SVT turns to remote production for winter sports coverage

Swedish public broadcaster SVT has delivered two complex winter sports events using ambitious remote production technology.

SVT used EVS live production technology for the Are 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships and the Ostersund 2019 IBU World Championships Biathlon.

Both events were produced remotely from SVT’s broadcast center in Stockholm, some 600 km away.

Around 75 uncompressed HD camera signals were transported in IP via two 100 Gbps Telia fiber circuits from the events in central Sweden to SVT’s three control rooms back in Stockholm.

The main director and vision mixer operator for both events were directing from galleries in Åre and Östersund that were connected to SVT’s central control rooms.

There, SVT scaled up its existing EVS resources so it could ingest and produce the large amount of incoming feeds from both Championships which included standard cameras, triple-speed and 6 times super slow-motion cameras. This was done by bringing in additional XT3 ChannelMAX servers from HDR Sweden to expand SVT’s existing EVS XT3/XS3 production servers and IPDirector PAM software suite. The expanded EVS system consisted of over 100 EVS HD channels for both Host and national-unilateral operation.

All EVS LSM replay operators were located in SVT’s Stockholm control rooms to provide instant replays, slomos, highlights and closers for the World Feed for both events.

The operators in the control rooms were able to create replays and highlights packages for the World Feed, World Feed Plus and also SVT’s national production remotely.

“We’ve been exploring the possibilities that remote productions bring since our first test at London 2012, as they can be both more efficient and more environmentally friendly. These two recent winter sports events were landmarks in terms of the sheer scale of what was attempted,” said Adde Granberg, SVT’s CTO and head of production.

Laurent Petit, EVS’ SVP product said: “SVT has been driving forward remote productions for many years and have reached yet another scale on the host production of the Åre 2019 and Östersund 2019 World Championships.”