Finland’s Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) has reduced its travel and accommodation costs for the 2010 Winter Games by using audio routing and simultaneous scheduling, remote control and monitoring technologies from Lawo.
In a joint venture with SVT, Sweden’s national broadcaster, YLE will capture every audio commentary and intercom signal in Vancouver and Whistler and reroute them to Helsinki, where they will be distributed to YLE production units for mixing.
Close collaboration between YLE, Lawo’s hardware engineers and DSA Volgmann, Lawo’s R&D partner, has delivered a system in Vancouver for real-time audio routing and monitoring of all matrices from Finland.
Matti Helkamaa, senior technical advisor for YLE, said that due to budget constraints, YLE has sent only the commentators, reporters and a small technical team to Vancouver. They are using the network’s Studio 25 in Helsinki, which is equipped with a Lawo Nova73 HD Matrix and mc²66 digital surround-sound console, as the main production facility for its audio broadcasting. For HD video production, they are using a mobile production truck on site in Canada (HD-1 OB).
Commentary and intercom signals will be gathered in two location facilities in Whistler and Vancouver, equipped with Lawo zirkon and crystal consoles and Nova 73HD matrices, and supplemented by SVT’s two Lawo mc²66 digital audio mixing console. From there, signals will be scheduled with DSA line scheduler systems and routed to and from Helsinki via EBU’s FINE Network’s Nimbra AES service.
In Whistler, Vancouver and Helsinki, commentary audios in two languages will be inserted in the Nova 73 HD’s cards to the correct SDI signal’s audio channel for EVS Farm, which operates on an SDI basis only. The return audio feeds from the production units will be collected to the Nova matrix in Helsinki and distributed via two matrices in Canada.
