L’Equipe flyaway features large contingent of Blackmagic Design products
The weekly live web sports series produced by French national newspaper L’Equipe, entitled Chats Video Orange-Ligue 1 L’Equipe, features interviews with players, managers and club owners involved in France’s top flight football league. Production and streaming of the series is overseen by Paris-based Canalchat Grandialogue, with filming taking place at one of 20 clubs currently competing in France’s Lique 1.
Integral to these live productions is a compact flyaway kit based around Blackmagic Design products. The L’Equipe series is shot on two HD cameras,m which are controlled remotely.
Frank Fellous, chief operation officer, comments: “Once the camera positions are set up, we take the two SDI sources straight into a [Blackmagic Design] ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher and monitor both of the feeds on Blackmagic’s SmartView Duo. We then produce our programme output using the ATEM Software Control Panel.
“And while the vast majority of our productions are still filmed in HD, we are beginning to see more interest from our clients in Ultra HD 4K. To keep ahead of the game we have just added a new 4K-ready live event rig around Blackmagic Design’s ATEM Production Studio 4K. This has the added benefit of future proofing our business for 4K while allowing us to use the rig on existing HD jobs.
“For title clips and lower third graphics, we use a MacBook as a video source over an HDMI connection. This allows us to move graphics as files between our laptop and the production switcher. Accessible through the ATEM’s Media Pool, we then create our mixed programme feed. We top and tail the show with title clips and record the mixed programme output in ProRes 422 onto solid state drives (SSD) using a Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio. Our workflow also features a secondary recording device for backup purposes.
“For audio we are using an analogue Mackie mixer. We have two audio inputs, one from the host and another from the interviewee, both of whom are wired up with their own Sennheiser microphone.
“Before we can stream the programme, we first encode the mixed programme output via a Teradek Cube, which is connected to our IP router. The set-up is generally the same for all events, however on occasion we might have to adjust the streaming bit-rate from 750 Kbps for SD to 2500 Kbps for HD. It all depends on whether we have access to DSL or fiber. For streaming the content we rely on CDNetwork and Edgecast. At the end of each show, a replay is made available immediately on the L’Equipe website. We also send an HD version in 1080p25 to the client’s production team.”
“No two events are ever identical. And when you are out on the road you need a set-up that is reliable and flexible enough to handle whatever might come your way during a live production. That is why Blackmagic Design was an obvious choice. ATEM was the only rack mount broadcast grade production switchers to offer this many I/O possibilities, whether it be HDMI or HD-SDI.”