Special report: Tweeking setup, day 3
Formula 1 2012 São Paulo - Brazil Grand Prix for EBU, Special report
The Dutch satellite uplink company Multi-Link Holland is responsible for all Formula 1 EBU (European Broadcasting Union) transmissions. This company travels the world since 2004 for the Formula 1. You can regonice them easily by their green uplink dishes. Since 2004 they produce satellite uplinks at the Formula 1 for many broadcasters, RTL Netherlands, RTL+ Germany, ORF Austria, Sky Italia, Ferrari TV, ViaSat Sweden and more. They will give us an inside look through the whole season in what they must achieve on every location they land with their equipment, starting this weekend in Melbourne Australia and ending 25 november in Brazil. At this last race in Brazil we will do a special report about this company on the Interlagos circuit.
Thursday is always the day of the fine-tuning and tweaking, testing systems and the doing first Uplinks for EBU.
In Brazil we do besides the uplinks for EBU also the so called Play Outs. In the same cabin where we do the uplinks are also the play-out machines connected. The broadcasters that only have a camera ENG crew on location, enter our cabin with their footage to send it to their homeland. Normally this will be covered by the host broadcaster and we only transmit the signals but in Brazil we also coordinate all these Play Outs. We use 2x a HD XDCam deck and 1x P2 HD player. Customers with other formats run their own player or camera and give us the HD-SDI output. We put this signal this through fibers to our HD-SDI router and switch it to the correct encoders in our rack.
On Thursday we also test the uplinks. Almost every race in every country we have being we do this on Thursday 14:00 local time, a full test. Here do almost all broadcasters participate. It is a live as race test (like it would be on sunday) in which all systems tested. The tests went smoothly today.
Other broadcasters had some problems in the morning problems because something went wrong with the local voltage. We were happy here not bother because we work with an automatic switch where both local voltage and a generator. Behind this is a 80kVA UPS. This system, we only use in Brazil and in recent years also proved very necessary, every year there are problems in this. Last year the man in control of the power decided to stop the generators just after the race. The man thought the race is over so I can shut down and go home. He really did not realize that the pre and so called 'aftershows' often are the major programs related to advertising revenue.
Friday first Free Practice Transmissions, we are ready for it.
Every Grand Prix a new Mix on, this time a Brazil Special:
More photo's available on our Broadcast Brazil Facebook page, you can find them here.
mentioned:
Multi-Link Holland
Sony professional XDCAM
EBU
Sky Sports