As reported by SVG Europe, RaceTech has recently invested in a new technical space at its Raynes Park facility, complete with galleries, master control room, replay rooms and more, as it continues to move to a remote production model.

When it came to designing and building the space, RaceTech worked closely with ES Broadcast, building on a long-standing relationship between the two companies that has evolved over many years.

For Alex Willmington, lead broadcast engineer, ES Broadcast, however, this was the first time he’d project managed a full-size build for RaceTech, and it was certainly a multifaceted one, including work at Ealing Broadcast Centre and designing new OB trucks as well as the design and build at Raynes Park.

Planning for the facility began some years ago, as Willmington recalls: “I think the first discussions probably started during lockdown, when the directors at RaceTech were looking into remote production, and it stemmed from there. I think a lot of companies went through the same thought processes at that time, because once lockdown was underway companies had to work out new ways of working, and remote production became quite a big part of that. Lockdown was probably the biggest sort of kicker, as it were, to get things going and to prove that it could be done.”

The potential benefits of remote production soon became clear, as did the fact that the technology to enable it was now available and could be relied upon. “It became clear that we could do it and there is the technology to do it,” he adds. “And if we do do it, then there are possible savings in the future because, in theory, your OB fleet, the quantity of vehicles, will stay the same, but all your new trucks will be smaller, because you won’t need full production trucks with video mixers, graphics, sound. You basically just need a truck with cameras in it, you can send the feeds back to base, and off you go.”

The project itself was broken down into several aspects, as Willmington details. “There was the build of the remote production centre in Raynes Park, but then also all of the hardware is actually based at Ealing Broadcast Centre (EBC). So, where you’ve got all the vision mixer control heads in Raynes Park, the actual mainframes of the vision mixers are seven miles away at Ealing Broadcast Centre, because that’s where all the fibre lands from all the racecourses.

“So, the first part of the project was fleshing out the base network design and building the section of the EBC which was going to be used by RaceTech along with Racing TV, designing and building all the remote production suites, the timing suites, the replay suites, and the machine room. The second part of the project involved a colleague of mine designing the first of RaceTech’s new OB trucks to work in this new way. That was a brand-new truck, a brand-new chassis, a brand-new vehicle. And then the third part of the project is what we’re doing at the moment, which is upgrading the rest of the RaceTech fleet to work in an IP structure.”

Actual feet on the ground building work started in January this year. “It took around three months to build the equipment area at EBC and build out Raynes Park. The first truck was delivered about a month ago and now we’re upgrading the existing fleet with the client to work with the new infrastructure,” he adds.

This work is expected to continue until early next year as it can only take place when the trucks aren’t needed at a race meet. “There’s no down season. It’s not like the Premier League or Formula 1, there’s no off season. Horse racing is all year-round business,” he says.

The fact that trucks are based across the country adds to the logistical challenge. “RaceTech has several trucks based in the south of England, several in the Midlands, and several further north, because they service all the racecourses in those regions of England so they have their own depots in those areas. So with some of the trucks where we do the phase one upgrade, installing and configuring the new network switches in, that is normally done on site at a racecourse a couple of days before they do a live job, or at Raynes Park when a truck comes in for annual service. Now we’re moving into phase two, which is the IP migration. The first upgraded truck is now in use and has completed its first remote production.”

Given the quantity of productions, the number of racecourses involved and the move to remote, connectivity has been at the heart of this project, and that too is an ongoing element.

“It’s really very complicated,” Willmington adds. “There are 35 racecourses up and down the UK and they are gradually migrating these onto the new BT Vena fibre optic system, which is different from the existing BT fibre broadcast services, where rather than sending HD-SDI down fibre, it’s actually packetised video. So we are now basically extending a Layer 2 network across the UK from EBC being the hub, Raynes Park is a control centre, and then from these two hubs, you have all the racecourses.

“As it stands, all racecourses owned by RMG have been connected up with the new BT Vena system, while those that are owned by TRP are not as they utilise a different connectivity partner. Over the next year or so, these will gradually follow along. So that’s another part of the design criteria. Some of the vehicles still have to be able to work in the traditional way as well. So, when they turn up to a racecourse which is BT Vena-enabled, they just plug in and everything goes down the fibre as packetised video, comms, control data. But then if they go to another racecourse which hasn’t been upgraded yet, they still have to be able to work in the old-fashioned traditional way, so that was another little complication.”

That was just one of the challenges faced by the team on this project, as Willmington reveals. “The biggest challenge is the scope of the project. It’s a lot larger than you think at first. It’s just the number of variables, 11 OB trucks, 50-plus racecourses, any truck can go to any racecourse. This raises the issue of how you get the correct comms panels to go from that truck to the correct remote production suite in Raynes Park; how do you make sure that the director pushes the right button and that goes through to the correct truck at the correct racecourse at that time of day. Working out how to do that, well, that was a real challenge.”

The solution came via RTS comms systems and EVS Cerebrum. “RTS comms systems can integrate with EVS Cerebrum, so we could create macros on EVS Cerebrum and we could say OB truck number three is going to be at Kempton on this date, and then we can basically program it. We just click a button and it automatically does all the routing for the comms. Every comms panel in each remote production suite is then talking to the correct vehicle and the correct person, in the correct position, on the correct comms panel.”

With RaceTech also considering opening another technical facility elsewhere in the UK, the project could increase in scope even further, and this has been planned into the initial network design.

“We designed quite a complicated network. There are two core networks. There’s one at Raynes Park and there’s one at Ealing, and then we have 2×10 gig data links between the two of them, and we have an NEP fibre backup link underneath that layer as well. So we’ve got a natural network loop and we had to design it in a way that it doesn’t actually keep on falling over and crashing, because network loops destroy networks. We had to configure it in such a way that it is totally redundant, totally flexible and it can easily be expanded, because the more complicated your network is, the harder it is to expand it. We’ve designed in double layer redundancy, and also a way of making this grow in the future, so we can have control centres up and down the UK which should also be working on the BT Vena system.”