Ullevaal Media Center Covers Euro Qualifying Action with

Case Study
Ullevaal Media Center Covers Euro Qualifying
Action with Mira Instant Replay Servers
The Interface between the Mira video servers and both the Reality Check Systems RCS LaunchPad and Ericsson Piero allows on-air presenters, Bengt Eriksen
(left) and Carsten Skjelbreid (right) to control replays during live highlights and game analysis.
The Norwegian national football team
and Vålerenga IF, calls home the largest
football stadium in Norway. The 30,000seat Ullevaal Stadion, located in Oslo, is
the site of the Norwegian Cup Final and is
also home to Ullevaal Media Center and
their broadcast facilities.
European Championship competition.
With Norway currently standing third in
the Group H standings, the pressure is on
for the Norwegian national team and their
coach Per-Mathias Høgmo.
Instant Replay Flexibility—An Essential
Element to Broadcast Operations
To minimize disruption to national league
matches, Euro qualifying games are
frequently played on the same day.
Ullevaal Media Center is owned 50/50
by the Norwegian Football Association
and Norwegian Toppfotball. Its sister
company, Fotball Media, sells the media
rights to the Norwegian Premier League,
Toppserien OBOS league, National teams
and Cup. Ullevaal Media Center produces
live match coverage, pre- & post-game
highlights and analysis—together with a
half-time show from their studio facilities
located within the stadium.
The European football scene is heating
up in anticipation of the Euro 2016
Tournament to be held in France from
June 10 through July 10, 2016. For the
first time, twenty four teams will qualify
for the month-long men’s national team
Ullevaal Media Center’s control room at Ullevaal Stadion houses two Abekas Mira Instant Replay servers,
each with dual-user Mira Control Surface panels.
The live studio set at Ullevaal Media Center. The 10m (33 foot) display at the back of the set is fed by multiple channels of Abekas Mira Instant Replay Server.
Ullevaal Media Center downlinks up
to eight simultaneous games, which
allows presenters to package the Euro
tournament and provide live coverage
of the Norwegian national team games
wherever they are being played. Discovery
has the distribution rights for the European
Qualifiers in Norway and distribute game
coverage on the Max and TVNorge
channels. To ensure fans are informed
and entertained before, during and after
matches, Ullevaal Media Center has
installed multiple Abekas Mira Instant
Replay servers.
Outputs from the Mira servers are
broadcast by: Ullevaal Media Center’s
national broadcast partners; to YouTube;
to the national football team’s Topfotball
website; and to a 10m (33 foot) wide video
screen in the studio.
The nature of simulcast games means the
broadcast infrastructure needs flexibility.
This is one of the primary reasons Ullevaal
Media Center chose Abekas Mira Instant
Replay servers—ultimately installing two
separate eight-channel Mira servers, each
with two Mira Control Surface panels
which allows each server to be operated
in dual-user mode. Each Mira server is
configured with native AVC-Intra recording,
and each Mira server stores up to 180
hours of recorded media content.
According to veteran EVS operator
Mathias Kristiansen, who now operates
the Mira servers and teaches other
freelance operators how to run the system:
“we needed a video server system that
allows us to rapidly create highlights. We
evaluated a number of replay servers
before we settled on Mira—and chose it
for its overall speed of operation, intuitive
interface and expansive configuration
flexibility.”
Analysing the Beautiful Game
One of the key attractions to Mira was
how easy it is to interface to other
systems in the Ullevaal Media broadcast
operations center. On-air presenters use
a combination of Reality Check Systems
RCS LaunchPad and Ericsson Piero
during live highlight shows, in order to
present game analysis.
Seamless integration between the
Mira video servers and both the RCS
LaunchPad and the Ericsson Piero is
achieved with the Mira server native
Ethernet control API. This tightly integrated
control interface allows presenters to
quickly and easily review earlier plays by
triggering “clip load”, “clip play” and “clip
stop” commands in the Mira servers from
the on-set touch-screen interface during
live productions.
Sharing media content from the Mira video
servers is another key requirement for the
broadcast team. As part of the workflow,
the Mira Control Surface is used to quickly
clip off and label content, and then to
seamlessly export AVC-I MXF media files
to their Adobe Premiere editing station.
Ullevaal Media Center is also taking
advantage of the new “Multiple Export
Destinations” feature supported by the
latest Mira server V5.5.0 software—which
allows an operator to define up to nine
Export Destinations—each with: media file
type; whether to export a Playlist as one
or many media files; whether to add 5:00
Heads and Tails to each media file; as
well as the local or network pathway to the
given Destination.
“We need to rapidly reconfigure our replay
system to meet the fluctuating demands of
the broadcast,” explains Kristiansen. “This
means dynamically changing a channel
from being an input to an output. With
other video servers we’ve used in the past,
this simple reconfiguration required us to
completely reboot the server, and wait up
to fifteen minutes for the server to come
back on-line. With the Mira video servers,
video channel reconfiguration is achieved
with a single mouse click, and all video
channels are instantly available.”
For Ullevaal Media Center, the broadcast
operations center has found its groove
and is producing outstanding programming
for Norwegian football fans around the
globe. Let’s hope the national team finds a
similar groove in their remaining qualifying
matches, and we get to see them compete
in France next year!
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