In Broadcast - August 2019 - 22

22

APAC NEWS

APAC NEWS

APAC NEWS

APAC NEWS

APAC NEWS

APAC NEWS

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 9 - Issue 7 | August 2019

InAPAC

CCTV Continues Rapid Advance
Of IP Broadcasting
T

he largest TV broadcaster in China
is the country's first to use Lawo's
flagship mc²96 Grand Production
Console - part of China Central
Television's (CCTV) swift and ambitious
uptake of 4K/UHD and IP operation.
The audio console has been installed
in CCTV's No.8 Studio in Beijing by
systems integrator, the NDT Group.
Begun in July 2018 with installation
work starting in November, the project
is now complete and marks the second
of CCTV's studios to be upgraded
to 4K/UHD with IP technology. The
mc²96 and two further Lawo mc²
series consoles in No.8 Studio (aka
the 800m² studio) follows three prior
AoIP projects for China's national state
broadcaster undertaken by Lawo.
"The renovation of CCTV's 800m²
Studio audio system was handled
by our long-term partner NDT, and
finished mid-Jan 2019," says Lawo
System Engineer Sam Zhang. "As soon
as it was finished, it was given a major
mission - broadcasting the CCTV Spring

Festival Gala, which is the largest live
show on Chinese New Year's Eve, with
1.3 billion watching. The 800m² Studio
produced the 4K/UHD signal; the first
time the Spring Festival Gala has been
broadcast in 4K. The new system did
the job perfectly."
"The CCTV audio engineers chose AoIP
without hesitation, since they believe
IP is the future and they trust Lawo,"
adds System Engineer Bai Shi, of
Lawo's Beijing Representative Office.
With many music shows and full bands
recorded here, the new audio system
for the 800m² studio comprises three
mc² consoles - the 56-fader mc²96
for broadcasting, a 32-fader mc²56
for FOH, and a 40-fader mc²36 for
monitors. The consoles share more
than 300 analogue and AES3 signal
feeds, along with10 MADI feeds via
two IP switches. Additionally, five
Lawo Power Core remote production
solutions and two A__madi4 units
translate baseband signals into
RAVENNA/AES67 streams and vice

versa. Without AoIP, accommodating
such a high signal count would be both
difficult and costly.
CCTV places a very high value on
operational reliability, with both the
mc²96 and mc²56 consoles' HD Cores
being fitted with redundant DSP and
router cards. The mc²96 will also
provide a backup FOH feed, while the
mc²56 provides a corresponding live
backup feed.
Based on a SMPTE 2110-compliant IP
audio backbone, the A_madi4 is part

Lawo mc²96 at CCTV Studio No. 8

of Lawo's A__line of audio interfaces,
providing connectivity in distributed
locations and can be readily adapted
to any change in CCTV's requirements.
It also supports two MADI ports on
SFP coaxial connections, and has two
Dual Media RJ45/SFP 100/1000Base-T
Ethernet ports for streaming and
control.
The two A_madi4 units also work as
the PTP clocking master for the audio
system.

Tennis Australia Chooses
Spectra Logic Solution
T

ennis
Australia
the
host
broadcaster for the Australian
Open deployed a Spectra Logic
solution to store over 180TB of host
broadcast content generated during
the tournament.
This was following a comprehensive
evaluation process where the choice
was the Spectra Logic Black Pearl
solution supplied and installed by
Digistor.
Tennis
Australia's
requirements
for the new storage solution were
extensive. They needed a solution that
guaranteed them reliability, scalability,
robustness, connectivity and came
with comprehensive support at the
right cost.
John O'Neil from Tennis Australia,
said: "We needed a reliable solution
that could cope with a number of
challenges, as well as grow with our
needs, including the ability to archive
content to other storage media and
thus removing the need to be adding
more spinning disks. We also needed

a product that could take 188TB of
content in 14 days, the duration of the
Australian Open. We have a massive
data spike when the Australian Open is
in progress and then for the remainder
of the year, the storage is used to
access content. We needed a product
that would work with our existing
EVS infrastructure to fully realise that
investment. Finally, we wanted to have
support and critically, we could get this
locally via Digistor and globally via the
Spectra Logic team."
The Spectra Logic solution delivered
and installed by Digistor met all of
Tennis
Australia's
requirements
presenting them with a robust storage
solution that enabled them to migrate
all of their data from their temporary
storage solution without any data loss
or issues.
O'Neil said: "We added extra storage
prior to the Australian Open and it just
worked. It was seamless addition. The
Spectra Logic storage integrated into
our EVS infrastructure without any

significant work required.
The storage is fast and
responsive to any media
requests. Each Australian
Open generates more than
180TB of data made up of
approximately 2,100 files.
It's clear to see that we
have significantly large
files as they are the full
record of a tennis match,
which can sometimes be
many hours in duration.
We needed a solution that
could handle such large
files without issue, which
the Spectra Logic has more
than done."
During the Australian
Open, everyday content was pushed Tennis Australia's Spectra Logic Black Pearl
to the Spectra Logic via an integration clean, scored and virtual.
into Tennis Australia's Host Broadcast In addition, there are press
EVS network.
conferences, match highlights, ultra
As a guide, in the first four days, there slow-mo compilations, full day records
are 64 tennis matches per day and of the World Feed coverage and the
some matches have three versions - World Feed highlights programme.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.lawo.com http://www.digistor.com.au
In Broadcast - August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - August 2019
