Live From the Tokyo Olympics: ARD/ZDF Adjusts; Production Control Rooms in Mainz, Germany, Play Key Role

01/08/2021

Live From the Tokyo Olympics: ARD/ZDF Adjusts; Production Control Rooms in Mainz, Germany, Play Key Role By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Saturday, July 31, 2021 - 10:43 pm

Print This Story

When German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF originally planned out their Tokyo Olympics plans, they included a studio with a view to Rainbow Bridge and a control room for the studio as well as edit facilities and more. The studio location is shared with Austria's ORF and Switzerland's SRG (each has their own studio), is still located along the water and still has a dramatic view and gives talent a chance to interview athletes in person. Many of the other facilities, however, are not.

Vito Zoiro of ARD/ZDF says that all production control is done out of Mainz for the Tokyo Olympics.

Corona changed all of that and now we are connected to production control in Mainz where we have an infrastructure like the IBC here: the National Broadcast Center which is a wooden structure with shipping containers, says Vito Zoiro, ZDF, technical manager, special projects. The studio is connected directly to production control in Mainz, and we don't even see the signals here. We also have our own cameras from athletics and aquatics going directly to Mainz where there is a sub control room for each.

Four 10 Gbps circuits from Telstra help transport signals back to Mainz. LiveU systems are also in use, sending ENG signals directly from mixed zones to home. The IBC facility basically passes on the OBS signals as well as audio signals from eight voice over booths (an additional 18 are back home in Mainz).

In principle, everything is working, says Zoiro. We had a plan and it took a couple of days for some of the commentators and producers to understand the workflow changes.

ARD and ZDF alternate days of coverage for the linear channel and are also offering up to 10 live streams of online content.

One of the ARD/ZDF voice over suits at the IBC in Tokyo.

With the games almost at the halfway point and everything running well the only issue might occur on August 3-4 when the fiber cable that is currently transporting the signals is replaced back in Germany after being damaged in the floods earlier this month.

It will be repaired, and we will have to establish a connection in a different way, says Zoiro.

Also helping back home is the Mobile Produktions Einheit (MPE) (for more details click here which Zoiro says was conceived when ARD and ZDF realized that it would be impossible to get equipment shipped from the Euros IBC in The Netherlands to Tokyo in time for the start of the games.

We also can't rent equipment, so we need to have some clever planning to be able to cover both, he adds.

Other tools making a difference are the LiveU gear as well as the roonect kit which has a USB audio interface and commentary headset that can connect to a computer.

After this we'll sort out what we did and then take the many ways of doing things and reduce that to the useful ones as not all of these workflows are really useful, he adds.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2021/07/31/live-from-the-tokyo-olympics-ar...
	See more stories from svg

North America Stories

17/07/2026

Foundry Unlocks Professional-Grade AI for VFX with Gripta...

Creative software developer Foundry today announced Griptape Enterprise, a new tier of the Griptape AI workflow orchestration platform, extended to meet the str...

17/07/2026

Foundry Releases SmartRoto for Nuke

Creative software developer Foundry today announced the availability of SmartRoto, a new AI-powered plugin upgrade for Nuke, NukeX, Nuke Studio, and Nuke Indie ...

17/07/2026

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available!

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available! Brie Clayton July 16, 2026 0 Comments Fairlight Live is a new audio mixer designed fo...

17/07/2026

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP Andy Marken July 16, 2026 0 Comments Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There\s no win...

16/07/2026

SVG Students To Watch: Kaden Sherman, Albany State University

This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work In the live-sports-video in...

16/07/2026

TNDV Marks First Year of Aspiration 35 Cinematic Production Truck

TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...

16/07/2026

ATSC Releases First Major Revision to A/85 Audio Loudness Recommended Practice Since 2013

ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...

16/07/2026

FloSports Named Exclusive Global Media Partner for 2026 CrossFit Games

FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...

16/07/2026

Sennheiser Releases Spectera Firmware 1.4 and Command Button

Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...

16/07/2026

ESPN and Southwestern Athletic Conference Announce Multi-Year Media Rights Agreement Through 2030-31

ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...

16/07/2026

Audio-Technica Releases 20 Series Control Application for Elgato Stream Deck

Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...

16/07/2026

SSL Live L550 Plus Consoles Power Audio Production for The Voice France Season 15

The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...

16/07/2026

Gray Media and Atlanta Hawks Announce Georgia-Wide Broadcast Partnership for 2026-27 NBA Season

Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...

16/07/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Quarterback Showrunner Joe Zucco on Cinematography, Building Trust, Carrying On the NFL Films Legacy

Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...

16/07/2026

Texas Rangers Switch Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Partner to BZZR

The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: BBC Sport on Moving Across the Pond to Bring the Atmosphere of the Final Matches to Fans

With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...

16/07/2026

With 36 Unilateral Cameras, NBC Sports Shapes 154th Open Championship Coverage for U.S. Viewers

In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...

16/07/2026

Altitude Sports & Entertainment's Tim De Lay on New SkyCam Digital Feed, Upgraded Studio Space

Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: Inside ORF's Austria-Based Production to Bring All the Emotions of the Tournament to Fans

Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team d...

16/07/2026

Inside Gravity Media's Effort To Power the 154th Open Championship Production

With 42 RF cameras and high-power radio mics deployed, the spectrum environment ...

16/07/2026

The Gauge: Poland | June 2026

June brought stabilization to the television market. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes a day in front of their TV screens exactly the same as i...

16/07/2026

New studio monitoring leads Glensound's 60th year line-up...

Glensound returns to IBC with a major new addition to its intelligent loudspeaker range, the Greater Divine Supernal studio monitor, alongside recent developmen...

16/07/2026

Complete spectrum of innovation from British exhibitors a...

33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...

16/07/2026

Hitomi Broadcast to showcase HDR colour verification and...

Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...