Live From Paris 2024: Inside Look at France T l visions Historic Production Effort Three channels dedicated to Olympics coverage require innovative operations, planning By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Wednesday, August 7, 2024 - 7:46 am
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Historically, France T l visions has approached the Olympics with the same philosophy for every Games: build a facility at the IBC, find a studio location, and make sure all the signals are properly delivered to Paris for playout to viewers via free, over-the-air TV. This year, with the Games taking place within an easy drive of headquarters, the national broadcaster has taken a different approach.
These Olympics are quite different from the ones we are used to doing, says Gr gory Vital, head of engineering, France T l visions. Tor the first time, we're doing it on our core facilities. When we do an Olympics in another country, we build a facility specially for that Olympics. This was quite challenging because of things like cybersecurity.
France T l visions monitors a large number of incoming feeds from OBS at its headquarters and also records them to EVS servers.
France T l visions needed to build additional master-control rooms to meet increased demand for content delivery. The broadcaster is producing content for three channels, one of which delivers coverage in UHD HDR (there is also a digital channel for the extreme sports: BMX, skateboarding, and breaking). The technical demand required some changes at headquarters, with the UHD coverage produced out of a France T l visions-owned TV truck (UM1) and the production-planning team taking over a TV studio. The broadcaster is taking in all the OBS feeds for live coverage and also recording 40 OBS channels on EVS servers for replay during night sessions.
The production area overseeing the UHD HDR channel, which is produced out of an OB truck
The decision to forgo a presence at the IBC was driven by budget needs, and the broadcaster has only one person on duty there to make sure the feeds leave the IBC correctly. Signals are received as both SDI and ST 2110, ensuring that there is a backup in case of any issues.
It was quite easy to put in place everything for ST 2110, says Vital, and we didn't have any issues with the 2110 feed. The EVS servers are currently in SDI, but, now that we know we will be going IP, we are in discussion to turn those from SDI to IP.
The advantage of working in ST 2110 is that it makes cabling and signal interchange much easier than working in SDI, he adds. We currently have four studio galleries and six or seven studio sets. It's a nightmare every year, and we spend all our summers crossing signals between the control rooms and the studio sets. It'll be a lot easier with 2110, for sure.
It will also bring us a lot of flexibility in terms of format and resolution, he continues, allowing us to do HD but also to do UHD with the same infrastructure. I am not so sure IP brings a lot of flexibility for a small channel, but, when you have a lot of sets and a lot of OB vans where you have to exchange feeds, it makes things better.
Among other new technologies, AI plays a big part in hundreds of daily highlight files sent by OBS, automatically translating them for input into the France TV archive. If an athlete speaks Chinese, explains Romuald Rat, technology lab director, France T l visions, we can choose the part we want to translate, and it will create a transcript and a clip for editing. We've developed that in-house with Whisper. It also gives context and can understand what sport you are talking about as the same word can mean different things in different sports.
For unilateral operations, France TV built two studios. One is in the Trocad ro for the main channel. The other is in the Club France, which is home to a late-night talk show bringing in athletes and others to close out the evening. The athletes also come the main news set for our national news at Trocad ro, says Vital. We can have the same athlete on at one set and then, a couple hours later, on at the other.
Reporters and ENG crews travel around Paris and beyond with TVU and AviWest bonded-cellular transmission systems. The broadcaster also set up a private 5G network for the Olympic-torch relay, cutting transmission costs by 92% versus a traditional setup.
We used that eight to 12 hours a day, Rat explains. It was connected to the cloud for production. We're reviewing the return on investment right now, but I can tell you that it was very positive. With a private 5G network, we will be able to produce more and more things with this kind of setup, and it'll help us to produce things we were not able to produce - not only for sports but also for news. It also helps us to not produce CO2 emissions, and we estimated that we saved production of 600 tons of CO2, which is very important.
Another France TV development is what Rat calls the bicycle video unit, which comes in handy during the Olympics, with two bicycle transmission units bouncing around town. Paris can be particularly difficult to get around in: for example, five years ago, when Notre Dame caught fire, it was impossible to get a satellite truck in position. At the Olympic venues, barriers prevent vehicles from getting close to the media entrance, requiring the crew to carry heavy equipment. The bicycle solution makes it much easier to get close to a venue.
We built a cargo cycle that has the same capacity as a satellite truck, he points out. One truck is replaced by two bicycles with two technicians, and they each carry 80 kilos of equipment. They connect to public 4G and can produce two live streams at one time.
Adds Vital, Part of our strategy is to do something at a small scale to prove it can work. When it's validated by the user, we can scale it.
