Immersive Media, an innovative provider of 360-degree video capture content, was tasked wi

MuxLab 6G-SDI Extender over Fiber Optic Delivers 4K Connectivity at Rio Olympics 17th October 2017

Immersive Media, an innovative provider of 360-degree video capture content, was tasked with a massive challenge in broadcasting at the Rio 2016 Summer Games. The sheer size of the event and the great distances that content had to travel provided a unique situation.

At this monumental event, the distances between the venues and our control rooms were vast. Sometimes signals had to be transmitted up to 65 kilometers in distance to main control, explained Immersive Media's Technical Director, Lance Van Nostrand.

In all, they laid approximately 2,400 kilometers of fiber cabling around the arenas and various venues in order to support multiple 360-degree cameras. To simplify the installation and ensure the highest quality video, Immersive Media specified and ran with one single fiber for each 4K video camera feed.

The event presented several difficult challenges that MuxLab's 6G-SDI Extenders over Fiber Optic simply solved while other solutions were too complex or incomplete, explained Van Nostrand.

Multiple HD video feeds had to be transmitted throughout the Olympics, and the MuxLab Extenders' multiplexing capability enabled Immersive Media to group four feeds and send them along one fiber cable to streamline the installation.

Alternative solutions I had looked at were single chassis-based and therefore, less flexible. Plus, when the scope of the project inevitably changed, in cases where we had to add more cameras or support a new venue with little lead time, the MuxLab 6G-SDI Extenders allowed us to be flexible and accommodate these requirements, said Van Nostrand.

MuxLab's 6G SDI Extender over Fiber Optic was one of several key solutions that supported Immersive Media during the Rio games. It extends 6G-SDI over single mode fiber cable up to 80km or over multimode fiber optic cable up to 400m. Integrators can extend four HD-SDI feeds, two 3G-SDI feeds or one 6G-SDI feed over one cable. A return channel is provided for AV monitoring, tally light, talk-back and camera control unit (CCU). It supports all SDI configurations (using 1, 2 or 4 BNCs) up to 4K. Automatic SDI link recognition and configuration and RS232 pass-through are provided.

I am relieved and pleased that the design and support from Muxlab made virtual reality at the Rio games a success, concluded Van Nostrand.

LINK:	http://www.theiabm.org/news/muxlab-6g-sdi-extender-over-fiber-optic-de...
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