Podium finish for Avesco companies

The Beijing Olympics had many records broken, masses of medals won and provided a sporting legacy that London dreams of replicating in 2012. But the Avesco Group has a few winners of our own that we’re proud of - Creative Technology and Presteigne Charter.

Creative Technology Shanghai provided the HD content management and playback system for the massive 4,000m LED screen that was a central feature of director Zhang Yimou’s extravagant Opening Ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the Bird’s Nest Stadium on 8th August.

Drawing on both equipment and skills from within its international organisation, as well as the experience gained from numerous sporting events it has been involved in, including the last Olympic Games held in Athens in 2004, CT once again delivered a highly professional service that marks it as a leader in the field of world class events.

For the Opening Ceremony, CT Shanghai was contracted directly by the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG), and spent nearly two years working on the project.

The heart of its system consisted of six Pronto HD hard disk video player/recorders, manufactured by DVS of Germany, feeding the six main sections of the screen, with additional channels feeding the legacy screens within the stadium, as well as the video starfield that covered the entire field of play. In all, 22 channels of HD playback were utilised. Medialon Manager was used as the control system for the entire system and the interface for incoming audio timecode and lighting DMX that provided cues for various sections of the show.

CT’s system also employed multiple channels of Barco Encore to provide a source dimming facility, so the lighting department could dim the screen when required. This was done using DMX and Medialon to convert DMX in to Barco protocol. A Vista Spyder 12x4 system was also used as multi source DVI preview. The entire system was fully redundant, with immediate switchover in the event of a component failure. A more compact version of the system was used for the Closing Ceremony in Beijing on August 24th. Two playback channels provided content for the existing legacy LED screens in the Stadium.

On the same day in London, four 5x4 panel Lighthouse R7-ER screens were situated on The Mall, with an additional two 5x4 panel Mitsubishi OD10 screens, one sited on Constitution Hill, the other at the Queen Victoria Monument in front of Buckingham Palace, for the London 2012 Party on the Mall to mark the moment the Games were officially handed over from Beijing to London.

Charlie Whittock, managing director, Creative Technology Asia Pacific, comments: “Being asked by BOCOG to be part of the Opening Ceremony was a great honour for us, and I am immensely proud of the team from Shanghai and London that worked so hard to deliver what was, in many respects, a very complex project.

"Beyond the Games, Beijing 2008 represents CT’s ability to truly deliver on a global level. CT teams from China, the UK, and the US have worked closely together to deliver projects for diverse clients around the world on time, on budget, and in unique and complex circumstances. Beijing 2008 also signifies CT’s very real presence in Asia as a resource for live event producers."

Presteigne Charter provided three major broadcasters, BBC, Network Seven (Australia) and TVNZ (New Zealand) with HD server solutions for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Presteigne Charter supplied three individual HD server systems all tied to the Host Broadcasters logging service, giving clients not only instant access to material ingested on their own systems, but also access to the Host Broadcaster EVS Server. This allowed producers to browse through nearly all the record material for the Games and utilise the material gathered in either post production packages or live on air.

Shipping in excess of 130,000kg of equipment to China for the event, Presteigne Charter also supplied over 25 engineering staff looking after the systems at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC). Alongside these systems Presteigne Charter also provided facilities utilising server technology for TVE Spain, NOS Netherlands and ORF Austria and NOS Netherlands.

For the BBC UK, Presteigne Charter provided a system that provided logging of recorded material from London and Beijing, a first for the industry. The data was stored on two EVS SQL Data Base Managers in Beijing and the other in London with information shared between both locations. The system utilised both high resolution (SDTI) and low resolution (Gigabyte) networks to ensure bandwidth stability.

TVNZ New Zealand were one of the first broadcasters to utilise the EVS system in 2006 for the Commonwealth Games. The TVNZ Beijing system consisted of ten EVS XT [2] Ingest HDDR with maximum storage with two EVS XT [2] On Air HDDR and ten EVS IP Directors. Tied to the system were two HD AVID Suites and three EVS X Store [2] HD Clean Edit Systems utilised by TVNZ’s news department. Archive material was transferred to six EVS XFS [2] HD X File Units where X File drives each containing 17 hours of HD storage were used.

In the words of the CEO of EVS Belgium (Mr. Pierre L’Hoest), the Seven Network Australian HD Server was the most integrated system that he had ever seen utilised. The Seven HD Server consisted of 22 EVS XT [2] Ingest HDDR with maximum storage, along with three EVS XLS [2] and three EVS XT [2] On Air HDDR. The system was complemented by 24 EVS IP Directors utilised for both logging and browsing and also six EVS IP Edit Suites and five AVID HD Edit Suites all tied to the high resolution (SDTI) and low resolution (Gigabyte) networks.

Sony’s newest XDCAM HD model, the PDW700 camera also featured in the company’s inventory of equipment that was sent to Beijing.
Manny Papas, global sales director, Australia, comments on the camera: “We used the PDW700 on the 2008 French Open and Wimbledon Championships with great success. Presteigne Charter obtained the first pre-manufactured PDW-700 because of our Olympic commitments, even though the official release date is not until November. So far it has performed well and we look forward to seeing it perform just as well in future projects.”

After the closing ceremony completed work in Beijing, Presteigne Charter were commissioned to provide a complete high definition set up for the US Open. Being involved in so many of the major sporting events of the year, such as three of the Tennis Grand Slam tournaments, the Open Championship, UEFA European Championships and the Olympics has provided the company with a fantastic reputation for providing broadcast solutions for this type of project. Tim Rawlings, director of sales, systems division, reflects, “We are forging links with many broadcasters around the world and are proud to supply total facilities to so many of them, thus ensuring professional coverage of such prestigious events”.