Tinopolis And Blackmagic Team Up For Rugby World Cup

One of the UK’s largest independent media groups, the group behind broadcasting the 2011 Rugby World Cup, has revealed how they got programming from New Zealand to Wales and then to our television screens.
Tinopolis Group company and 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, Wales.
Meanwhile Tinopolis showed faith in Blackmagic Design using their Universal Videohub 288 to broadcast the event across Wales. The 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.
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 Wale’s historic 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.”
About Universal Videohub
The Universal Videohub family consist of two fully customisable card based routers designed for the high end post production and broadcast industries. Universal Videohub is available in two models, a 72 x 72 and a 288 x 288 capacity size with the ability for customers to add a combination of SDI and optical fibre interface cards to fully customise their router. Universal Videohub 288 model also supports hot swap redundant cross-points and power supplies, so in the case of a fault, switch over is fully automatic for 24/7 reliability. Universal Videohub also includes powerful features such as SD, HD and 3 Gb/s auto switching, built in deck control ports and ethernet and serial router control with a wide range of Mac and PC software and hardware control panels.
(LB/GK)