OL and Euromedia create 4k and HDR first for Paris Saint-Germain clash

It was a clash of the titans in France’s Ligue 1: on Sunday February 29 Paris Saint-Germain played against rivals Olympique Lyonnais (OL) and the result confounded expectations. PSG, unbeaten this season, was defeated by the Lyonnais team 2 goals to 1. But the match was also a landmark in that it was played in Lyon’s brand new stadium and the technology used to broadcast the match on Canal + was groundbreaking.

Euromedia provided the OB technology on site and, for the first time in Europe, used 12 UHD native cameras to capture images of the match. One of the cameras was a 4K Superloupe, provided by Euromedia subsidiary Digital Video Sud, thus enabling Canal+ to replay slo-mo images of crucial moments during the match, most especially the goal scoring.

The other cameras were Sony HDC 4300, with Fujifilm UA22 and UA80 lenses as well as Canon J12 and J22 lenses. Two of the cameras were fixed on cranes to get higher shots of the ground. Euromedia dispatched three OB trucks to the site, all UHD equipped. One of the trucks, Euromedia’s C42, was used to package and edit the live content under the direction of Canal+’s Mohammed Hassani’s.

The C42 is kitted out with a Snell Advanced Media (S-A-M) Kahuna Maverick control panel and Sony BVM X300 monitors. Euromedia also used six LSM EVS servers on site as well as a Sony BVM X300 server. The UHD signal was transmitted by satellite to Canal+.

It was the second time Euromedia used 4K technology on a live French championship match for Canal+. The first was the Monaco/PSG game that took place last September. The company also provides production and transmission of Olympique Lyonnais’s own TV channel OL TV, which is available on SFR, an IPTV service provider who belongs to Altice.

According to Euromedia president Lionel Vialanex, the company not only perfected its 4K set-up on the match it also «tested HDR (High Dynamic Range) for image capture. We found the results were very promising.»