Live from the 37th America's Cup: Production Team Embraces 4K, HDR, ST 2110 in Land/Sea Effort Second to None New LiDAR system, hydrogen-powered chase boat help enhance viewer experience By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Friday, October 18, 2024 - 12:40 pm
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When it comes to applying technology to enhance TV coverage of a sport, there is little that compares to the America's Cup. With the 37th edition in its final battle, between New Zealand and Great Britain, in Barcelona, Spain, the production team has taken some serious leaps in helping viewers understand what is happening as racing yachts compete on a large playing surface made of water.
Topping the list of innovations this year: the production is all 4K and HDR (HLG2020), a new LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system captures wind speeds in 10 x 10-meter sections across the entire course, and a new zero-emissions hydrogen-powered chase boat allows the crew to get closer to the racing yachts because it foils and gets steadier shots at higher speeds.
This is the Formula One of sailing, says Stephen Nuttall, head of television, America's Cup, of the decision to go 4K and HDR. At the end of the day, it's a technology race: the team with the best sailors in the fastest boat is going to win the Cup. Innovation is woven throughout the fabric of the America's Cup, and we wanted to deliver the highest possible AV experience.
America's Cup's Stephen Nuttall: Innovation is woven throughout the fabric of the America's Cup.
For an event like the America's Cup, HDR is making a big difference. First, he explains, you've got many levels of light, and then we've got beautiful boats with some challenging camera positions. For example, we have a camera in the narrow, black pit where the cyclors are pedaling bikes [to generate hydraulic power on the yachts]. You've got someone in a dark uniform surrounded by black cycling above the camera with a very bright sky behind them. Being in HDR, we can get a lot more out of that than you would think. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference.
Nuttall and a team of more than 100 production professionals have been covering the competitions, which began July 31 with the Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta. That was followed by the America's Cup E-Series, the Louis Vuitton Cup, the UniCredit Youth America's Cup, the Puig Women's America's Cup, and the Louis Vuitton 37th America's Cup Match in a best-of-13 competition.
Land Ho! There are two key components in producing a sailing event. First, covering the actual race requires getting audio and video technology onto the yachts and chase boats and into the air on helicopters. And then there needs to be a place for all those signals to be brought together on land and allow a production team to create a broadcast. With respect to the latter, the America's Cup team selected Barcelona-based Mediapro to provide the onshore production facilities at the World Trade Center in the Port of Barcelona. Nuttall says the America's Cup crew lucked out when the real estate, an ideal location in the Port Vell harbor, became available a few months ahead of the beginning of competition.
Mediapro is providing more than 40 broadcast professionals, a control room, and two audio-control rooms, an EVS replay room, and camera control for the live coverage and an editing suite to produce daily highlights summaries and create social-media content.
The America's Cup EVS replay area in Barcelona
The two audio rooms have separate functions: one room mixes the yacht feeds (submix), including effects and crew communications; the other room layers in the commentators and the final output.
The team in the submix will turn the effects up as a prompt for the rest of the production to focus on something being said, says Nuttall. Or they might push the crew
down so you can better hear the foil going into the water [thanks to] the eight effects mics. They're doing all of that mixing in 5.1, which is hard because you're obviously jumping from yacht to yacht.
Because the America's Cup team wanted to go with the best video format, 4K with HLG2020 HDR and 5.1 surround sound, the Mediapro engineering team decided to use ST 2110 IP. We are receiving signals from the onboard camera in normal SDI and converting them to 2110, Mediapro Operations Manager Miguel Mur explains, so that we can do almost anything we want with them as we are then working with virtual inputs and outputs. That allows us to meet all the production needs before we deliver the signals to the international-distribution side in SDI. And we convert from progressive to interlace for those who need an interlaced signal.
Getting the Port of Barcelona ready for the multi-month production required deployment of a fiber ring by the port. That ring connects all the team bases as well as the sites that are used for signal contribution and then, of course, connecting it to the World Trade Center, where the main production gallery, postproduction, and social-media-content creation are located.
In many ways, adds Mur, this is a remote production because everything is coming from different sites and 99% of the cameras are on the water, so we don't have the normal SMPTE camera connectivity. From Timeline, we have diversity RF receivers, and the signals from those receivers are sent via fiber to the production center.
The cameras shaders are shading in HDR and downscaling to SDR. Our main feed is the 4K HDR as we have plenty of takers of the 4K feed, says Mediapro, Technical Manager David Salmon. But the vision supervisors can always see both the HDR and SDR signals. At Mediapro, we've been doing 4K for the past eight years, so we have a bit of experie
