MediaTec Group discusses IIHF World Championships workflow

Many of the National Hockey League’s biggest stars have traded in their employer’s jersey to wear their nation’s colours at the IIHF World Championships in Sweden. The event is airing in 170 countries worldwide and at the centre of it in Helsinki and Stockholm is Mediatec Group, one of Europe’s largest live event television production companies.

Mediatec owns a fleet of over 25 mobile production units, 13 of which broadcast in high-definition. Four of those units are deployed for the tournament, producing the World Feed and serving as homes for three unilateral productions of broadcasters on hand from Sweden, Norway and Canada.

“This is really one of our top events,” says Johan Spindler, head of broadcast production, Mediatec Group, who has worked the IIHF World Championships since 2006. “Doing two venues at the same time and helping with three unilateral productions is a tremendous task.”

As the tournament moves from the Preliminary Round into the playoffs beginning with the quarter-finals on Thursday, the production teams are upping the ante on the show’s elements.

For the World Feed, one large Mediatec HD unit is on site at each of the venues. Each unit is equipped with 23 cameras, a Grass Valley Kayak and Kayenne, and four EVS XT2s. Throughout the tournament, Mediatec stores all content in EVS XFile down to a media server for its participating broadcasters to access. Each compound is covered in approximately 10 kilometers of cables.

Supplementing the traditional camera complement is eight remote cameras. One of the remotes is positioned behind a goal and is Sony’s compact point-of-view camera, the HDC-P1 mounted on a Micro Scorpio remote head provided by Servicevision Bis out of Spain. There is currently one at each venue but the second will be moved to Stockholm this weekend.

When the semifinals begin on Saturday, Mediatec will consolidate many of its resources to Stockholm, home of the Semis, Gold Medal, and Bronze Medal games. Over the weekend, the production compound will expand to include five HD mobile units.

During the event, Mediatech is also servicing 20 international language broadcasters with commentary positions, offering all technical needs to the broadcasters including any gear needed for reporters doing live stand-ups.

Mediatec is also producing world feed graphics with its own design, done off a Vizrt engine and designed in coordination with Reality Check Systems. On the World Feed, they are supplying dual-branding and dual-language (one English feed and one Swedish feed).