SVT expands its EVS resources for the remote production of the Alpine Skiing and Biathlon World Championships

The workflow conceived by SVT, as host of the 2019 FIS Åre Alpine World Ski Championships and the 2019 IBU Östersund Biathlon World Championships, uses EVS technology for the ingestion of 75 camera feeds performed remotely from Stockholm.

Swedish public television channel Swedish Television (SVT) has used live production technology from EVS to successfully deliver two ambitious remote productions for high-level winter sports events: the FIS Åre Alpine World Ski Championships 2019 and the World Biathlon Championship IBU Östersund 2019, which were held in February and March in neighboring Swedish resorts. As host broadcaster, SVT opted on this occasion for remote production of both events from its production center located in Stockholm about 600 kilometers away.

Around 75 uncompressed HD camera signals were transported over IP through two fiber circuits Telia 100 Gbps from the Championships venue in central Sweden to SVT's three control rooms in Stockholm. Both events were directed by both the filmmaker and the mixer operator from controls in Åre and Östersund connected to SVT's central control rooms.

There, SVT expanded its existing EVS resources for the specific demands to ingest and produce the large number of incoming signals from both championships, which included cstandard cameras, triple speed cameras and 6 super slow-motion cameras. For the occasion, SVT added several XT3 ChannelMAX servers to production servers EVS XT3/XS3 and the PAM IPDirector software suite. The expanded EVS system consisted of more than 100 HD channels both for use as host broadcasters and for national-unilateral operation.

All operators of EVS LSM repeats were located in SVT's Stockholm control rooms to provide instant replays, slomos, recaps and outroes to the World Feed for both events. EVS operators in the control rooms were able to create the replays and summaries for World Feed, World Feed Plus and also for the national SVT production remotely.

One of the benefits of central/remote operation, as all cameras were transported directly to the broadcast center in Stockholm, was that SVT's in-house editorial team working on the national-unilateral production as well as SVT's winter program The winter studio, they had exclusive material at their disposal to create even more attractive content.

El World Feed Plus, que era un feed adicional producido y ofrecido por Infront Sports & Media y SVT a todos los titulares de los derechos para el Campeonato Mundial de Esquí Alpino FIS Åre 2019, también fue producido gracias al sistema EVS. Todos los operadores de EVS en el control estaban etiquetando las mejores imágenes de Super Motion de cada esquiador con metadatos/palabras clave. Y gracias a las capacidades avanzadas de filtrado y búsqueda de IPDirector, World Feed Plus operator EVS was able to quickly have a summary ready for each skier as soon as they finished their run. This would not be possible without EVS's unique XNet instant live media sharing network, as Super Motion clips can be shared instantly over the XNet network without the need to transfer them.

Two milestones in remote production

Add Granberg, technical director and head of production at SVT, highlights that "we have been exploring the possibilities that remote productions offer since our first trial in London 2012, as they can be more efficient and more environmentally friendly. These two recent winter sporting events have been two milestones due to the scale of their production."

Laurent Petit, Executive Vice President of EVS, assures for his part that "SVT has been driving remote productions for many years and has reached another scale in the production hosting the World Championships in Åre 2019 and Östersund 2019. EVS is adopting and supporting these initiatives. From a product/solution development perspective, we do our best to evaluate the requirements of our customers in such remote production operations or enabling remote access and flows. “The new XT-VIA and XNet-VIA will offer even more possibilities, as they are compatible with SMPTE2110 IP standards for any production environment.”

In addition to its involvement in SVT's host broadcasts for both the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships and the 2019 IBU Biathlon World Championships, EVS' live production equipment was also used extensively on-site and in the broadcast centers of numerous rights holders.