Live From Paris 2024: OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris Reflects on the Technical Legacy of the Games The massive Opening Ceremony prep, the role of ST 2110 and IP, and the virtualized future of production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, August 12, 2024 - 2:00 am
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The Paris Olympics are over, and, for the OBS team, there is a brief moment to reflect on its accomplishments before the Paralympics begin on Aug. 28. It gives SVG a chance to chat with OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris about the multi-year effort that produced a nice return to normalcy after the past two the Olympics: the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games and the Beijing 2022 Winter Games were severely affected by the pandemic and, without fans in the stands, lacked much of the energy that transforms an Olympics into something special.
OBS's Sotiris Salamouris in the video-quality-control area at the Paris 2024 IBC
Empty venues impact us quite negatively in terms of how the sports appear, he says. Having fans creates an excitement that gets all the way up to the way that we're doing the production. It affects the producers; it affects the directors, even the camera people. It doesn't change the technical setup, but it absolutely contributes to the quality of the final production. Here in Paris, there is also the beauty of the city, and it's amazing how you see that reflected in the production.
In the Beginning Displaying the beauty of the Paris Olympics began on July 24, when some competitions began outside of Paris as well as at the Stade de France. But, on Friday, July 26, the Opening Ceremony took place, and the production made waves - both literally and figuratively. Historically, Opening Ceremonies have taken place in a stadium, and certain protocols are observed: an artistic segment reflecting the host city or nation, a parade of nations and athletes, the official opening the Games.
That was not what happened this year. Instead of being held in a stadium, the Opening Ceremony took place on a nearly 8-km-long portion of the Seine, from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Pont d'Iena. The parade of nations comprised the Olympic teams on boats, artistic elements were performed both on the river and alongside it for the entire route, and the parade culminated at the Stade de Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
What was very different in this ceremony was that the parade was mixed with the artistic elements, Salamouris points out. That added another dimension of complexity and made it even bigger as we had seven drones in the production plan and three helicopters.
The drones and helicopters were part of a massive production plan for, arguably, the largest single-day event ever produced for television. Covering the route required hundreds of cameras, hundreds of microphones, and a lot of signal transport.
A fleet of gyrostabilized boats with cameras and microphones captured views of the Opening Ceremony from the Seine. (Photo: OBS)
We had close to 120 standard broadcast cameras that are deployed for events like this, he explains, but we had 220 additional mobile phones that were also live broadcast sources. And we deployed around 450 microphones. It was a massive number of video plus audio sources. Any kind of technology that works for a live event was used. We had wired connections but also wireless, and we even had a private 5G network along the route as well as at preparation zones.
Besides the coverage from the shore and bridges and the mobile phones on the boats, the teams motoring down the Seine were covered by six camera boats deployed as chase boats. Four of them had three gyrostabilized robotic cameras each, mounted on a truss atop the boat (shading took place on the boats, but camera control was done remotely from the Opening Ceremony compound near the Trocad ro); the fifth boat had two cameras. The sixth boat served as a landing zone for the drone.
Seven wireless receive sites located along the route ensured that signals were brought back to shore and to the long fiber running along the Seine to the IBC. Featuring 740-strand fiber, the ring began to be installed as soon as the OBS team learned of the plan to have the Ceremony on the Seine.
Before we saw the production plan, Salamouris says, we put the fiber in. That saved the show because it is an amazing number of strands put in by our telecom partner, Orange. All the content from the cameras that were deployed in the river or the wired cameras along the river were connected to that network.
The compound was built on a massive IP-based infrastructure, with three interconnected production units.
It was all IP and SMPTE ST 2110, he says, with a spine-leaf topology that we call a super spine. It has two layers to collect all the signals coming from the river, plus the Trocad ro area because that was where the grandstands were with a big number of cameras. All the cameras and signals were available in all three galleries [at the IBC], so they had access to the same signals depending on what they were doing. As a result, there was no problem about sharing all this content among the production galleries.
All the production planning in the world, of course, can be disrupted by inclement weather, and that happened with Paris 2024: there was a steady, soaking rain for just about the entire Opening Ceremony. Fortunately, the weather in the days prior and the day of had been relatively clear, allowing final preparation to take place. However, about two hours prior to the Ceremony, the heavens opened up, and everyone involved - production crew, athletes, fans - was challenged in a new way.
There was a good plan about protecting all the cameras lenses, microphones, and personnel, says Salamouris. It proved to be very good because nobody was expecting four continuous hours of rain. All the restricti
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Live From Paris 2024: OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris Reflects on the Technical Legacy of the Games The massive Opening Ceremony prep, the role of ST 2110 and IP, and the virtualized future of production By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
