Riedel Communications’ MediorNet has been installed in five HD OB trucks used to produce the unilateral signal for ARD/ZDF, the German public broadcaster, in South Africa for coverage of the 2010 World Cup.
Belgium OB truck provider Alfacam equipped the trucks with MediorNet, Riedel’s fiber-based, real-time signal distribution and routing solution for HD/SD video, audio, intercom and data, which includes software-based processing features.
Alfacam is also in charge of the world feed production at the venues in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Port Elizabeth.
MediorNet links Alfacam’s trucks with the technical operation centers in the stadiums, delivering 16 HD-SDI signals including the world feed to the trucks and four back from the OB van to the operations centers.
The technology’s integrated CWDM multiplexing maximizes fiber efficiency and enables the transport of all HD signals bidirectionally via one single-mode dual-fiber link. MediorNet’s integrated embedding/de-embedding feature de-embeds the audio and delivers the signals via MADI to the trucks’ Lawo audio consoles. As the video and audio streams come from various asynchronous sources, Alfacam also makes use of MediorNet’s frame store feature, which synchronizes the video signals to the truck’s internal clock, while the audio signals are synchronized via MediorNet’s sample rate converter. After editing, the final HD video and audio stream is sent back to the operations center, where it is forwarded to the international broadcast center for worldwide broadcast.
"With our task to process the stadium's cameras, the world feed of the games and to provide the feed for the German broadcast of the event, it is important that we can absolutely rely on the technology we use. MediorNet gives us all we need for this exciting broadcast operation while saving a lot of equipment, such as de-embedders, frame stores and such, which we would have needed with other solution," said Rene Alles, project manager at Alfacam Deutschland.
