Live from the America’s Cup: Embracing 4K, HDR and ST-2110 in a land and sea effort that is second to none
Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup: Emirates Team New Zealand on race day 4 (Credit: Ian Roman/America’s Cup)
The 37th America’s Cup is in its final battle between New Zealand and Great Britain, and when it comes to applying technology to a sport to enhance the TV product there is little that compares to the America’s Cup.
Trying to help viewers understand what is happening when racing yachts compete on a large “playing surface” made of water is always the rub and this year the production team at the 37th America’s Cup, being held in Barcelona, Spain, has managed to take some serious leaps in improving the quality for viewers.
Topping the list of innovations this year? The production is all 4K and HDR (HLG2020); a new LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system allows wind speeds to be captured in 10×10 meter sections across the entire course; and a new zero-emissions hydrogen-powered chase boat allows the crew to get closer to the racing yachts because it foils and get steadier shots at higher speeds.
“This is the Formula One of sailing. It’s a technology race at the end of the day, as the team with the best sailors in the fastest boat are going to win the Cup,” says Stephen Nuttall, America’s Cup, head of television, of the decision to go 4K and HDR.
Stephen Nuttall, America’s Cup, head of television
“Innovation’s woven throughout the fabric of the America’s Cup, and we wanted to deliver the highest possible AV experience.”
Nuttall says that for an event like the America’s Cup, HDR is making a big difference.
“Firstly, you’ve got many levels of light,” he says, “and then we’ve got beautiful boats with some really challenging camera positions. For example, we have a camera in the narrow, black pit where the cyclors are pedaling bikes [to generate hydraulic power on the yachts].
So, you’ve got someone in a dark uniform surrounded by black cycling above the camera with a very bright sky behind them. By being in HDR we can get a lot more out of that than you would think. It’s a small thing, but it makes a big difference.”
Nuttall and a team of more than 100 production professionals have been covering competitions which began on July 31 with the Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta.
That was followed by the America’s Cup E-Series; the Louis Vuitton Cup; the UniCredit Youth America’s Cup; the Puig Women’s America’s Cup; and finally, the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup in a best of 13 competition.
On Land
There are two key components to producing a sailing event: first, getting audio and video technology onto the yachts and chase boats and into the air on helicopters to cover the actual race.
Then, there needs to be a place for all those signals to be brought together on land and allow for a production team to create a broadcast. With respect to the latter, the America’s Cup team selected Mediapro, which is headquartered in Barcelona, to provide the onshore production facilities at the World Trade Center in the Port of Barcelona. Nuttall says the America’s Cup crew lucked out when the real estate became available a few months ahead of the beginning of competition as it is an ideal spot in the Port Vell harbour.
Mediapro is providing more than 40 broadcast professionals, a control room and two audio control rooms, an EVS replay room, and camera control for the live coverage as well as an editing suite to produce daily highlights summaries and create social media content.
EVS operators at work during America’s Cup action
The two audio rooms each have separate functions with one room just mixing the yacht feeds (submix), including the effects and crew communications, and then the second room layers in the commentators and the final output.
“The team in the submix will turn the effects up as a prompt for the rest of the production to focus on something being said,” says Nuttall. “Or they might push the crew down so you can better hear the foil going into the water as we have the eight effects mics. And they’re doing all of that mixing in 5.1 which is hard because you’re obviously jumping from yacht to yacht.”
Mediapro’s operations manager Miguel Mur, says that because the America’s Cup Team wanted to go with the best video format, 4K with HLG2020 HDR and 5.1 Surround Sound, the Mediapro engineering team decided to use ST-2110 IP.
“We are receiving signals from the onboard camera in normal SDI and converting them to 2110 so that we can do almost anything we want with them as we are then working with virtual inputs and outputs,” he explains.
“That allows us to meet all the production needs before we then deliver the signals to the international distribution side in SDI and we also converting from progressive to interlace for those who need an interlaced signal.”
Getting the port of Barcelona ready for the multi-month production required a fiber ring to be deployed by the port. That ring connects all the team bases as well as the different sites that are used for signal contribution and then, of course, connecting it to the World Trade Center where the main production gallery, post-production, and social media content is created.
“In many ways this is a remote production because everything is coming from different sites and 99% of the cameras are on the water, so we don’t have the normal SMPTE camera connectivity,” adds Mur. “From Timeline, we have diversity RF receivers and the signals from those receivers are sent via fiber to the production center.”
David Salmon, Mediapro, technical manager, says the cameras shaders are shading in HDR and then downscaling to SDR.
“Our main feed is the 4K HDR as we have plenty of takers of the 4K feed,” says Salmon.
“But the vision supervisors can always see both the HDR and SDR signals and at Mediapro we’ve been doing 4K for the past eight years, so we have a bit of experience.”
On the Water
As for the technology on the boats and yachts, Timeline Television is responsible for the 44 on-water camera systems (including four PTZ cameras on each yacht that are controlled from shore) as well as the RF mesh network that brings those signals back to shore.
Now that the competition is down to two yachts the camera resources can be enhanced as they no longer need to be spread across six yachts like in the Preliminary Regatta.
In that earlier race series six cameras were used on each whereas in the Match there are twelve cameras per yacht. There are also 16 microphones on the yachts, one per sailor plus eight for the effects.
“The PTZ cameras from Timeline are bespoke for us as we want to have the minimum aerodynamic load on the yachts, so we need a small camera,” adds Nuttall.
“And of course they need to be robust because sometimes they go in the water and when the bow goes in at 30 or 40 knots it needs to still be working when the bow comes back out. So, there are a lot of belts and other systems within those cameras to make sure it suits the purpose.”
All 12 cameras are recorded on board with usually five signals being transmitted back to the production center for the live world feed. All the recorded contents is available to use in post-production by the world feed team and it’s also available to Skydance who are producing the official documentary. In addition, for training purposes, teams receive their boat’s camera feeds every day.
As for audio and communications, Riedel is once again providing the broadband audio systems as well as crew communications, onshore intercoms, and digital Tetra radio systems.
Among the Riedel highlights are more than 280 Hytera Tetra radios, 72 waterproof sailor Bolero beltpacks, six different types of Riedel headsets, 70 Riedel smart panels, and a Riedel Artist 104 router for MADI handover and all signal routing (a Bolero Bridge system is used for all the boats on the water as well as helicopters).
New from Riedel this year was the development of a custom tablet solution that allows for the camera chase boat to listen directly to the race teams on the yachts.
The aerial shots and shots from the chase boats, meanwhile, is the work of Amis Productions which is working on its sixth America’s Cup (the two helicopters are supplied by Barcelona-based SkyTours, and one shoots wide while the other focuses on closeups of the yachts).
“I’ve been happy the way everybody’s delivered so far, production wise,” says Nuttall. “It’s been a really good collaboration.”
One big advance on the water is that the “Chase Zero” chase boat is now hydrogen powered. The boat was originally built by team New Zealand to prove that a chase boat could foil (when a boat uses foils to lift the boat out of the water to reduce drag and increase speed and efficiency).
“Chase Zero (pictured above) has two hydrogen cells that generate electricity to power the boat with zero emissions which is obviously important,” says Nuttall. “And when the boat gets to around 17 miles per hour the hull lifts up out of the water and flies on the foils reaching speeds up to 50 miles per hour and with zero wake.”
The camera system on the chase boats is also capable of 360-degree coverage so that the camera can frame the shot without the chase boat needing to be moved or aligned a certain way.
“No matter which way the boat’s going it can be filming something and that’s a real game changer for the coverage,” adds Nuttall.
Autonomous Race Marks are another new addition to this America’s Cup.
The racecourse marks are now mounted on top of a remote-controlled pontoon boat which is computer controlled including via a touch tablet. The battery powered markers are charged overnight and then towed out to the course where the propellors then get fired up and set them into position.
“They are part of the Race Management System (RMS) and if the winds get stronger, we can lengthen the course or if the wind drops, we can compress the course so that the race finishes on time,” says Nuttall. “And that means we can deliver a reliable product to broadcasters. We can also reorient the course to make sure that the wind is always coming straight down the course making for a fair race.”
Adds Brent Russell, America’s Cup Media, head of technology: “Controlling the Autonomous Marks have revolutionised the way that the Race Committee can quickly set fair courses, and control the length of the race, to fit the demanding requirements of both the event, and a tight broadcast schedule.”
Read more Live from the America’s Cup: The Holy Grail of ‘seeing the wind’
A new face this year is Bolt6, whose optical tracking system is used to calculate the position of the race yachts and other assets to a millimetre accuracy relying on nothing but the TV video feeds, obviating the need for GPS.
“On each of the helicopters we have the main Shotover system and underneath that broadcast camera we have a second wide angle camera, which we call a witness camera,” explains Nuttall.
“The video feeds come back, and they go into an AI system developed for us by Bolt6. That AI system is smart enough to recognise every asset that’s out on the water and calculate its position. It does that to a significantly higher level of resolution than you can ever do with GPS, even with military-grade GPS systems.”
That system then powers the advantage line graphics (showing who is leading and by how much) as well as pins the flags on the top of the yacht masts.
Virtual Eye, in turns, uses the data from both Bolt6 and Capgemini to enhance the live coverage with graphics that give viewers the best understanding of what is happening out on the water.
“It’s working really well, and it’s turned out to be way more powerful than we thought,” adds Nuttall.
“Bolt6 have never done sailing before so there’s an amazing mix of experience, which I think is really good. People come from different cultures, different parts of the world, and there’s a team of people that have worked on many America’s Cups.
“There’s also a whole host of people who’ve never been to an America’s Cup before and you get that nice collaboration between people. So, I think it’s really working.”
Adds Russell: “There are two notable challenges to delivering excellence for the America’s Cup production. The first is that there is never really enough time or resources to do everything that we want to do.
“The second is that success requires excellence in many different fields, greater than traditionally required for broadcast. The solution to both problems is putting together a consortium of suppliers and in-house expertise that knows how to innovate and deliver at the highest level.”