Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 25, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Wellen+Nöthen GmbH announces that, following a Europe-wide tender, it has been awarded the contract to provide the media-technology equipment for ZDF’s live coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Cologne systems house thereby confirms its leading position in broadcast-equipment rental for major international sporting events.
For more than 7,000 broadcasting staff from around the world, the opening ceremony on February 12, 2010, will mark the start of production and reporting from the International Broadcast Centre in Vancouver. The 21st Winter Olympics will represent a particular milestone for the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF: with MDR taking the lead, ARD will report live in HDTV mode from a major international sporting event for the first time, while ZDF will do so for the second time following the World Athletics Championships. A large part of the high-definition production and broadcast technology required and jointly used by ARD and ZDF will be assembled by Wellen+Nöthen and preconfigured in various test environments in Cologne. The technology will then be combined with ZDF’s mobile production unit in Mainz and delivered to Vancouver and Whistler Mountain, where it will be commissioned on site.
“We are now also benefiting in our rental business from our strategy of investing in tapeless HD technology and forming new partnerships with manufacturers of the latest digital media technologies,” says Ulrich A. Maslak, Project Manager in Wellen+Nöthen’s Rental division. “By expanding our portfolio, we are able to supply the required HD-capable AV and IT technology for almost every broadcast area. This certainly made us particularly attractive to ZDF, as the Mainz broadcaster can supplement its own mobile HD production unit for the Winter Games from a single source. For our part, we can celebrate our largest rental contract to date, which even exceeds the equipment supplied for the previous Summer Games in Beijing. Nevertheless, we will continue to invest selectively in our rental pool and explore new partnerships—especially with a view to the next challenges, such as the World Cup in South Africa,” Maslak continues.
The fact that the new partnerships are bearing fruit is demonstrated, for example, by the recently concluded distribution cooperation with Vizrt: with Viz Trio™, a total of seven real-time 3D systems will be used to prepare 3D graphics and animations during the Winter Games.
The Vizrt installation will be integrated into an extensive Avid NLE environment consisting of 17 Avid Media Composer Nitris systems, five Media Composer Soft systems and Avid Interplay Assist, a large-format Avid Unity ISIS system with several video-storage units, and 18 Avid Airspeed systems for connection to ingest and playout processes. For multi-channel ingest and synchronised playout, a total of 17 fully equipped, networked EVS XT[2] servers will be used for signal processing. For colour correction and on-air design, 21 new TCube Fig Color Correctors and four Harris Inscriber® G-Store™ HD character generators will be integrated into the production environment.
$$$$
To make its in-house range of motion correctors suitable for the HDTV standard, Wellen+Nöthen also recently invested in three Snell Alchemist Ph.C™ HD units including the Dolby E option. The Cologne company will now provide ZDF with these three motion systems and 14 Snell Mach HD converters for audio- and video-format conversion in the HD production environment.
HD signals will be recorded and processed using Sony MVS-8000G HD video mixers and more than 50 VTRs and studio recorders in the digital HDTV formats HDCAM SR and DVCPRO HD from Sony and Panasonic.
Alongside extensive glue equipment from LYNX, Yamaha DM1000 audio mixing consoles, surround monitors from DK-Technologies, A!Tec EventDriver, AJA audio converters and Jünger audio limiters, as well as supplementary measuring and control technology, will be used for audio editing. An Artist 128 and an Artist 32 from Riedel, together with around 50 intercom panels with extensions, will be supplied for communication.
Wellen+Nöthen is also providing various video-monitoring systems for the Winter Olympics: seven Evertz MVP multiviewer systems with 480 inputs and two VIPA16-DUO units will control more than 250 monitors ranging from 17 to 47 inches, including around 180 Sony multiformat displays from the LMD series ranging from 9 to 24 inches and Class I Full HD monitors from the BVM series. Grass Valley LDK-8000 HD system cameras will also be available to the Mainz team for live reporting from ZDF’s Olympic studio.
“We are delighted to deliver razor-sharp pictures of the forthcoming Winter Games to German television audiences in high-resolution HDTV. To implement this technically, we have an experienced and strong partner at our side in Wellen+Nöthen. During the Olympic Games in Beijing, we were already able to benefit from the reliability and technical expertise of the Cologne company together with our colleagues at NDR, who took the lead at the time. The experience gained from major sporting events like these will take us a significant step further towards future regular HDTV operations,” says Gunnar Darge, ZDF’s Technical Director for the Winter Olympics.
On site, six AV and IT employees from Wellen+Nöthen will work closely with ZDF’s technical personnel to install the technology in the public broadcasters’ production facilities and commission the systems. During the Winter Games, two Wellen+Nöthen operators will also be on site for system monitoring and technical support.
As with the Summer Games in Beijing, a large part of the equipment will remain on site in Vancouver for the subsequent Paralympics. After the events conclude on March 21, 2010, the equipment will be returned to Wellen+Nöthen’s rental pool and largely used again at the 2010 World Cup.
