EMG Group opens new FISU TV operation hub in Italy
A brand-new state-of-the-art broadcast operation hub for the International University Sports Federation (FISU) has been developed by EMG Italy in co-operation with SES and EVS.
Capable of running up to eight incoming live feeds and potentially endless outgoing feeds, the Master Control Room (MCR), located at EMG’s production centre in Cologno Monzese, near Milan, has been designed to manage the channels for FISU TV and the worldwide distribution towards all rightsholders and takers involved. The main solutions deployed include a combination of a cloud-based platform for the distribution, management and creation of contents and highlights, and SRT technology for receiving and broadcasting feeds.
Operations started with the Lake Placid 2023 FISU Winter World University Games, which ran from 12-22 January. The live streams covered 12 sports, 10 competition venues and almost 100 races and exhibitions that involved 2,500 athletes and coaches from 50 countries.
“The effort is big, but we are excited to start this new adventure,” said Claudio Cavallotti, EMG Italy CEO. “We’ve been working with FISU for many years, starting ten years ago in Trento up to the wonderful edition in Naples in 2019. This is a great achievement for our technical team, as our MCR will be the main international hub of all FISU broadcast operations from 2023 to 2027.”
The MCR enabled the management of up to four redundant simultaneous feeds from Lake Placid to be received, monitored, converted and recorded. The distribution centre then provided these four redundant signals to SES for wider distribution, to CCTV Beijing (via CMG), to Qazsport in Almaty, to Eurosport for linear and digital services, to EVS MediaHub for online broadcast access in Japan and Europe, and to other buyer agencies.
EVS supported EMG Italy with the deployment of a dedicated MediaHub instance for FISU. The cloud-based platform extends the reach of live events by enabling online publishing and distribution of non-linear and near-live content to rightsholders globally.
Thanks to the powerful search engine of MediaHub, the FISU media team and rightsholders can easily browse, clip and edit content as it is being produced remotely. The platform also provides them with access to a consolidated, constantly updated archive to enrich their storytelling.
The EMG Italy MCR can also provide a full catalogue of services to cover the entire production chain, including commentary booths for live remote voiceovers, audio mixing, multichannel monitoring, ingest, editing and a dedicated technical and production team.