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The Volvo Ocean Race, formerly known as the Whitbread, occurs every three years (it used to be every four years) and is known as the Formula One of the seas. It is expected that up to ten teams will tackle the 2008-2009 Race which sets sail on 11 October from Alicante, Spain along a 39,000 nautical mile track.
With stopovers in Cape Town, the India, Singapore, China, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg, Stockholm and the final port, St. Petersburg, in June 2009 , the television audience figures are expected to be well over 1.8 billion.
Livewire Digital has delivered the media from the race yachts since 1997. This involved transmitting live, storing and forwarding video over satellite during the long ocean legs. The 2005-2006 race saw the introduction of in-port racing, presenting the new challenge of transmitting live video from remotely controlled onboard cameras direct to shore over distances of up to 20 miles.
For this, it designed the Media Desk 70, a control centre installed in all competing yachts to relay transmissions from the on-board cameras. It incorporates Livewire Digital’s M-Link technology, widely used for remote news gathering. The camera technology in the VOR 2005-2006 was largely based on CCTV technology, for which certain compromises were made in terms of resolution and optics, and it was only capable of 4:3 SD format.
This time however, the cameras being designed by Livewire Digital for the 2008-2009 race are HD 1080i. It is reworking Media Desk 70 to be HD capable with a raft (pardon the pun) of innovations, including H.264 AVC live video encoding for interaction with the teams and Inmarsat’s latest high speed maritime satellite services to provide high bandwidth media delivery.
“Although the workflow is similar to last time, we’ve redesigned the whole structure from top to bottom to support HD,” says Tristan Wood, Managing Director, Livewire Digital. “Support for HD is considered instrumental in ensuring the best media coverage for the sponsors of the event. HD presents a whole new range of design and operational challenges. Partly for this reason we will be using the HDV format on board”
Outfitting the fleet of yachts with five high-end HD cameras, says Wood, would be expensive, especially considering that each unit needs to be re-housed to protect it from the harsh elements. A range of different block cameras are being trialed that are fitted with new wide angle lenses.
We’re taking off the shelf cameras and re-engineering them to fit this unique workflow and to operate in the most challenging maritime conditions,” Wood says. “You can’t just place commercial ‘off the shelf’ technology on a racing yacht and assume it will survive. We also need to strike the correct balance between weight, size, image quality, and cost.”
All the cameras will be fitted with an embedded computer offering full control of the camera features as well as the ability to manage the servo-controlled fully proportional pan and tilt and optical zoom, all via IP.
Pan, Tilt and Zoom (PTZ) cameras will be fitted to the port and starboard spreaders (a section of the mast) overlooking the action on deck. The camera looking forward from the stern includes roll compensation so that as the boat is heeled over, the horizon is kept level, plus infra-red illuminators for night vision. A roll-compensated camera mounted on the mast provides a clear view of the cockpit and helm, showing the team fighting the elements or suffering the doldrums.
The stern camera features a rolling video cache, so, in the event of a dramatic event such as the mast breaking, any crew member can hit one of a number of buttons situated around the vessel and that footage is recorded, capturing the unique event for distribution.
A diary camera is mounted close to the navigation desk for below decks interviews.
“The above decks cameras have to survive the whole of the race under the most extreme conditions,” says Wood. “During the last race, one of the yachts was hit by lightening, which can destroy much of the media system, and left the top of the mast on fire. Salt water is a highly corrosive substance so inevitably there will be damage to some part of the system, and therefore we build in as much redundancy as possible.”
While high-tech, the technology also has to be as simple as possible for the team to operate. One exciting new feature is the inclusion of a crew member dedicated to media aboard every participating yacht who is responsible for the recording, editing and delivery of on-board footage through Livewire’s media system.
“The media specialist will be given training on using the system, selecting cameras and microphones, editing stories and delivering the drama of the race to Race Office. Using a joystick control, the on-board media crew member will be able to pan and tilt the spreader cameras.”
Livewire personnel will be at every port to provide technical support to the production team during the in-port racing events. The cameras are all controlled remotely from shore using the yacht’s microwave link while live video is transmitted before, during and after the in-port races .
The Media Desk itself has been optimised for minimal weight, space and power consumption - operating in stand-by mode for most of the time. It’s housed in a carbon fibre composite to ensure rigidity, strength and lightness and ties together all the elements of the yacht’s inbound and outbound communications (including downloads of weather data from Race HQ to the yacht during ocean legs) via a simple interface.
The management and control of the Media Desk is through the main system console, via the yacht’s network, remotely via satellite or telemetry links thanks to the IP network structure
The 2008-2009 race will be equipped with the latest generation of satcomm systems, called Inmarsat Fleet Broadband. During the ocean legs the Inmarsat satellite terminals are used to deliver media and receive weather data. Fleet Broadband will provide high bandwidth links from the yacht delivering HD ‘store and forward’ material to Race Office for the weekly programmes as well as Live SIF based feeds for news interviews and the Internet.
The microwave uplink is used to transmit live audio and video back to shore during the in-port racing. “After considering frequency allocation, regions, logistics and costs we concluded that the on board microwave would make use of the same RF technology and modulation schemes used so successfully in the 2005-2006 race, offering direct to shore transmissions at distances in excess of 20 miles,” explains Wood.
Although the design can incorporate the inclusion of HD H.264 encoders, the philosophy is to record the HD material on board for documentary purposes, but transmit a scaled HD feed to shore for the host broadcasters and the Internet.
Sunset + Vine has been contracted to produce coverage and is likely to use XDCAM HD cameras from helicopters. The exact mix of programming is still being explored but is likely to include a weekly highlights show, special features and daily news feed alongside radio interviews and video telephony. Volvo and the official race website will stream content online. Broadcasters are being lined up to cover the in-port races live as Brazil’s TV Globo and Spain’s TVE did last time, for which the producer can directly select feeds from specific yachts and cameras to be integrated into the live production.
There is much to be trialed before race start next October, partly because few events have tested HD capture and transmission to such extremes before.
“I would say that by attempting to send more material at greater quality back from the middle of the ocean in as harsh an environment as you can possibly get, Livewire Digital is at the cutting edge,” says Wood.
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