Spin shot: How Infront Productions is producing coverage of the Women's European Handball Federation Euro 2024 By Heather McLean
Friday, November 29, 2024 - 13:41
Print This Story
With the help of host broadcast HBS, the EHF js making this Women's Euro bigger and better than ever before [Source:EHF/kolektiff]
The Women's European Handball Federation (EHF) Euro 2024 started on Thursday 28 November, with 24 teams taking part for the first time, up from 16 previously. The preliminary round of the competition will be concluded in the three host countries, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland, on 3 December, with the main round and the knockout phase seeing a winner crowned on 15 December.
With the help of Infront Productions, which selected Host Broadcast Services (HBS) to run the project, the EHF is making this Women's Euro bigger and better than ever before. When it comes to planning and strategy, the Women's EHF Euro will for the second time be as big in terms of production as the Men's EHF Euro 2024, which took place in January 2024.
Innovations introduced in Germany for the men, such as the change in format from interlaced to progressive (1080p 50), as well as the use of a cine-style camera for the final weekend, are being carried over to the Women's EHF Euro. Additionally, the final weekend itself will be captured by 21 cameras.
The Women's EHF Euro 2024 will be produced in progressive this year, as the men's was in January [Source:EHF/kolektiff]
Equal production
SVG Europe spoke to Thomas Sch neich, EHF director of media and communications, and Lou Oppenheim, production manager at Infront Productions and the person responsible for the Women's EHF Euro host broadcast, about how the two weeks of the Women's Euro were going to be produced.
Comments Sch neich on the move to equalise the men's and women's productions in 2022: We made the deliberate decision that both the men's Euro and the women's Euro would be treated equally; we wanted to give it the same exposure. We don't want to reduce cameras if we're talking camera planning from one event to the other. Back then when we started, we said that both events should enjoy our defined gold standard of TV production.
The women's event will be produced in progressive this year, as the men's was in January. Comments Oppenheim: Now more and more broadcasters are using progressive rather than interlaced and because as well on big events we do progressive, we just want the EHF to follow that path because it's a big production, a lot of cameras and now [produced to a] high standard.
For the technical side of the production, using progressive has meant a few tweaks have had to be made, says Oppenheim. In Hungary, Infront Productions works with technical services provider Antenna, while in Innsbruck and Vienna in Austria and Basel, Switzerland, it works with Media Luso from Portugal.
She comments on the men's Euro in January: Actually in Germany, we had a couple of challenges, just because we needed to adapt all the equipment coming from the broadcasters, even for everything replay related, for example, that all machines have to be able to work with the progressive format, which with some technical providers is not the case with all the machines. So we had to adapt a bit. It all went fine.
The bandwidth required for the production when using progressive is also increased, she notes: It just uses more bandwidth and capacity. And all of that has an impact on the organising committee (OC) for internet lines, for example; as soon as you start pushing progressive, it takes much more [capacity], especially if you want the turnaround to be as quick as possible and then it's money on OC's and all of that. But in the end it worked all fine and as Thomas said, we want the same thing on the woman's, and it's all agreed with the OC and technical providers, so it should be fine and for the best.
Camera plan for the final of the Women's EHF Euro 2024 (click on the image to see a larger version)
Cine cam magic
Infront Productions is using the Sony FX6 cine cam for the EHF women's final. It is being used to capture off-court images, explains Oppenheim. We are using it before, at halftime, and after [the matches] to provide more beautiful pictures, or cinematic pictures. So it'll be from players in the dressing room if they allow us to enter with this one, otherwise we'll be waiting to enter the court, lining up during the anthem, on the bench, and then at the end, some emotions on the court. Just to tell the story a bit more. And our friends from digital have asked us to film the last player of each team when they enter the court, that we follow them from the back; that will be used on different platforms.
Sch neich explains why the EHF found it necessary to introduce cine cameras. Obviously it's always our goal to enhance the viewing experience. I'm not going to say we were late to the party, but obviously back in January, cine style cameras had become much wider used in world feed productions, at least from my point of view. And this is the next step that we wanted to take as well, from a European Handball Federation and innovation point of view. It was an on top' investment, so to say that we deliberately made [it in addition] to the existing camera plan.
There's always financial thoughts that come into these discussions and we looked at the feasibility, of when can we use it? Sch neich goes on. The final weekend is kind of a given because it's obviously the highlight matches of the tournament. In Germany [at the men's Euros], we had the particular situation that the opening game was a world record-breaking game in terms of audience, because we played in a football stadium in front of 53,000
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Spin shot: How Infront Productions is producing coverage of the Women's European Handball Federation Euro 2024 By Heather McLean 
