Joining Efforts For High-Quality Broadcasting of World Cup football
This summer, billions of football fans all over the world fell under the spell of a breathtaking football performance – World Cup 2018, which took place across 12 venues in 11 Russian cities from June 14 to July 15. Lots of technical stuff was put into organizing high-quality broadcasting of this long-awaited event and giving viewers a chance to witness every football triumph or defeat. Elecard made its contribution as a live encoder vendor and a partner of AMT Group that delivered and distributed TV-signals within the stadiums at World Cup 2018. The Elecard team in cooperation with AMT Group ensured proper maintenance of the broadcasting system, took part in startup and adjustment works and provided the lowest possible latency in signal delivery.
High-quality and fast delivery of the video captured at the stadium during the game is a top priority, but a sophisticated challenge for FIFA officials. Any delay in the video signal delivery will result in significant complications for numerous commentators, announcers and other press members. It is important for them to see the picture captured from a stadium immediately otherwise immersive live coverage of a football game becomes tricky. Each of the hundreds of reporters covering the World Cup must be well-equipped to get high-quality pictures extra fast. Th organization and maintenance of such a large-scale broadcasting system may cost a fortune. The most daunting challenge was reducing expenses on such a system, and providing the lowest possible latency (usually ranges from 2 to 3 seconds).
AMT Group in cooperation with Elecard made it possible to organize a centralized system for capture and encoding of SDI-signal with further broadcasting and playback within the stadiums, the commentators’ locations, the VIP-boxes, the changing and locker areas, etc. Implementation of such a system based on the latest digital TV broadcasting technologies significantly reduced expenses. At the same time, the picture was delivered with the lowest possible latency – 300 milliseconds (0,3 seconds) from SDI-signal capture to video playback at the receiving device.
Long-time experience of AMT Group and Elecard members as well as extensive support received at different levels provided the opportunity to develop efficient codecs and create competitive broadcasting technology, which demonstrated high performance and stable work at a world-scale event.
“Our team is happy to make a contribution to organizing a fabulous football event – World Cup 2018. We plan to work hard to further improve our system for content delivery and broadcasting to ensure breath-catching viewing experience and make sure the delay is the lowest possible,”- says Nikolay Milovanov, Elecard CEO.
The World Cup 2018 organizing committee highly appreciated the stable work of AMT Group and Elecard and the strong level of technical competence of their team members. FIFA technical managers expressed the hope that cooperation with AMT Group and Elecard will continue in future at the next World Cup 2022 in Qatar.
