores of microphones as host-broadcast provider, sending feeds to such distributors as BT Sport, DAZN, Sky Sports, Canal+, and Servus TV.
Dorna Sports' Sergi Sendra i Vives: For every MotoGP race, the riders have to adjust to the track. We do the same.
When Dorna acquired the rights to MotoGP in 1991, we realized there was more than one version of it: every country had its own vision of MotoGP, says Sergi Sendra i Vives, head of global technology, Dorna Sports. There was no standardization of the production that made the product unique. That would be Dorna's mission: to communicate the sport better from a production and rightsholder point of view.
In 30-plus years of fulfilling that mission, Dorna's MotoGP staff has grown from just over a dozen to more than 500 people. The production has considerable standardization at this point - of the 160-180 cameras per production, 26-28 are deployed at curves and straightaways on all courses - but, Sendra says, that evolved over time at each venue.
You need to see the bikes - MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3 - the behavior of the racing, he explains, noting that each year's fleets of bikes are prototypes, incorporating design and technical innovations their manufacturers are trying out. The first race [at each new venue] is going to be the first for the riders, too. In the second year, we learn from that - maybe there is a need to change camera positions - and the third is when the positions may be made permanent. I'd say that 70%-80% of the production is the same from place to place, but the other 20% we need to adapt to each venue. It's not like doing a football game in stadiums that are the same everywhere. That's why we had to develop our own processes. For every MotoGP race, the riders have to adjust to the track. We do the same.
Dorna Sports carries its own gear to set up the media compound- an estimated 80 tons of it - all loaded into custom flight cases. Certain cases - the modular, dual-expando production-control room, the audio-mix control room (ACR), the RF-management room - constitute their own package: unplugged, closed up, and ready to be loaded aboard a truck or an aircraft. The company contracts locally for certain services, such as the crane needed to place control units in the broadcast compound and cameras on their perches.
Besides bringing the production gear, Sendra notes, Dorna carries its own production culture. We're like the host broadcaster for the Olympics because our people do the same work no matter where the race takes place. We have to adapt for local conditions, like humidity in places like Malaysia or Indonesia, but the process is the same. It's important to bring the same people who have the knowledge and experience to every race.
Dorna Sports' Jose Pep Mendoza: We have to have a careful balance between confidentiality and access [in transmitting telemetry data]. )
The main broadcast cameras deployed around the track include Steadicams, a Jimmy Jib, airborne cams, super-slow-motion cameras, and an eight-gyroscope gyrocam. Some have an Audio-Technica BP28L mono or BP4027 stereo shotgun mic attached. Others are matched with a pair of mono shotguns placed in X-Y configuration of either 90 or 110 degrees of incidence, depending on the location, and attached to track fences to pick up Doppler-type sound effects as bikes approach and depart. Track audio is embedded in the video signal and de-embedded at the ACR.
The Dorna broadcast compound is laid out for workflow. For instance, the output from the ACR is folded into the international program feed next door. The production-monitor displays showing the feeds around the race are arranged in a circular configuration, with camera numbers running clockwise to follow the action. Everything is designed to follow the linear narrative of the race itself.
To keep up with the pace of racing annually, Dorna has developed workflows that allow a considerable amount of postproduction to be done in near real time. For instance, in 2020, Dorna replaced its local servers with Adobe's Creative Cloud SAAS, including Adobe Team Projects. To take advantage of the 1.4 PB of video content in its archives, the team created proxies for all the files by linking them directly to Premiere Pro via remote desktop.
Bike-Mounted Cams and Mics A custom assemb
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Dorna Sports Makes MotoGP Roar With Customized Workflows Productions include product development and testing with Audio-Technica, Grass Valley By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
