Fiber Optic Video News and Perspective

LeTeam uses fiber optics to help with Oceans imagery

 digg it |   delicious |   StumbleUpon |   Technorati |  reddit 

According to Yahoo Movies:

"Nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water and OCEANS boldly chronicles the mysteries that lie beneath. Directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud dive deep into the very waters that sustain all of mankind - exploring the harsh reality and the amazing creatures that live within. Narrated by Pierce Brosnan and featuring spectacular never-before-seen imagery captured by the latest underwater technologies, OCEANS offers an unprecedented look beneath the sea."

Our partner in France, LeTeam, helped with the technical aspects of capturing that imagery.  A majority of it was shot underwater which presented a number of interesting challenges.  Challenges that were met with fiber.

The camera was tethered to the back of the boat by a long fiber optic link enabling the film makers to capture some great images of the Ocean and it creatures in their natural habitat.  We hope you get a chance to see the this film and its great images.  It is a bit blurry but you can see the credits above in the picture.  And if you need help capturing a great shot contact Marc Belleville at LeTeam! 

Olympic Broadcast challenges met with Fiber Optic systems

 digg it |   delicious |   StumbleUpon |   Technorati |  reddit 

 

A great article by Carolyn Braff, Managing Editor of the Sports Video Group on some of the broadcast challenges at the recent Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Jeff Coleman is a veteran sports producer, having spent the last decade producing a variety of events from countries around the globe. But nothing could prepare him for the challenges of spending 17 days broadcasting eight alpine ski events atop a mountain. Home to men and women’s downhill, super combined, Super-G, slalom, and giant slalom Olympic events, Whistler Creekside is a steep, unforgiving hill, made all the more difficult to navigate because the rest of the mountain remains open to the public throughout the Games. Coleman took a few minutes out of his non-stop schedule to explain to SVG how his team has overcome the early challenges that this venue – and these Games – have posed to his Olympic Broadcast Services productions.

 

Of course, Telecast and fiber optics were a critical component in delivering all those great images you saw.  Jeff said:  "The Telecast SHEDs where we can send six cameras back on one fiber, that system is fantastic. I’m pretty pleased with the way that was installed."

Head over to the Sports Video Group site for the full article. 

Don't Disturb the Tigers

 digg it |   delicious |   StumbleUpon |   Technorati |  reddit 

One of our clients here in Boston is NESN (New England Sports Network) who are a very progressive, all HD regional sports network that broadcasts the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins. NESN is unique in that their entire connectivity is accomplished over dark fiber from their headquarters in Watertown MA to Fenway Park, the Bank North Garden, and their uplink facility in Needham, MA. They needed to add an additional uncompressed 1080i program return from master control to the Garden for the Bruins Sky Suite feeds to minimize latency. All the dark fibers were in use over this 24 mile run.

Our choice was to take the existing program return fiber, add CWDM multiplexing and run both return feeds on the same strand, taking advantage of our newest 6292 series digital video cards. The 6000 series gives an end-to-end performance increase of about 6db over the 5000 series. Two new TX6292 transmitters and a four channel CWDM mux replaced the original program return module in Master Control. At the Garden, the incoming fiber arrives at the mezzanine level studio connecting first to the CWDM mux. The program return feed then goes to a two way splitter; one leg to the studio receiver and the other to a house fiber which takes the signal to the truck bay. 

The separate Garden return feed from the CWDM was also connected to a house fiber which brought the signal to the Garden frame room where the new receive module was installed to feed the HD video to the flat screens in the Sky Suites. No more three second delay between the hockey game in front of you and the picture on the flat screens.

So what about this title referring to tigers? When we got to the 

Garden we discovered it was also load-in day for the Ringling Brothers Circus. Garden staff and big signs warned us to “stay off  level #3” where the animals were in their cages. In our travels around the Garden to install and test, we made sure we routed well away from the “Land of Big Cats”. However, when we were working at the NESN studio above on Mezzanine level #5, all we ever heard were a couple yipping little dogs who were on the same level as the big animals. It must have been time for a CatNap. (GROAN)