Live From FIFA World Cup: FIFA TV Delivers Wealth of Content to Rightsholders, Fans Massive effort provides live match coverage, pre/postmatch features, daily updates for each team in the tournament By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - 9:10 am
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As the 2018 FIFA World Cup enters the Quarterfinals Stage of the tournament, the FIFA TV production team continues to refine its workflows, not only from 2014 but also from the Group Stage. Like the athletes themselves, the team aims to build off the previous match and become stronger and more capable.
The overwhelming positive feedback we are receiving from our media-rights licensees, as well as the impressive take-up of the new offerings, makes us believe we had made the right technical and editorial choices, says Florin Mitu, head of host broadcast production, FIFA. We now look forward to the last eight matches of the tournament with a passionate commitment to continue offering offsite viewers the best possible seat in the house.
The master-control area in the FIFA World Cup IBC
The IBC itself is located in the Crocus Expo International Exhibition Center northwest of Red Square, which is another primary location given the presence of rightsholder studios. The IBC is once again a massive place, with 54,000 sq. meters of raw indoor space, 8,613 sq. meters of multilateral areas, and 9,054 sq. meters for the unilateral production teams. The production center measures 3,329 sq. meters and houses seven studios; the largest, Televisa's, measures 300 sq. meters. The seven studios are for Fox U.S., Fox Brazil, Telemundo, Televisa, Caracol TV, TYC Sports Argentina, and CCTV.
The production team in Moscow at the IBC is complemented by 40 ENG crews (comprising 120 people) covering each team and gathering footage from practices, interviews, location beauty shots, and more. And, of course, there are the Host Broadcast Services (HBS) technical and production teams at each of the 12 venues; a number of those are currently not active because matches are no longer being played there. Once again, the teams will operate out of Equipment Room Containers instead of traditional remote-production trucks. The advantages of the ERCs are clear: they provide more room for the production team and obviate numerous onsite trucks.
The core production plan for FIFA World Cup match coverage calls for 37 cameras to be used for each match, with the addition of two behind-goal pole cams for the Knockout rounds. New this year at the IBC is the first use of Video Assistant Referees, centrally located at the IBC in Moscow. The VAR team has access to all relevant host-broadcast cameras plus two dedicated offside cameras and supports the match officials during all 64 matches.
Also new at the IBC are two Infotainment galleries, removing the need to have dedicated in-venue videoboard operations at each stadium. The teams in the galleries have access to all feeds and dedicated iso feeds (including RF handhelds) and low-latency transmission to the giant screens in the venues ensure that fans in the stands get a robust and timely experience. One challenge? Communication and coordination between the people on the ground and the gallery.
Televisa has the largest studio in the World Cup IBC.
The UHD/HDR efforts at the FIFA World Cup have two layers of production formats in use: a core layer comprises cameras operating in 1080p/50 SDR mode (REC.709) with HD graphics; an enhanced UHD layer operates at 2160p/50 HDR (BT2020) without graphics. The HDR production format is OETF Slog3/Live, and the UHD feed (available only at the International Broadcast Center) relies on quad 1080p/50 at 3 Gbps to create the 4K-resolution image.
The vision mixer works with eight cameras operating in dual mode, outputting UHD/HDR and 1080p/SDR; 11 cameras with dual output in 1080p/HDR and 1080p/SDR; 21 cameras in single-output 1080p/SDR; and all replays, which are 1080p/SDR.
The UHD/HDR output will take advantage of a dedicated camera at the Camera 1 position as well as seven additional UHD-camera positions. The remaining 11 single-speed 1080p/HDR cameras will all be upconverted to UHD's 2160p resolution (with HDR).
Key to all the production efforts is a dual-layer workflow, allowing a single vision mixer and a single production team to create three deliverables: 1080i SDR, 1080p SDR, and UHD HDR. The vision mixer outputs two of the three signals directly to rightsholders: a 1080i/SDR version and a 1080p SDR version. The UHD version will simultaneously be created within that same vision mixer, relying on upscaling and color mapping to create a UHD 2160p HDR BT2020 signal. That UHD signal is sent to the IBC via fiber and then processed and made available to rightsholders as UHD with HDR in three flavors: S-Log3, HDR10, and HLG. A dirty feed of each of the three formats includes English graphics; a dirty dirty feed also includes clock and score.
One of the big challenges for any single production designed for both SDR and HDR output is figuring out the best way to shade the cameras. For example, shading in HDR can potentially cause issues with the SDR output because the shader may not be aware of how the expanded imaging capabilities for HDR might exceed the capabilities of the SDR output and cause issues like blowing out light areas or lack of detail in dark areas. As a result, the FIFA World Cup production team is shading in 1080p/SDR.
The World Cup production-control room
The FIFA World Cup coverage may seem straightforward, but the FIFA TV production team is providing a wealth of feeds around each match, including a dedicated production at each stadium on the days prior to matches. One gallery at the venue is used for the production of all the multifeeds. One goal this year is to provide faster access to team content, more warmup and fan
