The Asian Games processed and routed all its signals over Lawo V_

Central routing of the entire facility was handled by a V__matrix unit, Lawo's software-defined IP core processing and routing platform.

Held simultaneously in Jakarta and Palembang for the first time in its history, the 18th Asian Games ended in September with a closing ceremony in the Indonesian state capital of Jakarta, where the opening ceremony had been held 15 days earlier.

Los 18th Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games 2018, popularly called “the Asian Olympic Games” include disciplines practiced only in Asia. In addition to the well-known Olympic sports, dragon racing and the Chinese martial art of Wushu were among the sports included in this event.

The Games were broadcast throughout Asia and beyond with an audience of some 112 million viewers commissioned by the Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee (INASGOC) a International Games Broadcast Services (IGBS) host broadcaster duties.

Joint company between IMG (London) and HBS (Switzerland), IGBS was responsible for the production and distribution of the live Games.

The International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Jakarta hosted several international broadcasters, including NHK and TBS (Japan), KBS, MBC and SBS (Korea), CCTV (China), TV5 (Philippines), Astro (Malaysia), SCTV (Indonesia) and BEIN and AlKass (Qatar).

Core routing

During live production, Lawo equipment was used for signal processing and distribution, as well as central control. He core routing of the entire facility was handled by one unit V__matrix, Lawo's software-defined IP core processing and routing platform.

Of the units V__remote4 they provided the PTP sync, and a system VSM (Virtual Studio Manager) provided overall control. For live broadcasts, the 27 main stadiums participating in the event were continuously connected to the IBC, while broadcasts for sports coverage in the “smaller” venues were recorded by ENG cameras and the material fed to the IBC.

The broadcast setup included in-stadium production kits with commentary units, as well as permanently installed equipment at the IBC for multilateral reporting. The signals produced at the headquarters were transmitted to the IBC, where they were distributed to broadcasters after technical and content control.

High volume of signals

The event schedule also determined the volume of the signal as in addition to the live images from the 27 stadiums and ENG material, signals from six beauty cameras distributed throughout Indonesia were recorded and distributed to obtain scenic and cultural impressions. With daily information from the press center and the highlights of the day's events, it was necessary to have a system capable of agilely managing the entire flow of signals.

For this, HBS chose V__matrix, the platform processing and routing with software-defined IP core Theirs, also with a view to the future production of IP-based broadcasts.

Configured with 400 inputs and 400 outputs, la matriz – 64 tarjetas C-100 en ocho cuadros – ofrece 21 puertos multiviewer, controlados por el Virtual Studio Manager de Lawo que funciona en dos servidores VSM. El sistema VSM fue operado a través de 16 paneles blandos VSM en seis pantallas de 23 pulgadas disponibles en el CDT (Sala de Contribución, Distribución y Transmisión), así como en pantallas de tabletas utilizadas en otras salas.

Head of Engineering, Harry Petry, acknowledges that "we chose the V__matrix for this task in order to be able to establish a decentralized IP infrastructure for our future projects. With its product portfolio, Lawo offers the most modern IP-based technology and, with the V__matrix, is the market leader."

"Due to the proximity of the Asian Games to the World Cup in Russia, there was no time for us to configure and test the entire system as usual, but our cooperation with Lawo on many major sporting events in recent years gave us so much confidence that we nevertheless decided in favor of this solution. So we put the system into operation at the beginning of August, and despite the time pressure, everything went as planned," he adds.

The V__matrix provides a fully virtualized real-time production infrastructure that supports many cores connected to a powerful standard switch with redundant 10GE and 40GE connectivity. This allows you to build a distributed IP processing and routing matrix with clean and precise switching as with traditional baseband routers.

Commentator positions

When dark fiber connections were available, the Lawo commentator systems to receive commentary signals from the indoor pool, the main stadium and the three venues of the IBC building.

The LCU (Lawo Commentary Unit) was developed in close collaboration with Host Broadcast Services (HBS); The system uses IP transmission infrastructures and allows direct connection to Lawo mc² audio consoles and Nova routers for autonomous operation. Extensive development work invested by Lawo's R&D team has resulted in a fully digital feedback system based on the transmission of real-time Ravenna audio data over IP (Audio-over-IP). This makes it possible to network both facilities and equipment over standard IP networks, reducing cabling and increasing system flexibility.