KBS and L-S-B Combine to Broadcast Universiade Gwangju 05

Earlier this month, South Korea hosted another worldwide sport event Universiade Gwangju 2015. Host broadcaster KBS took care of all broadcast technology to deliver the world feed, relying on the VSM Broadcast Control and Monitoring System from L-S-B Broadcast Technologies to manage all workflows and signals within the International Broadcast Center (IBC) and for several OBs at the venues.

During the competition students from universities from all over the world met to fight for medals in 21 sports categories. With 20,000 participants from 170 countries, bi-annual Gwangju Universiade is one of the biggest international sport events taking place in 2015. As host broadcaster the organizing committee commissioned Korean public broadcaster KBS (Korean Broadcasting System). KBS took care of all broadcast infrastructure at the venues as well as in the IBC to cover all the sport events and to provide the world feed.

The long term relationship between KBS and L-S-B again resulted in this cooperation, after partnering successfully for Daegu World Athletics Championships 2011 or 2014 Incheon Asian Games.

In the IBC at Universiade Gwangju KBS installed several production areas to establish the whole distribution and transmission workflow. The VSM system by L-S-B provided the solution for KBS to combine the Control and Monitoring requirements of the various production areas into a single seamless workflow.

The main tasks of the VSM system was to provide all router control requirements of the International Broadcast Center as well as offering monitoring and control of essential equipment and signal feeds in the transmission path. Further workflow streamlining was provided with VSMs built-in scheduler, which was utilised to automate the daily distribution and transmission routing tasks for simplicity and speed. A combination of hardware and software control panels provided the operations and engineering staff with simplified and ergonomic user interfaces focussed to their different work tasks. Overall, a streamlined and simplified workflow solution was created to support the essential control requirements of this large-scale sport event.

Within the International Broadcast Center (IBC) several rooms were established for dedicated tasks. In each room, several L-S-B hardware and software panels were used.

A short overview of the structure within the IBC:

CDT - Contribution, Distribution, Transmission

Contribution: Reception of the international signal feeds from all venues.

Distribution: Signal distribution to right holders (broadcasters)

Transmission: Sending the international signal to the telecom/satellite farm and sending the return signal to each venue.

LDR - Line Distribution Room

Additional signal distribution to right holders which are located not in immediate proximity to the CDT. Signals are monitored and - if needed - re-clocked to ensure the best signal quality over the long distance.

BOC - Broadcast Operation Centre

Booking of the right holders and control for the Chief Engineer. Customized router control and monitoring within the IBC.

PQC - Program Quality Control

Quality control of all program feeds in terms of content and technical requirements.

CSC - Commentary Switching Centre

Distribution and management of commentary audio.

Archive

Recording all international signals and store in file format adding metadata & file classification.

Editing Room / Off-Tube / Daily Highlight

Provide the service of editing content and create daily highlight material as well as adding English commentary.

Central Apparatus Room

Heart of the IBC with routers and all relevant hardware.

The main goal in developing the VSM system design was the required flexibility to control and monitor the complete signal paths in the IBC with individually designed user interfaces. In close cooperation with the customer, the L-S-B engineers developed several user GUIs that fulfil the customers' demands for flexible and easy to use workflows. Due to VSM's overall system design, workflows could be changed easily, even during production. L-S-Bs contribution to the project included the consulting during preparation, the close cooperation during the project phase as well as the support during broadcast of the Games.

All this resulted in a highly customized and individually designed control and workflow concept that fulfilled the customer's needs for reliability and workflow flexibility by using a single overall control and monitoring system - VSM.

LINK:	http://sportsvideo.org/main/blog/2015/07/kbs-and-l-s-b-combine-to-broa...
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