The qualified teams have been named for the European soccer championship. Similarly, the teams in sports studio control room RP11 of the Austrian broadcaster ORF have completed intensive training for this major sports event. With the start of the European championship, ORF will go on-air in HDTV, which has necessitated a complete rebuild of the sports studio in Vienna with state-of-the-art technology. In the course of these alterations, the RP11 control room was fitted with an mc²90 digital console from Lawo.
Immediately after taking delivery of the new console in February, the first training sessions took place. In the meantime, ORF has prepared everything for the big day. The “hot” trial run in HDTV for the video and sound control room has been going on throughout May with simulated TV programs and the preparation for different situations. The sound engineers and technicians have established settings and configurations, and they have created their setups and stored them. Also, the workplaces of the editors in the team are now completely set.
The studio control room is centrally situated in a studio complex of ORF that consists of several small studios, among them a bluebox studio, a virtual studio and a studio with furniture. All studios are connected with this control room, making this a flexible studio/control room environment.
Shortly before the EURO 2008 kickoff on June 1, ORF went on-air with its traditional Sunday sports program “Sport am Sonntag” using the new studio — for the first time — live in HDTV. After this test match, it was all plain sailing for the HDTV live coverage of the EURO 2008.
For more information, visit www.lawo.ca.
