VIDI joins SVG Europe as Gold Sponsor
Sports Video Group Europe is very pleased to welcome VIDI as a new Gold Sponsor. VIDI, ‘the expert in video transmission’, is a full service provider to major sporting events. It has provided services for UEFA and HBS for EURO2008 and EURO2012 as well as WC2010, Confed Cup 2013, WC2015 and Womens World Cup 2015.
The company operates two permanent fibre-based networks in Germany, one for transmitting Ice Hockey to Red Bull Media House and the other transmitting Bundesliga German football for Sportcast.
VIDI is an independently run and privately owned company with its headquarters, research facilities and sales and support departments based in Darmstadt.
The company has organised itself around four major business units: VIDI-Events for the transmission of live events; VIDI-SI for system integration services; and VIDI-24, a 24 hour/365 day a year service and support unit. In addition, VIDI-PLUS forms part of the company portfolio, which includes the development of software as well as the resale of high-quality broadcast products from selected manufacturers.
The company recently took part in a major international Ultra HD test project. As part of a large-scale test during week 14 of the English Premier League in November 2015, the match between Aston Villa and Watford in Birmingham was produced in the usual HD as well as live in the new Ultra HD image format. A wide range of international partners joined forces to test a variety of devices and components along the entire signal chain for live UHD productions. Representing the field of signal transmission was the team from VIDI, which had prepared a comprehensive test program. A modified version of the MD8000 system by Media Links was used.
To obtain the most detailed insights possible from the live test, VIDI’s video lab in Darmstadt focused intensively on the requirements beforehand. By adapting the software to the MD8000’s universal video cards, the four 1080p50 signals could be transmitted phase-locked and at the same latency with JPEG2000 compression. The time had arrived for this configuration to prove itself in live production in Birmingham, during which the aim was to test data rates from 4 x 100 Mbit/s up to 4 x 400 Mbit/s.
Alongside the error-free transmission of all four individual quadrants, synchronisation between them was the top priority and the most closely monitored aspect. Because one thing was absolutely clear: even the tiniest deviation in the latency rate for one of the four quadrants would render the transmission unusable.
Karsten Winterberg, member of the Management Team at VIDI, was more than satisfied with the outcome: “This test under real-life conditions completely validated the preparatory work carried out in the lab, and proved that the MD8000 system enables very good image quality at a minimal total transfer delay, as well as error-free synchronisation between the individual quadrants.”