Wireless Cameras

Whenever Hollywood portrays live TV reporters, they one thing they always get wrong is there is never a cable going between the camera and truck.  A typical SNG cable reel is between 250-400 feet long, weighs 30-60 pounds.  It usually carries one or two video lines, plus several audio cables which in the past were used for microphones along with communications (IFB and Intercom), but now with digital SDI video and embedded audio, they are mainly just used for the comms.

 A little bit more than a typical SNG reel!

Within the past few years, heavy-duty tactical fiber optical cable has become popular, but that is another post!

 

SNG Fiber

Whenever a satellite truck is set up for a live shot, these cables have to be strung to the camera.  Sometimes it is simply just a few feet from the truck, other times the cable has to be run through a building, requiring an hour or more of hard work.

People often ask why it can't be wireless... after all they can stream video reliably over mobile phones, use WiFi, and a host of other wireless data services.  The main answer is unlike IP based streaming, which may have at least 30 seconds of delay built-in for error correction, wireless for live reporting has to be very low delay, otherwise the lag between reporter and anchor during talk-backs is very noticeable.  Also since it will be encoded again, very high bitrates are required. 

DCI is proud to be the only SNG company in the Washington area to own our camera-back microwave system, and one of the few SNG companies in the entire country to have a licensed microwave system of any kind.  Other systems use the crowded public WiFi bands of 5.4 or 2.4 GHz, but our system operates in a licensed band at 6.4 GHz, allowing better range resulting from less interference.

This is the same system we deployed as a fixed-position link every July 4th, but its most versatile when connected to the back of a roaming camera.  

This camera-back system is extremely useful when needing to cover an event where cabling is not possible, such as in Lafayette Park in front of the White House.  The only place to park a SNG truck is across a busy road, so covering protests inside the park require a wireless link like DCI's Campack system, or for crews without a wireless kit, going live from across the street, a far less appealing location.  Another use is when covering another popular Washington news event, a march to the Capitol.  By placing the truck at a central location and using directional antennas, we can have a mobile reporter go live while covering one of these marches.  Paired with a simple UHF wireless IFB system for reporter and camera, the camera-back transmitter gives DCI a unique edge when challenging live shots solutions are required.

 

LafayettePark live shot

Contact DCI to see how we can put our wireless systems to use for your next broadcast.

Cuba 2014

 

Working in Cuba is always an adventure!  When the Chinese president planned a visit to Cuba after the BRICS summit in Brazil, national broadcaster CCTV planned a large operation.  The president planned two stops- Havana, just 90 miles from Key West, and Santiago, about 500 miles away on the south-east coast.



CCTV insisted on full path diversity at both locations, that means two uplinks at each location, two different satellites, and  two discrete routes to China from the two receive sites US, using both fiber and satellite. 



Operating an uplink in Cuba requires copious amounts of paperwork and licenses, and two flyaways makes it twice as much!  After an eight hour wait to clear customs, we loaded our gear up on a 1934 Ford truck to carry it to the Nacional hotel in Havana.
 
The first kit used our first generation airline flyaway, a 1.1m Patriot connected to Xicom 400w transmitters in a 1:1 configuration.  The transmission plan called for SD MPEG-2 video broadcast a very high quality 16mbps with 4:2:2 compression using 8PSK modulation in a 9MHz slot.



Setup and testing went smooth, however CCTV requested a second path for live shots, which we able to support by combining a smaller 4.5 MHz signal on the uplink chain.  That path utilized H.264 compression and DVB-S2 QPSK modulation at 6 mbps.



At this time a second engineer arrived to take over operation of the Havana flyaway while the second system traveled 11 hours across the country to Santiago de Cuba.



The countryside has some of the best, freshest food in the country, and much cheaper than the cities. 

Upon arriving in Santiago we found a spot where we could get a shot (the only satellites covering Santiago are very far to the west, resulting in look angles much lower than you would expect for being so far south)

The Santiago flyaway was our new modified Norsat system, connected to a pair of linearized 400w BUCs, allowing us to locate the encoders far away under shelter.  After one day of feeding, we packed up and drove the 11 hours back to Havana, and hopped a cargo charter to Miami the next day.


Need a flyaway uplink in a difficult location, or just a SNG truck around town in DC?  Give DCI a call!

July 4 Microwaves

 The famous PBS fireworks camera with a perfect view of the DC memorials.

DCI has been helping link up remote cameras for the PBS "A Capitol Fourth" concert show for more than 15 years.  What had once been a single SD analog microwave path has become two high quality HD feeds.  This year, with the loss of the Clocktower receive site to a hotel development project, we had to think of another way to send the cameras back to the production truck.

The first of two cameras was stationed at the Lincoln Memorial.  We used our normal 7GHz NuComm HD microwave transmitter in the van, but instead of it's internal MPEG-2 encoder, we encoded externally to take advantage of H.264 4:2:2 encoding for a better quality picture.

We took the ASI output of the encoder into the microwave transmitter running at 17mbps.  The second camera was located on a balcony of condo in Arlington and sends the famous shot of the memorials with fireworks above.  A NuComm receiver at that location received the Lincoln Memorial shot and outputted the compressed ASI directly into an ASI mux. Also feeding the mux was a second H.264 4:2:2 encoder with the memorials shot.

 

 We also downlinked the program feed off satellite to give return monitoring to the Lincoln camera operator.  

The resulting 34mbps ASI stream contained two services and was fed into a second NuComm transmitter and received at a rooftop in DC where we maintain a redundant 45mbps 38GHz link for a studio.  The NuComm receiver fed the multiplexed ASI stream into the 38GHz transmitter where it was received back at DCI, decoded into two HD-SDI streams and sent over Verizon fiber to the production truck on Capitol Hill.

45 mbps 38 GHz links, along with a long-range WiFi bridge connecting our DCI LAN to the microwave receiver on the rooftop. 

 Quad-Diversity antennas receiving the 2 channel mux microwave feed before sending to DCI over 38GHz (above)

More Live Surgery in 3D

AUA 2014 3D Surgery

 Article in AUA convention newspaper after our first 3D live case.

Last year, we worked with BoxLine Box medical communications to transmit the first live 3D surgery broadcast to the American Urological Association convention in San Diego.  The single case was so popular that we were asked back for the 2014 show in Orlando, but this time instead of one 3D broadcast in a trade show booth for surgical robot maker Intuitive, we were asked to handle ALL of the live transmissions for the convention itself.  So instead of room for a few hundred people standing around the Intuitive booth, we would be broadcasting into a 3000-seat auditorium as part of the official AUA program, and there would be multiple broadcasts from several different surgical instruments, each of which presented a different "flavor" of video for us to handle.

DCI truck at Orlando Convention Center for reception of live surgery feeds.

The much larger broadcast required a different approach to transmission.  Last year we transmitted each "eye" individually, and combined into a 3D signal at the receive site, which required specialized equipment to adjust timing differences.  With multiple 3D broadcasts to receive, that was not practical this year.  After some testing, we found we could combine the two signals prior to uplink, which simplified the receive side setup.

 3D setup training with Mike Evans at the Boxline Box studios in San Diego a few weeks before the AUA 2014 convention in Orlando.  Each site had a Boxline Box production crew responsible for interfacing between the operating room and the satellite truck.

Also unlike last year we had to deal with three different flavors of SMPTE 424M 3gbps video- the DaVinci robot outputs "dual link" HD-SDI, which is two separate 1.5gbps outputs, one for each eye.  We also had to use 3G "Level A" from a Karl Storz Endoscope, which is a true 3gbps signal for 1080p video.  The third format we were presented with was "Level B" from an Olympus device, which is similar to "dual link", but the two interlaced signals are carried on one cable.  Since all of the 3gbps SDI signals are incompatible with most MPEG encoders, we had to down convert to 1.5gbps SDI for transmission.

In the auditorium the 3D presentations used a special drop-in video screen and dual projectors run through polarizing filters which allowed stereoscopic viewing with passive 3D glasses.



After the the AUA convention in Orlando was over, we headed south to Miami for another related urology event which required us to send a 3D surgery from University of Miami Hospital to the
 Eden Roc hotel at Miami Beach.

Our Miami production team after a site survey in Miami Beach. Above- DCI's old 1.2m flyaway brought back in service to receive the feeds from our truck.

We used our old 1.2m Patriot flyaway to receive the broadcast at the Eden Roc.  Two IRDs connected to a laptop running Team Viewer software and an internet connection from the hotel allowed us to remotely monitor the signal status on the main and backup IRD from the transmit truck 10 miles away and make power adjustments as necessary.
 Remote Control of the receive site flyaway.

3D live transmission has found a niche market with medical distance education, and DCI and Boxline Box are the established leaders in providing this kind of transmission at the highest quality possible.

DCI's New Airline Flyaway

 

Second generation (left) and first generation (right) airline-checkable flyaways.

DCI's first-generation airline-checkable flyaway is a Patriot 1.1m aluminum 6-segment military "manpack" antenna.  This flyaway has worked well, however we wanted to build something more rugged and self-contained.  The result is our second-generationairline flyaway, a modified Norsat SecureLink.  We stripped this system down to just the reflector and base, removing the small 20w BUC, LNA, and other electronics used for Norsat's IP link.  With a carbon fiber reflector rated at 600 watts by manufacture Cobham Defense in the UK, this little flyaway is capable of so much more than the original 10mbps it was first used for.  Our modification includes installing TWO high power amplifiers-  a  a MCL MT3400, and the latest in TWT technology, a 32lb linearized 400w MT2400.- in a custom-made collapsible bracket that both acts as a ballast for the antenna and raises the amplifiers off the ground.  Both of these outdoor amplifiers have internal block upconverters (BUCs).

Custom bracket holding two HPA's and a 1:1 redundancy switch (left), a 3 path HD mux in a single rack in a SUV

Where has the first-generation flyaway traveled? 

A redundant 4-path H.264 HD flyaway that fits on a baggage cart?  Yes, DCI can do that!

Its not just the flyaway antenna that is special however.    Ten-channel ASI muxes, multiple MPEG 4 HD encoders, DVB-S2 modulators- all redundant, allow the flyaway to transmit more data in less bandwidth than ever before possible.  For example, in a 18MHz slot using 8PSK, we can easily carry eight paths of SD and HD in H.264  Or in a typical 6MHz slot, we can do two SD or one high-quality HD in MPEG-4.  With the combination of DVB-S2's increase in throughput and MPEG-4 increase in efficiency, space segment costs are lower and easier to book.  We also carry a small 16x16 HD/SD router, a Phabrix HD/SD analyzer, compact SDI quad viewer, and all the assorted cables, tools, and spare parts needed for successful self-contained transmission from anywhere in the world.

As the oldest flyaway operator in continuous operation in the US, DCI has a long history of innovation in the field.  Our first flyaway, a 1.8m Advent Mantis, provided the Department of Defense pool during Desert Storm from Kuwait City, a flyaway voice comms system decades before commercial equipment was available, covering the Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Peru, and the list goes on.

  DCI's first flyaway setup on the roof of the now-destroyed Hotel Montana in Haiti, covering the 1991 coup:

 
DCI designed and built this comms system totally in house, allowing our first flyaway to carry phone calls along with the video uplink.  This was decades before comms systems became commercially available.  

DCI's current flyaway systems continue the tradition providing innovative solutions in difficult locations such as the Haiti earthquake, Chile mine rescue, and Papal visit to Cuba.  Our flyaway recently downlinked the first ever live surgery 3D broadcast!  The small airline checkable footprint makes covering breaking news events like the Chavez funeral in Caracas, or the new pope from Buenos Aires in a way never before possible, yet still maintaining the full redundancy and capability of a cargo-only flyaway.