World Cup Action With The Coolux Pandoras Box

20 July 2010 12.16 BST

The German multi-media system house ICT AG recently presented a revolutionary sports-broadcasting presentation tool, developed in conjunction with the SWR (part of the German PSB giant ARD) and Burmester Event — und Medientechnik.

The setup was in use during the international football World Cup in South Africa. The setup included the use of a touch sensitive plasma screen, that enabled the presenters to choose from a range of Full-HD sources represented on the screen by a variety of preview windows, that could be freely selected and moved around. This way, the presenter was able to, for example, select live feeds spontaneously, or change the sequence in which the available video content was to be integrated into the show. The image sources, which were stored in a complex database, were easily fed into pre-defined placeholders.

This applied to just about any kind of image source. Live broadcasts could potentially have been combined with more film clips and/or different internet content this way.

Once a particular source on the screen had been selected, it was displayed in large-scale, with the remaining content sources still present in small-scale.

In the context of football tactics, this setup allowed presenters to change the visualised team formations, in order to highlight the strategic implications.

On the hardware side, the heart of the complete system was the coolux Pandoras Box server range. Being able to process multiple Full-HD streams in this particular case, in addition to extremely little delay, made coolux products the perfect component for this TV presenter tool.

Not only live sources, but already existing material, was directly accessed and played out through the system as well. An additional function that was used daily was the press review feature.

All these functions had one thing in common; they were modifiable within seconds and allowed a seamless integration into the broadcast workflow. Using an old fashioned setup, even a simple action like updating the score could take a few minutes, due to the render time. In this case however the time was reduced to a mere few seconds. Spontaneity was guaranteed this way, right up until the final whistle.

The following coolux components were used in the SWR’s main studio at the IBC (International Broadcast Centre) in Johannesburg: five sets consisting of one Pandoras Box with dual DVI and SD/SDI each, together with the coolux Manager Pro and the coolux Serial Link, in connection with a frame grabber system and a database system, courtesy of the Burmester Event — und Medientechnik.

The Serial Link controls the SDI matrix switch (for choosing the image source showed in fullscreen mode), as well as the EVS (Timecode/Start/Stop/Shuttle).

These systems were used to play out the content to the presenter desks and the 103“ plasma screens mounted on the studio wall.

Three of these systems were intended for mobile use inside the studios of the different football stadiums and for use with outside broadcast vehicles.

www.ict.de 
http://www.ict.de/Fussball-WM_2010.1511.0.html
www.swr.de
www.burmester-berlin.com