NZVNdecember2017

DECEMBER 2017

News via Satellite We’re in a coffee house in central Auckland, but we didn’t start the day there, we started the day on a green field in Victoria Park with a very clever satellite setup and TVNZ’s No1 News cameraman, Nick Zieltjes – who would probably deny he’s No1 cameraman – but Barbara likes him.

Nick:

Barbara’s biased.

Ed: Now Nick, this is something that’s quite new for TVNZ and a welcome addition to the arsenal of transmission technology from difficult places?

Nick: Yes. It’s certainly a part of the evolution of technology.

We’ve been big adopters of bonded technology, such as the LiveU, which is all IP data based.

This piece of equipment is called a GX which stands for Global Xpress and it connects to the new satellites that Inmarsat have put up. Their network comprises of four new geostationary satellites.

Ed:

So you’re not using the Optus satellites?

Nick: No, it’s completely independent of the Optus networks; it’s fixed IP, so they’re IP internet protocol satellites giving us 4 Megabit up, 2 Megabit down and while that initially doesn’t sound like a lot, when you’re in the middle of nowhere, that’s the difference between delivering and not.

Ed: Going back to the LiveU, if you’re in an ideal situation, such as central Auckland, and you’ve got something happening right now, you can arrive there in your wagon with your camera and a little LiveU unit clipped on to the back.

That’s got its own bonded transmitters with SIM cards in them which are connecting to the cellular network and that will give you a quick signal back – but that can have some problems?

Nick with camera.

Vol 242

Nick: Yes definitely. While LiveU is a great technology and the bonded modems are great, it’s all dependent on loading on a cell tower. Unlike Police, Ambulance or Fire, we don’t have priorities on the cell towers with our SIM cards.

We have two SIM cards for Spark, two for Vodafone but, for example, if one cell tower on Spark is completely loaded, you only end up with three SIM cards, or two SIM cards depending. If it’s a big event, like say you’re at the rugby or a big parade on Queen Street such as the America’s Cup return, so many people are on their phones and connected to the one or two cell towers, the system gets loaded and our LiveU connection drops off.

Ed: So you could actually get a good signal to start with, but then part way through your report – hmmm, goodbye?

Nick: Yes, correct.

As I said, when you connect to the cell tower, you’re on the stack of connections, and as more and more connections come in, the bandwidth gets lower and lower. To adapt for it, your LiveU drops down from maybe a good 5 or 6 Megabit up to 212 Kilobits or so, and when you’re trying to stream back HD, it makes it pretty interesting. This is where the GX would come in. If you’re preplanning or you’re in a situation where you know that there’s going to be either very limited cell coverage or very heavy use cell coverage, the GX becomes a really good gap filler to be able to provide that extra bandwidth to go up to be able to send your footage and content back.

Ed: So it is actually in addition to the LiveU and you’re still using the LiveU in the arrangement aren’t you?

Nick: Correct. There are two ways – one is that you can use it to supplement the SIMs on the LiveU or, if there is no data connectivity in the LiveU, particularly as we experience in the Islands quite a lot, the GX becomes a standalone delivery pipe for the data.

However, we still need to use the LiveU on the cameras as the encoder for our pictures going out. The GX doesn’t encode; all it does is provides a pipe.

Ed: And it’s quite quick to set up – you said something like 20 minutes?

Nick: Yes, everything going well, 15-20 minutes to set up and be transmitting, which is pretty good. As you saw yourself, it’s self-finding so you set it up, point it roughly towards North, push the button and generally it does the rest by itself. There are always exceptions to that of course, but usually it’s pretty reliable.

Ed: car?

In this situation, you actually powered it off your

Nick: Yes, it’s got quite a low power draw, about 150 Watt. We’re fortunate at TVNZ to have inverters in

Power from the electric News vehicle.

our vehicles as a standard and they’re certainly capable of powering the GX. When we’re away in the Islands, we’ve got another kit that’s got a more powerful inverter on it and we’ve got some good heavy duty crocodile clips. We just clip those on to the battery terminals off a good hire vehicle we’re with, and use that to power the inverter and run everything off that as well … which is what we did on this last trip just to Fiji.

Ed: I actually saw that. I was watching the News feed and saw Barbara in Fiji and obviously the pictures were really clear and virtually no audio delay. It seems as though this technology will work – certainly in Fiji – anywhere?

Nick: Yes, the theory is that this can work anywhere in the world; providing you can uplink to the satellite it shouldn’t matter where you are. Of course, it’s a part of equipment in a delivery chain and you make your plans based on what you can and what you can’t do, but I certainly have a lot of confidence to use it in the more remote places but, like all things, have a Plan B. Ed: And when you were doing the setup I was intrigued that you strung some security tape between the boxes and the satellite receiver. Was this to keep people at a distance for any particular reason?

Nick: It’s a very focused beam of energy and that can be quite a hot beam. The best way to apply the terminology is like a mini microwave in a very intense, focused area.

Obviously, out in front of the dish when it’s transmitting is a danger area so the tape and the boxes are there just to stop people walking in front and across it. It’s about 2-3 metre out in front of the dish generally. It’s

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computer. Then you have a LAN setting for data on your computer.

Ed:

But you could use one of the other ports surely?

Nick: You could do if you wanted to, that’s entirely up to you. It tends to be the less cables you have running around, the tidier and easier it is.

Ed: I would guess that this setup would have been particularly useful in Kaikoura because you said that when you were there covering the earthquake, there was no means for home base to contact you, because the cell phones were down?

Nick: Yes, correct. When Kaikoura happened, it was obviously a devastating earthquake; infrastructure was gone, the only form of communication we had was through Vodafone still having their 2G carrier. This allowed us limited cell and texts, but obviously no data.

When we initially arrived on the scene, we had two of our traditional satellite units, which are great for pumping and putting video back, but they’re not data enabled to get the data back down. What we ended up doing was using a Bgan unit to provide us a little WiFi hotspot to give us at least the ability to get email backwards and forwards. With the GX unit, it gives us the ability to deliver video and run data for emails and infrastructure, all at the same time within the one unit.

Ed: So the addition of the GX to the News toolkit means that you have a lot more flexibility in those situations where data transmission is a difficult thing.

Ideally of course, you’d like to plug into a network hub somewhere and you wouldn’t need the GX but in situations such as in the Islands or in remote parts of New Zealand or where data use by cellphones and other media is high, it comes into its own.

The other option, of course, is the old-fashioned OB truck. Does this system totally negate the need for an OB truck?

Setting up the satellite dish.

good practice and it’s just ensuring the safety of not only the general public, but also your own crew as well.

Ed: I also noticed there was a single connection from the LiveU box to the GX and that was a CAT6 cable?

Nick: Yes. There are four connections on the GX satellite transmitter. One is a service port, the other three are active ports.

Now one of those connects the LiveU unit on the camera to the GX and that gives you the 4 Megabit upload, 2 Megabit download.

The connection from the camera to the LiveU unit is SDI but LiveU to GX is Ethernet. You could also unplug the Ethernet cable at the LiveU end and plug that into your

Nick: Like all things, the GX unit is just another tool in the toolkit, but it can be interesting trying to get an OB truck in to some of the situations in remote New Zealand.

As News crews, we tend to travel light, we travel fast, there are two maybe maximum three of us. We just don’t have the time or the resources, and a lot of the time, the ability to plan for those larger events, if it’s a fast breaking News event like Kaikoura. Kaikoura again is a great example; there would have been no way to bring an OB truck into that environment.

Ed: But what does an OB truck give you that this setup doesn’t?

Nick: Multiple switching of cameras, but you’ve still got to get it out somehow.

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width and connectivity and we’re fighting with everyone else to get bandwidth.

In certain circumstances, we can’t afford to be relying on that delivery mechanism if it’s mission critical; we’ve got to be independent. It’s a matter of making it or not making it.

The other thing the GX does provide is that it does have a WiFi connection on it, so you can have a WiFi network set up once it’s established on to the satellite, but you can also have the WiFi connection to the LiveU instead of having the CAT6 cable if you want it, so you can go wireless. However, piece of string methodology, it’s always more secure.

Ed: And another good thing is that you can pack it all up into your hard cases and it goes on a plane?

Cordon in place.

Ed: Because that’s it, it’s one camera isn’t it – you’d have to have a second unit to deliver two cameras?

Nick: Correct.

At the end of the day, we’re generally working a single camera out. As long as we can get that signal out, that’s what this provides us.

Ed: Where do you see it going from here … a motorbike instead of a car?

Nick: That would be my dream wish.

This technology has been around for a couple of years now and countries that are closer to the Equator than us have smaller units that require less power for uplinking.

Of course, New Zealand being on the lower end of the world, we’re further away from the satellite, so bigger units are needed.

But I can see the day where technology is going to develop to such a point, and attain a price point of entry, that this technology becomes a standard issue bit of kit. We are seeing LiveU very quickly becoming that.

The combination of LiveU and GX enables one person to be a global gather and deliver of News.

Nick: Yes, correct. It packs down into three hard cases – two sizeable Pelicans and another case that we’ve set up with an inverter, power cable, etc. to help out with the electricity needs. You’re probably looking about 45-50 kilos all up check-in luggage.

Ed:

Are you still having issues with batteries?

Nick: Aaah no – as long as you’ve got a good reliable vehicle that’s got the inverter, you’re pretty well right.

Ed: Oh I meant the camera batteries when you’re flying to these exotic places and the check-in person asks you “have you got any batteries in that box sir?”

Nick: Yeah lots, as I’m sure a lot of your readers will agree, it’s becoming a harder and harder issue for crews now to travel.

In this particular case in Fiji, I didn’t only have camera batteries, I also had drone batteries, so I ended up with about 6 or 7 batteries that I had to carry on to a plane,

It’s the true incarnation of “The One Man Band” crewing and journalism.

Ed: But of course, if the New Zealand telcos upped their bandwidth and number of cell sites, you could do it all by bonded devices?

Nick: Absolutely – depending on how many people are on it at the time.

At the end of the day, cell technology is great, but …

Ed: It’s good independent?

to

be

Nick: It is great to be independent.

There are more cellphones than people in the world now, and they’re all wanting band-

Hay … their lawnmower broke down (from Fiji).

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go through security, show, talk and then still talk to air hostesses when trying to put them in overhead luggage. I’m not being negative about it, it’s their rules, but you’ve got to expect what we bring on board now, this is the way it is you know.

Ed: Do you think perhaps Air New Zealand could give you a little brass plaque that you could sort of attach to these boxes to say “these are okay”?

Nick: I think Air New Zealand are pretty good, they understand it.

You’ve got to remember that they don’t know that this crew’s going to walk on with batteries and cameras and things like that. They like to know Barbara takes a selfie while Nick sets up the dish. what’s on their plane. A few other airlines could do with a shakeup but I’m not It’s really the world we’re in today you know, and I going to name them here.

NZVN think it’s going to get harder and harder.

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Run Doggy, Run! We’re at 60 Stanley Street in Auckland for a look into the workings of the media delivery for the New Zealand Racing Board. Heading up the interview group today, we have Jamie Annan, the studio operations and services manager for the NZRB, beside me Eric Stark head of operations and, by video conference, a man who’s working while talking, Matt Blackmore, OB engineer for NZRB based in Hamilton.

Ed: First of all Jamie, this building, 60 Stanley Street, this isn’t all yours is it?

Jamie: No. We lease services off NZ Live. For our production facility, we have here two control rooms, three studios, an MCR, a media ingest and a presentation suite, plus some production space as well.

We operate our two channels, Trackside One and Two as well as a radio station. NZ Live supply us the technical operators, so the sound operators, the vision mixers, a fair chunk of engineering support, and basically keep the engine running down there. They look after a large part of the MAM and the Grass Valley STRATUS system here as well. On the flip side, we manage our own presentation system; we manage all our own linking and that side of the fence if you like, so there’s a bit of a demark between SDI essentially.

presentations … I saw in one there was a green screen, what’s going on?

Jamie: Primarily, live racing’s what we’re all about, so we’re running our five OB trucks round the country at the moment, plus our new greyhound scenario.

We’ve got about 1100 live race meets a year that we cover in New Zealand, and then that’s supplemented by racing from Australia, the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, and all of that comes into this building primarily as a distribution point out to Sky and everywhere else.

So we’ve got two control rooms dedicated to managing all of that content; we’ve got presenters who come to screen – that would have been the green screens that you saw downstairs. In saying that, we’ve also got a presenter studio in Hamilton, we’ve got two in Petone and we’ve got one in Christchurch as well, and they all contribute back to the services here. We’ve also got a big studio, which is our Studio One essentially, and that does our bigger shows – so it will do panel shows and things like that, dedicated to the harness codes and the thoroughbred codes and the greyhound codes as well.

Ed: So you’re providing the content, they’re doing the technical?

Jamie:

Yes, absolutely.

Ed: But the studios that you’re using and the physical space that you’re using is totally dedicated to you. You don’t have to fight for a control room – first on the seat gets it?

Jamie: No, it is built for our purposes primarily. NZ Live do do some production here, but they operate out of their own space.

Jamie (left) and Matt via video.

Ed: I believe it was three years ago that you moved to this facility from Petone?

Jamie: Correct. We had a production facility in Petone, but we were actually using Avalon as our production space, so broadcasting Trackside One and Two out of Avalon studios and that wound up probably 3½ years ago.

Ed:

Did you bring the Media 100s with you?

Jamie: The Media 100s were gone about seven years ago if I recall. I’ve been here 10 or 11 years and I think the M-100s were probably out the door just after I arrived.

Ed: And for those of you who don’t know what a Media 100 is, Google it – it might be in an archive somewhere, but it was an interesting adventure in the development of editing platforms.

Jamie: I made quite a bit of money working as a Media 100 editor in England to be honest – for a short while.

Ed: Yes, a short while. So, in the facilities that you have here in your studios, you’re doing live

So there’s plenty of programming being originated here plus we’ve got long form programmes that we go out and shoot in the field as well.

Ed: I imagine your producers have to be very flexible, because not all race meetings are going to start on time, there must be some delays and if you’ve got a slot with Sky, you’ve pretty well got to take that slot, you can’t go into someone else’s schedule. Tricky to manage?

Jamie: Yes. We’ve got our own two channels, so that’s totally up to us what we do with that time – Trackside One and Two on Sky channels 62 and 63.

They’re ours to do with as we like, so it’s up to us to manage our own time within that. But, in saying that, we do do productions for Prime, so we’ve got 10 or 15 of those, depending on the year, where we do have to manage that time, because we usually come right up against the News at 5.30 at Prime.

Ed:

And those are live feeds to Prime?

Jamie: Absolutely, yes. We had three for New Zealand Cup Week, so they’re around 5-5.30. We get a

Page 9

half hour on Prime free to air, but the rest is on Sky, on Trackside One and Two. Ed: Okay, now let’s talk the technical side and I guess it’s important here to separate two areas – one is your horse racing which, I guess, you’re covering by your OB trucks; and the second is what we originally came here to talk about, which is the dog racing. First of all, just talk about the horses – you are doing standard def or high def or what’s the technicals inside those OB trucks?

Jamie: I’m probably going to defer to Matt shortly, but it’s standard def at the moment in our OB trucks, and those trucks would be 10 years old now Matt?

Matt: ber.

Yes, 10 years this Decem-

Jamie: So they’re standard def and have served us well actually. They’re good trucks and they’re still going, but as you can imagine 10 year old equipment is just starting to creak on the sides there at the moment, but that’s all standard def acquisition. How many cameras Matt … 10 depending on the day?

Matt: Ed:

Yes, 10 is a good average.

Each truck?

Jamie: Each truck, yes, but it scales up and down as required for the meeting.

We might have a presenter so we’ll add more cameras.

Ed:

Are these all fitted out by Grass Valley?

Eric on one of the sets.

Jamie: I think those things got commissioned about the day I started, so it’s a while back now.

Ed: Yes, we’ve been going a while. Any potential move to HD or do your punters not really worry about seeing the warts on the horses’ noses?

Jamie: They definitely do and, with our greyhound move that we’ve just done to HD, the difference is significant. There will certainly be a move to HD sooner rather than later for all our OB side of things and we are looking to update our OB fleet from 2018.

Yes, that was a Grass Valley build 10 years

Ed: But surely that’s a budget issue isn’t it, to replace 5 or 6 OB trucks into HD – that’s quite a lump of cash?

Ed: I actually remember doing an interview at the Ellerslie Racecourse when the first one was set up …

Eric: Perhaps – it depends on how you negotiate it, and the other side of it is that you really have to look at a structure now versus 10 years ago when the SD

Jamie: or so ago.

A New Gencom Team Member We are very pleased to welcome Martin Wilkinson to our team at Gencom.

We’ve known Martin for many, many years, having worked with him as a consultant 2003 with the building of the Maori Television studio in Newmarket. Over the last couple of years, he has been working fulltime at Maori Television, designing the network architecture for their new facility in East Tamaki and he’s now joining us fulltime as an Enterprise Architect.

Martin is an expert on all things IT-related, with advanced certifications from Cisco, Microsoft, VMWare, Juniper and others; and has deep experience in broadcasting technology and workflows as well.

So it’s been really great to welcome him on board knowing that he will provide support and advice to our customers who are increasingly looking at IP as a key part of their video infrastructure.

Having his expertise is invaluable.

Ed: For those of us struggling with acronyms, what is the difference between “IT” and “IP” David?

David: IT is a broad field of endeavour – it’s “Information Technology” which encompasses networking, storage, processing, software applications … all the various tools that we now take for granted in our daily lives.

IP very specifically stands for “Internet Protocol” and it’s the protocol by which we deliver content over a local network or the internet.

Page 10

trucks came out, and what we do and how we service things and the quality of the roads in New Zealand – the difference then versus now.

There are a lot of factors that go into it that are being taken into consideration along with just the state of being as it is, because we’ve got new generations of people working here and new generations of people watching, so we’re moving through it carefully and cautiously to make sure we do the best for the correct amount of spend, and be very judicious on that to make sure that we don’t get anything wrong.

Jamie: Also, this move to HD for greyhound racing is just the first step in a phased plan that covers all One of the NZRB control rooms. the way we capture vision for all racing in New Zealand. Rather than rolling out all there’s very little else in those vans. Essentially, it all the new OB vehicles at once, we're staggering them. goes back to Christchurch, all of the camera control, So we'll roll out two next year for gallops and harness everything, is actually run from Christchurch. It’s all and two more the year after that etc. overlaid with VSM which is the Virtual Studio Manager equipment from Lawo, so essentially they can Ed: So to send out an OB truck, you’ve obviously got interrogate most systems, see the state of everything, the physical truck, you’ve got a whole lot of get a response of whether something’s on or off, right cameramen, you’ve got the driver – there’s a lot of through to just about whether you put the kettle on in personnel involved and a lot of setting up and then the truck. In the van itself, there’s only a rack and a packing it down. What about feeding it back to here – half of space and equipment now, as opposed to us is that all microwave link? rolling an entire OB truck in with all the complement of Jamie: No, primarily it’s satellite. We’ve got over equipment and people that would have to come with 60 racetracks that we cover around the country, North that. So we’ve drastically scaled down what needs to to South. The bulk of that is SNG, so that’s through go out on track to actually deliver a better product than Optus. We’ve got a permanent booking slot so we fire we were delivering before. up our satellite as we need and if we have overflow, Ed: In terms of the cameras, are they fixed at the then we’ll book some occasional use.

The rest is venue or do they come and go with the van? augmented by fibre; we’ve just implemented our own network which is about 15 locations across the country and that has enabled us to move to the remote side of production for our greyhounds, and also given us the bandwidth to push HD through. Currently, our satellite is HD capable, but we’re not utilising it as such because the trucks are only pushing SD. Basically, the slot that we’ve got, we’re actually breaking that in half and turning it into two SD slots as opposed to one HD. Ed: Right, now we’ve mentioned greyhounds a couple of times and this is really the reason I’m here. Neil Duncan was the man who put me on to this when he said “you need to talk to these guys about what they’re doing with the greyhounds, because it’s pretty clever.”

How clever?

Jamie: I think it’s pretty clever – what do you reckon Matt?

Matt: Yes it is. Certainly now that it’s all up and operational it is pretty impressive to look at.

Jamie: Essentially, we have a production facility in Christchurch; we’ve got seven greyhound tracks around New Zealand where all but one of them are serviced by vans with linking terminal equipment that gets us on to the network. There are some camera base stations, a Glensound unit for our commentator to get commentary through, and some coms infrastructure and some audio infrastructure, and there’s a bit of routing as well. But

Jamie: The cameras actually come in and out with the van, so we will send a crew of three people out to the track. They will unpack the cameras and set them up in position. We’ve got two camera operators actually managing four cameras on site, so three full system cameras sitting on TRIAX, and then we’ve got an additional camera which is plumbed in to our commentator, so that’s a kind of a smaller semi-fixed camera which is just to give a shot of the commentator up the top. Depending on where those greyhounds jump, those two operators are manning two cameras, and one is a fixed position locked off.

Ed:

Have you got a GoPro on the rabbit?

Jamie: No … we have done it in the past with mixed success.

Ed:

Sometimes it comes back with tooth marks?

Jamie: so …

Yeah, exactly, the dogs do have muzzles,

Ed: I imagine that would provide quite interesting footage?

Jamie: I think it did.

Our Central team have actually done it and it looks great with the dogs chasing it. We can’t put it live to air, because you can’t see what’s going on, but it’s fantastic footage to look back on.

Page 12

Eric: Yes, because it’s on the lure itself, which is moving at high speed on an uneven track.

Jamie: There’s a lot of potential for relooking at that – just watch that space in the future.

Ed: Gyro-controlled … they can do it on a MotoGP bike?

Eric: There are a lot of things we can do in that space.

It’s something that people are having a lot of fun looking at.

One thing I’d say about the entire project is that it was done in-house, it was done by a very small design and implementation team.

Regardless, it was done inhouse, designed in-house, and pretty much put together and built in-house. For the level of delivery, being the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, and a very small number of its kind in the entire world, that’s quite an achievement for those young men and women who worked on it.

It’s quite a major feat I think to be the first in New Zealand, much less everywhere else that it’s a first, and certainly probably under 10, maybe even under 5 in most parts of the world for what it is, how it works and how it does it. It’s not unlimited bandwidth because it’s New Zealand. You know there’s not massive amounts of dark fibre everywhere yet, and certainly not at some of the locations that we go to, so they’ve taken a more holistic and intelligent approach to it which, in the design, takes that into account, and we’re delivering great pictures. Look up the kennel racing ad – it’s an ad from AmJamiea from the 50s – YouTube it and you’ll understand. Instead of “is better than” just put in “looks better than” and you’ll get the idea, because it really is a significant difference to see the vision

onscreen now versus what it used to be in terms of the SD to HD. And then against other content from other places, to see what state of affairs the SD/HD world is in, in what we’re watching here in New Zealand. It’s something for those young men and women to be very proud of.

Jamie: We really look very closely at what the rest of the world is doing, and is this the right track for us to go down. The quality that is served up in different parts of the world – in racing particularly – it’s miles apart from the lowest common denominator. Some of it is very rough and it’s pretty embarrassing to see, you know, some of those people out there what is being delivered compared to what we’re delivering. We’re delivering a top class product.

Ed:

Well we still see 4x3 coming out of India in sport?

Jamie: Oh look, we’re still getting 4x3 racing from some territories and it’s not great looking stuff.

Ed: It’s not pretty. Okay, so your workflow starts with your cameras, so what cameras did you choose for greyhound racing Matt?

Matt: Ed:

Sony HDC2570’s.

Because?

Matt: Because TRIAX operation was probably the main consideration, and serviceability, longevity of the product and support from Sony and overall performance is why the Sony product was chosen.

Jamie:

And they look nice.

Matt:

They look bloody nice, yeah.

Jamie: We’ve moved from SD to HD so it was always going to be a big jump, but it’s significantly good.

Page 14

Ed: Now you say you have three vans for the greyhounds?

Jamie: They’re done in regions, so you’ve got the Northern region which is Manukau and Cambridge and there’s two dog tracks there; then you’ve got the Central region which is the Manawatu, so that’s Manawatu Raceway and Wanganui which is Hatrick; then you’ve got Christchurch which is actually a fixed installation, because there’s only one dog track in Christchurch; and then the next area is way down south which is Dunedin and Invercargill. So three vans, South and North and that’s just Chch there on its own.

Ed: Did you cover dogs with the same OB that you covered the horses with?

Jamie: Yes. Up until very recently, we had six OB trucks covering all equine and all greyhounds.

By doing this model, we’ve essentially removed a truck from the scenario, so that’s given us the ability to utilise equipment from that to get the others running nice and smoothly for as long as we need to. It’s just basically three vans now covering the entire country of greyhounds.

Eric: At 450 meetings a year, it’s not an insignificant number of events – 450 different locations, a full day of racing, which is amazing. There are over 1100 days of racing all in with the other equine harness and gallops.

So it’s significant.

Matt: The greyhounds operate six days a week.

The only day of the week that doesn’t have greyhound racing is a Saturday.

All the other days have greyhound racing, so it’s a big chunk of the work.

Jamie: A good stat for you is that we are easily the biggest live broadcaster in the country.

OSB is probably doing 500 live events a year, and we’re doing 1100, so we’re much bigger.

Matt: But as a sport, 450 meetings of greyhounds, I guess put it against any other single sport, it’s quite a lot.

Ed: So how many people actually attend the meetings themselves?

Jamie: It depends on the day. So next week, if you go to Cup Week in Christchurch …

Ed:

Is there a Greyhound Cup?

Jamie: There is a Greyhound Cup, yes, during NZ Cup and Show Week in November and it's a busy night.

And you go to Manukau on a good Sunday … Matt, how many people would you get to Manukau on a good Sunday?

Matt: say.

A couple of hundred on a good day I would

Eric: And you go to Hatrick in Wanganui, they’ve got a nice clubhouse they’ve built a couple of years ago there – it gets a lot of people there on a Friday night. The times I’ve been there it’s quite popular.

Ed: Okay, but obviously you’re getting a much bigger viewership than a few hundred?

Jamie: Oh absolutely. I haven’t got the viewership stats to hand.

Matt: Our viewership’s much larger than that – that’s just people on course, which is quite good, and sometimes more at the bigger events.

Warren is the audio man from NZ Live.

Ed: Tell me, does your viewership view it because of the excitement of greyhound racing, or they’ve put a dollar on it and they’re hoping that their dog wins?

Jamie: I’d say the majority of people watching are for the betting product, but I’m certain we’ve got people who just like to tune in to the voices of our presenters and commentators and see what the weather’s doing in Wanganui.

Eric: There are a lot of people I know who actively go and seek out and watch, just because it’s a fun thing.

Jamie: You can, it’s part of the base Sky package.

It’s not part of Sport but if you’ve got Sky, you’ll have Trackside One and Two. Ed: So you’re doing the Sky thing, but you have an online presence too?

Jamie: Yes and on the TAB mobile app you can log in and watch us as well, Trackside One and Two. The social media side is starting to pick up, so we’re exploring that avenue quite heavily at the moment.

Ed: So a punter can something?

have

a favourite

dog

or

Jamie: Yes, to an extent and you can also follow them through the codes as well. So we’re kind of the overall for everyone, but if you’ve got a real specific about greyhounds or thoroughbred, you can actually go to their particular entities in terms of the website … that’s not managed by us, but it’s managed by Greyhounds New Zealand or Thoroughbred New Zealand or Harness New Zealand and they manage their own side of the industry as well.

Ed: Okay, what about other production – you’re obviously covering the tracks, you’re covering the racing side of it, but as well, you’re going a bit behind the scenes and looking at the care of the horses.

Jamie: We’ve got a show, Kiwi Bred – that’s one of our longer form shows. That goes into the personalities of the industry; it goes down into some of the stuff around the particular animals that have raced. There are many industry focused specific shows that go into the “behind the scenes” if you like. We’re doing 18 hours of live racing and then, after hours, we’ve got all of those particular industry specific shows that really go into depth around the personalities, the jockeys, the drivers and the horses and the dogs. We’ve got quite a lot of industry focus shows that go into that sort of

Page 15

stuff, and there’s some really nice stuff being made actually.

Kiwi Bred in particular – it’s playing right now, we’re about halfway through the season.

Ed: Okay, back to the technicals, if you don’t put a GoPro on the rabbit, what about covering it with a drone?

Eric: We’ve tried that several times and certainly we’d look at it in the future as well.

The interesting thing we learned is that we had a drone that was doing 70 kilometres an hour, which is what it’s capable of … it couldn’t keep up with the dogs.

We had to get a running start before they actually came out of the box, because in six steps they’re allegedly at 69 kilometres an hour and the drone will only do 70. And they can do that into a turn where the drone can’t, so it was a white knuckle ride for our drone person on that day.

We literally got through a battery a race from how hard we were pushing it, banking it and getting it to go. It was a real learning experience for the drone pilot.

Everybody’s certified, we’re flying safely, there’s no concern, we stayed away from the crowds, away from the dogs, but just keeping up with them was quite an achievement, especially in the short track with the curves and everything that are there. They were great pictures; the people on course that day were very enthusiastic about helping us with that, to capture it, and also seeing the results.

I think it gives another view, not just to the people looking but also to the judicial side to see a different angle or different point of view of the race itself and what’s happening. So it’s quite a good thing they’re both in that and in the equine sector.

Ed:

Oh, you’ve tried the drone with the horses?

Eric: We’ve been doing both for a while, and if you watched NZ Cup and Show Week, there were some interesting things to see. There are more developments along a lot of other lines that as they roll out we’ll certainly let you know what they are, but they’re in progress.

Ed:

What about putting microphones on the jockeys?

Eric: We’ve already done a camera on jockeys. It’s something that we’re constantly reviewing because there’s health and safety issues both for the person wearing the camera as well as anybody else around, or the horse itself.

Matt: TV.

The audio isn’t often suitable for On Air Live

Jamie: Certainly in the bigger harness events, we quite often put a radio mic on one of the drivers, because obviously sitting in a sulky it’s a lot easier.

They’re able to take some of the more bulky gear because the weight’s not quite the consideration that it is for the thoroughbred jockeys.

Ed: Overseas sales … obviously with all this innovation, interest in overseas? For example, I’ve seen in the Las Vegas casinos, they have races from all parts of the world where they are assuming the punters wouldn’t know which horse actually won the seventh race from Wanganui in 1971, and they bet on that. Do you have sales to Las Vegas?

Cameron does the race graphics live.

Jamie: Absolutely. We have content coming and going both ways.

Our content obviously goes to Australia – what’s called “commingling” – so they can bet on our product. Most of New Zealand racing is played in Australia on the screens over there. Another portion of racing, because the time zone’s quite favourable, goes to the UK in the mornings and some also goes to North America, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Our content is taken all over the world and I think, particularly with some of the bigger events, we’ve thrown out all the stops to lift the production levels at times when we knew it was going to some of the bigger territories.

But in terms of our international agreements, we actually don’t know from one day to the next in what countries it’s going, just because those things do happen behind the scenes sometimes – but yes, our content is all over the world.

Racing is one of those games which is great because, as long as all the correct betting agreements are in place, we can follow the sun. So content here, on a typical day, might start in New Zealand at midday, Australian content will kick in at 2 o’clock our time, which is midday their time, it will carry on right through to later on and then we push through to UK content.

Ed: I know the insomniacs in Europe would probably be quite interested … I remember once when I went to the IBC show in Amsterdam, being wide awake at 3am and all I could get on the television was soft porn or a train video, which was a camera on the front of a train that just went on and on and on … you know a bit of harness racing or dogs from New Zealand would have been a welcome relief.

Now a question for Matt on future technology – ARVR – would you like the opportunity to add a little bit of augmented reality to what you do, or might that be a bit too far?

Matt: I think that stuff’s better suited to the gaming market. I went to a tech show a few months ago and had my first go on VR and while it’s great technology, I think it’s better suited to the gaming market. Much like I thought 3D was a bit of a have – wide 3D for sports and whatnot, and it turned out it was …

Page 16

Ed: You weren’t the only one!

But augmented reality, where you’re taking that image that you have now and adding something especially to your smartphone users?

Jamie: There are sort of two aspects to that, that we’re actually looking at – the Facebook Live type thing, so obviously, with some of the content that doesn’t go to normal media, you know the traditional broadcast if there is such a thing anymore – the social media side of us, we’re looking quite actively at doing 360 degree cameras in the birdcage. So obviously you can sit there with your iPad and you can watch those horses go right round – that’s extremely feasible now, and certainly not expensive to set up. That’s something we’ve actually trialled but we haven’t pushed online.

Augmented reality in terms of things like virtual lines, virtual signwriting and things like that – we don’t actively advertise on screen, but some of the content we get Jamie points to the Lawo boxes that provide the links. from say Hong Kong and Singapore has virtual lines, so you can see the 100 very problematic for us. Quick turnaround, turn up with metres, the 300 metres. We’d love to do that. It’s the an OB truck that morning, 3 or 4 hours to set up and tyranny of the number of racetracks we’ve got, so with then take it away, it’s a lot of infrastructure to put 60 racetracks, implementing that at a racetrack say like together.

Dargaville, that we’re only at once a year, becomes

Tips and Tricks for Christmas John de Vere writes – I've probably saved myself thousands. The mouse arrow would frequently stop while I was editing and the computer would make a sound like a “gulp” trying to cope.

Thought my Z800 was getting past it, so I rang a tech supplier who said my gear was old and gave me a few options to upgrade.

While I was thinking about it, in the middle of an edit session, I turned my mouse upside down and noticed a lot of dust and crap ( that had built up over the years no doubt ) on each of the small black pads.

I scratched all the crap off back to the black pads and suddenly realised that there were no more arrow hiccups or gulping sounds from my computer.

Works perfectly again.

The tolerance for the red light of the mouse on a flat surface must be minuscule!

Ed replies –

again. Thoughts swirled of catastrophic damage until I noticed that the air vent to the cooling fan was completely blocked with a wad of dust and carpet fibre.

Once the blockage was removed, internet freedom resumed and continues to this day.

On another PC matter, is your Windows 10 upgrade making your PC go slow?

This is common and due to a number of factors. Simply Google to find a solution that fits your case, but don’t rely on Microsoft help.

PS Any similar life lessons to share are most NZVN welcome.

Ed

John has discovered that it’s always important to keep your tools clean.

My experience involved my internet computer suddenly shutting itself down after some 20 minutes. I could restart and it would go for 5 minutes then shut down Page 18

Ed: Surely that infrastructure, the augmented reality infrastructure really is back in the control room?

move the kind of data that we’d like to move around.

There’s a lot of fibre that’s got to go in and Cat6.

Jamie: Yeah … a lot of it’s to do with mapping as well, so you’ve actually got to physically know where things are on track. But yes, you’ve GPS or heads that can tell you where your cameras are looking and things like that … I guess with our new infrastructure that we’ve put in with our fibre tracks that’s basically an IP link, we have opportunities to do that, but it’s only in certain locations at this stage. Those latencies are now down to a point where we could actually do those kinds of things and they aren’t out of the realms of possibility.

Ed:

Ed:

So where do you see it going?

Matt: More towards the data centre type operations as opposed to traditional broadcasting I think is a fair overall call. It’s not going to be SDI in the foreseeable future, it’s going to be high tech data centres basically.

Jamie: I’m not that old but I came from “you plug a plug in and it’s SDI out one end and a bit of embedded audio”, and now it’s Ravenna audio streams and MADI and zeros and ones – it’s make sure you get the right switch configuration to move this content around. I don’t want a great big baseband router now.

Ed:

It’s all on Cat6?

Jamie: It’s all Cat6 yes absolutely, and that’s got some pretty high tolerances, you’ve got to get that stuff right, that we’ve found out. And fibre obviously, that’s the next one for us. As Matt said, there’s a lot of TRIAX infrastructure that we run; over the next few years we’ve got a bit of work to do to get that up to be able to

I suppose you could do it region by region?

Jamie: Oh absolutely and we will be. It’s certainly part of our upgrade to make sure that we’re delivering the good pictures. We’ve seen the quality we’re getting out of the greyhounds now moving to HD and pushing those pictures round. It’s just stunning compared to our other local productions which are actually pretty good; we’ve got some reasonably nicely racked cameras, they look good, but then you’ve got some of the content that comes in from overseas and you’re like “oof” – it’s apples and oranges or apples and some other kind of fruit that you don’t want to mention.

Ed:

So does anyone do it better you reckon?

Jamie: For what it’s worth, I’ve worked overseas, I spent six years working in the racing industry broadcasting in the UK. We definitely do it better. In saying that, on a regular basis we do it better, I’m quite confident to say that, particularly with greyhound coverage, I think it’s easily the best in the world on a regular basis.

Ed:

So as a oncer the Kentucky Derby might be …?

Jamie: Oh absolutely, look at the Melbourne Cup last month. We can’t deliver that quality of product or that scale of product on a day to day basis, that’s just next level, and that’s some of the best production in the world. That’s the team that do all of the motor racing and things like that, so we can’t compete. But, on a day to day basis, what we deliver, hand on heart, I’d say it’s some of the best in the world easily.

NZVN

Page 19

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Page 20

Dale Bremner puts ARRI AMIRA and Master Primes through their paces in Australia’s Red Centre Note from Ed: Since I haven’t had any luck getting someone in New Zealand to tell us about their experiences with this level of camera technology, the team at ARRI Australia sent me a number of stories they have prepared and I picked this one about Dale and his experiences with the AMIRA in the outback, to be the most informative – I hope you agree.

However, if anyone out there would like to share their knowledge of a camera or any other item of kit, please contact me for inclusion next year. NZVN Now, let’s hear from Dale.

Sydney, 24 November 2017 – Multi-award winning cinematographer Dale Bremner has had a long association with ARRI. Having first won the ACS Emerging Cinematographer Award and a Gold Tripod in ARRI’s music category back in 2013, Dale knows a thing or two about cameras.

Recently he undertook one of his toughest shoots in Australia’s Red Centre. For this production he chose the ARRI AMIRA and a set of ARRI master primes.

Bremner explained, “The AMIRA was primarily chosen based on the shoot’s deliverables, requirements and predicted hurdles which included having 4K output integrated into a 3D dome experience for the Seven Sisters Uluru exhibition in the National Museum of Australia.”

Plates were shot for the dome along with a short 2D narrative film, narrated by an indigenous elder, to accompany the story.

According to Bremner, the AMIRA was an obvious choice for the project.

He continued, “Firstly, the camera’s reliability factor played a big part as the fact that we were shooting seven hours out of Alice Springs in such a remote and harsh environment gave us no backup should the camera fail or suffer media corruption. In other words, camera reliability was paramount – there was no Plan B in case something went wrong. I had taken the AMIRA on previous longform jobs before and it has never skipped a beat, even in scorching temperatures.”

Bremner also highlighted the camera’s features and usability adding, “The AMIRA’s internal NDs are a big plus as the Australian sun is harsh and unforgiving, especially in the desert. Dust and filters are not always the best combination and keeping the filtering inside the camera was not only completely logical, it was extremely practical under those exposed conditions.

Some of our setups were on the side of cliffs and on uneven terrain, places where you don’t want to be swapping out filters.”

The AMIRA’s form factor also played a big part in the shoot, as did its power consumption and ease of use as Bremner continued, “The weight and balance of handheld solo operation with the AMIRA was excellent.

Considering we were hiking and climbing to obtain shots, the camera was often carried and shot straight

Dale with AMIRA.

from the shoulder and the weight and balance of the camera was perfect for long hours in such conditions.

Also, next to reliability, power was key. Along with the standard ALEXA and ALEXA Mini, the AMIRA is the best in terms of power consumption. With base camp only having generator power, every battery had to count.

Finally, having Chris Braga as my one and only trusted and experienced AC and such a huge scale, I was often operating completely on my own and the AMIRA dominates as the doco solo op setup camera.”

To pay homage to the vastness of the outback and tranquillity of such a spiritual realm, the majority of the project was shot using the ARRI 12mm Master Prime lens.

Bremner explained, “A lot of 100mm macro shots were integrated into the project as well, dancing at both ends of the spectrum. The spiritual indigenous dreamtime stories are told through the land and history of the indigenous arts and I wanted the camera to be as unobtrusive and to have as little influence on the look as possible. I didn’t feel it was right to add an artistic style or visual signature of my own to the story, and the footage conveys results we got as the proof is in the pudding.”

Outside of the plates to be integrated into the project dome piece, the narrative was shot at varied frame rates – predominantly 60fps off a 4ft slider. Bremner and his small crew shot in a multitude of conditions at dusk, dawn, night and direct daylight, both inside and outside a sacred cave.

He added, “Magic hour is predictable and safe, however through the intense daytime, the contrast from the cave and the full blooded indigenous elders’ skin tone against the desert sun was unlike anything I had faced before.

This presented some fascin-ating challenges and gave the AMIRA a chance to ultimately flex its dynamic range.

I’m delighted to say it passed with flying colours.”

Page 22

It wasn’t just the AMIRA that impressed Bremner on this shoot; he was also full of praise for his lenses adding, “In my opinion, master primes are without a doubt the pinnacle of technical achievement in modern optics, especially when pushed to the extremities in environmental conditions, and the radical and opposing spectrum of focal ranges, i.e the 12mm and 100mm macro.

I’m not saying they always offer the correct aesthetic, but I chose the master primes for this specific project, primarily due to the project’s requirement of integration into a multiple 4K-projected 3D dome experience. The lack of fringing and chromatic abrasions make these lenses a preference for many VFX and 3D integration situations.”

All in all, Dale Bremner was delighted with his choice of AMIRA and ARRI master prime lenses for what was undoubtedly one of his most challenging shoots as he concluded, “Given this project, in my belief, there was no better camera in existence for this job.

That said, many elements outside of a brand name or high-end sensor exist to create what can be commonly

You need good shades in this sun.

referred to as a pleasing image. This, of course, is subjective and ignoring the basic fundamental rules and laws of photography – laws that once learned can and should be broken and bent – palette, texture, tone, light quality, reference and psychology equally play their roles. The AMIRA performed as expected, like the tried and tested premium digital camera it is.”

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