Sunset + Vine Cymru deploys Blackmagic kit

Blackmagic Design, which has been somewhat busy of late buying Teranex, has also been highlighting the fact that the Tinopolis Group (specifically, Sunset + Vine Cymru) used a Blackmagic Design Universal Videohub 288 to broadcast the Rugby World Cup across Wales.

Tinopolis Group also incorporated a wide range of Blackmagic Design’s OpenGear Converters and Mini Converters to support their HD infrastructure used in broadcasting the games.

Tinopolis Group company, Sunset + Vine Cymru, won the tender to provide Rugby World Cup programming for the S4C Network. As part of this, a Sunset + Vine team worked in New Zealand for the duration of the Rugby World Cup, with all matches and rugby related programs sent back to Wales via a combination of satellite and optical fibre. From there, live programming and highlights were produced at the Tinopolis studios and headquarters in Llanelli.

The Universal Videohub was used to route all incoming HD satellite feeds from New Zealand into record playback servers and edit suites, as well as routing all studio sources into a vision mixer located in the company’s production suite. Through this workflow, Tinopolis was able to complete rapid input source changes as well as the rerouting of satellite receivers, VTRs and other servers quickly and efficiently, keeping pace with the huge amount of footage and programming being created during Wales’ brave World Cup run.

Peter Harston, Chief Engineer at Tinopolis, said: “We used an iPad to control the previous Videohub, but for the Rugby World Cup, we have added a combination of software control panels and Blackmagic Design’s Smart Control panels. This allowed for rapid input source changes to the EVS as well as the re routing of satellite receivers, VTRs, servers and vision mixer outputs.”

Harston continues: “We wanted to install a system that would cope with 3G so that our infrastructure is ready to handle our future needs, and the Universal Videohub was perfect for this. We decided to integrate the Universal Videohub into our workflow, not just because of the attractive price, but also because the equipment needed to fit the bill in terms of both performance and operability. The Universal Videohub did just that.”