Red Bull Salzburg broadcasts content with Blackmagic Design products

Ursa Mini digital cinema cameras together with an ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K switcher are being used by the Austrian football club.

Red Bull Salzburg is using Blackmagic Design's Urs Mini digital cinema cameras in the production of audiovisual content as part of an outdoor broadcast system based on the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K switcher.

The company Mediahaus has been responsible for generating this content for the sports institution since 2005. The platform used for its production has evolved from a simple portable system to a complete mobile unit equipped with Blackmagic devices that are used to capture and mix images, control the transmission and distribute audiovisual material.

Signal management from the Mercedes Sprinter van belonging to Mediahaus is carried out using a Smart Videohub 40×40 matrix switcher and a series of mini converters manufactured by Blackmagic Design.

Wolfgang Angermüller, founder and CEO of Mediahaus, acknowledges that "considering the distances between the mobile unit and the cameras, and that we depend on the stadium's SDI network to send and receive images, we chose to also install a 16×16 Smart Videohub matrix in the club's technical room. This allows us to resynchronize the signals halfway, with the aim of guaranteeing their quality."

Achievement

For their part, the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K and ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Panel devices constitute the fundamental pillars of Mediahaus' creative work dynamics. "We use the mixer to generate two signals for the club. One of them is transmitted through the stadium's giant screens, and the other is transmitted through FanTV, the institution's internal television channel," explains Angermüller. “We also produce additional material for the analytical equipment, digital scoreboards and live Internet broadcasts,” he adds.

For this purpose, Mediahaus uses a clean signal provided by the local station and the images captured by the main camera, according to Angermüller. "Likewise, we have our own units located in different parts of the stadium, including two in the locker room tunnel, another on the catwalk of the most important stand and a fourth under the roof of the stadium to obtain panoramic shots."

The Ursa Mini 4K and Ursa Mini Pro cameras from Mediahaus are equipped with B4 mounts and Ursa Mini Shoulder Kit shoulder mounts. In turn, they have been configured to capture images with a reduced sensor area, at a resolution of 1920x1080, to transmit signals in 1080i format over the SDI network. On the other hand, the unit located on the catwalk has an Ursa Studio Viewfinder and a high-definition Fujinon B4 16x lens, while the Ursa Mini 4K model located next to the court includes a lens Fujinon 18x variable focal length. Both versions are mounted on tripods Sachtler.

"One of the great advantages of using Ursa Mini cameras is the possibility of controlling them remotely through the ATEM Software Control program. For us, this benefit represents a significant saving, since it is not necessary to have expensive control units. In this way, we can significantly reduce the cost per transmission channel, and this is something that we cannot ignore," concludes Angermüller.