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40% of French households now have a 4K UHD television, this technology is becoming the television standard. France Télévisions, Eutelsat, TDF and their partners intend to support its development and provide viewers with ever more UHD content.
How it works ?
Recovery and processing of contribution signals
The UHD streams of the Philippe-Chatrier court are encoded on site and routed by Globecast to the France Télévisions hub, decoded by BBright and then made available in an IP ST 2110 environment.
Within it, native 5.1 audio is processed by a Linear Acoustics processor to recreate an immersive 5.1.4 audio version, the basis of the Dolby Atmos experience offered. The French commentaries complete this audio device in the second week of competition. Finally, s-ADM (Audio Definition Model) metadata is generated in real time in order to describe the audio stream and to configure the Ateme distribution encoder. Everything, whether compressed or 2110, is verified by BBright's RMD monitoring solution.
The ADM metadata system was developed by the EBU with the active participation of France Télévisions, in order to offer the market an open and flexible system for managing NGA (Next Generation Audio) audio. This system was implemented in 2020 by France Télévisions at Roland-Garros, with the support of Dolby and Ateme. Since then, each year brings an increasingly fine and easy integration throughout the chain, from production to distribution.
Playout
New this year, France Télévisions has set up its own 2110 compatible UHD control room, orchestrated by Cerebrum!
The ST 2110 signals (with the 2022-7 resilience) arrive at the input of the platform which includes the Playout and Record functions.
Two Recorder Harmonic Spectrum X, associated with MBT tools for piloting, are used to record matches for replay purposes. A preview system provides exhibitors with a means of controlling media.
Two Spectrum X Playouts, controlled automatically by MBT or manually by the Spectrum Media Studio remote control, subscribe to ST 2110 streams and play a playlist of primary and secondary events. These skins, static or dynamic, are managed in html5. The signals are then delivered, still in IP, to the contributing encoders.
Operators and engineers rely on the Prismon solutions from Rohde & Schwarz and Prism from Tektronics, in order to provide a mosaic of ST 2110 flows as well as all the signal analysis and supervision functions.
Signal delivery
At the end of the chain, the Selenio™ Network Processor (SNP) from Imagine Communications performs an automatic 2110 change-over between the two broadcast channels. Then Ateme encodes a 120Mbps contribution by subscribing to the 2110 change-over stream, which is received by Globecast for final encoding and delivery to buyers in the expected formats. It is at this stage that the encoding in Dolby AC-4 is done, and it is the s-ADM metadata that drives and informs the Ateme encoder about the different audio presentations (versions) existing on the event (ambience with French comments, atmosphere alone).
The atmosphere of the court will be offered by default to viewers until May 30 inclusive, and with commentary in French from May 31 to June 5. The Dialogue Enhancement features that adjust the level of the commentary in relation to the atmosphere of the court, offered by AC-4 encoding, will be tested over the same period.
For this project, France Télévisions is a partner of:
Ateme for the compression of the signal at the output of France Télévisions and the final encoding in HEVC and Dolby Atmos in Dolby AC-4, intended for buyers
BBright for UHD decoding when the signal arrives at France Télévisions and for UHD monitoring
Broadteam for its Spectrum Media Studio solution allowing manual actions on the Spectrum X
DOLBY for work done around s-ADM and AC-4 encoding
EVS for its orchestrator Cerebrum
Fransat for satellite broadcasting
Globecast for transporting the signal from Roland-Garros to France Télévisions, as well as for final encoding and delivery to buyers
Harmonic for the encoding of contribution on the Roland-Garros side, as well as for the video server and the dressing in the France Télévisions control room
Imagine Communications for automatic Change Over in IP 2110 with the SNP
Linear Acoustic for the 5.1.4 generation
Media & Broadcast Technologies for the Automation System
Rohde & Schwarz for its Prismon solution
TDF for broadcasting Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) from the handling of signals to TH2/IX5 data centers to private antennas via its network of terrestrial transmitters
Tektronics for its Prism solution
Trinnov for the contribution to the monitoring of the Atmos audio part with his D-Mon solution.
