Every lap involves eight motorcycleTV-cameras, two shooting helicopters, two radio link helicopters and a whole modular control room.
Since 1998 Enrico Motta was requested to create system capable of following all main sports events in Italy just like “Giro d'Italia”, the “Moto Mondiale”, the “Formula Uno”, and many others.
From those years ahead he was the person in charge to put up all the tv production projects from scratch. Starting from a deep study of each event and with the help of the Editor, the new RAI, for the new sports channels Raisport 1 and Raisport2, Motta had to plan everything with a new technical, productive and editorial scheme.
The organization involved in this first complex study is the technical structure “ProduzioneTV”, which is thoroughly made of RAI resources, for the first year ever since this great tv event was televised; they had first to develop a productive profile that could be flexible enough for the serious challenges of the race. So, after a first rough project, Enrico Motta, considering what had been done in the past, made a lot many efforts to improve the whole experience still trying to otimize the available resources.
The main idea was to create a series of different tv programs and journalistic stories to be broadcast in several different time slots throughout the day and and the whole period of the game, several days.
Actually the “Giro” is broadcast from morning to evening and faces very different audiences along the day in several different programs and channels. The whole system is to be adaptable to the various sessions, so the choice was made in favour of a modular and re-assemblable hardware solution to be composed at every departure and arrival location, with a few changes.
So the same system in many and very different configurations was composed to create the many daily tv broadcasts on several locations to follow the race live.
Several OB Vans were ready to be composed to create a live studio plant and a recording site as necessary, during the many days of the Giro.
Enrico Motta tv tech manager says: “The event is composed of “easy laps” which can be faced with simple and standard hardware equipments and other “complex laps” just like when the riders have to race through the mountains, and the technical system is to be prepared at least one hour in advance departure; it is to be quick to be dismantled and re-constructed in another location the following day, perhaps 500 km away.”
The travelling production centre is so complete of everything, control room, recording booth, replay systems, satellite links, editorial and production offices, UPS, cabling, etc. And everything is tailored to the place of installation, among squares and streets, security service and the rest.
All technical means are RAI's equipped for digital production, with Avid editing server, BLT equipments as image stores for highlights, slow motion and production server with EVS.
All images are shot on tv cameras by Sony XDCAM, while moving, on motorcycles, plus two “terrestrial”, and a redundant recording camcorder; two receiving station on earth receive all contribution of the motor cameras and two shooting helicopters, plus two others which fly at a higher altitude and operate as radio links of all signals.
In case of bad weather a specially equipped airplane is used over the clouds to receive all radio camera signals, flying in circle over the event. All radio equipments use dynamic power handling which automatically adapts to weather and orographic conditions. All high frequency equipments comprise gyroscopic hardware for aerial automatic pointing through GPS.
Italian Civil Aviation have an important role in this event, since all necessary flight safety instruction details are issued in real time throughout the whole race.
Due to intelligent strategic choices, this perfect and gigantic organization is due to less professionals than expected unlike done in the past.
