Lyon Video, Grass Valley Team Up for Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships

Veteran mobile production company Lyon Video helped produce the 2012 season opener of the Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship from St. Paul, MN, on Jan. 14, with the latest live high-definition (HD) production equipment from Grass Valley. The Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship now moves on to two other countries—The Netherlands and Sweden—before an eventual winner is crowned after the final race in Quebec City, Canada, on March 17.

The unique Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship features competitors on hockey skates racing down a challenging ice-covered course. The action is fast and furious, with very little room for error. A team of four Americans was picked from the St. Paul event and they will now represent the US in the World Championships.

Lyon Video set up its MU10 truck on location, complete with 20 Grass Valley LDK 8000 HD cameras, two LDK 8300 Super SloMo camera systems, a Grass Valley Kalypso Video Production Center, and a Trinix NXT multiformat router with multiviewer. The cameras were fed into a fiber network using the new Grass Valley 3G Transmission system to accommodate the long distances from the various venues back to LYON Video’s production truck.

“We were pleased that the production went off very well and that the Grass Valley products were more than up to the task,” said Brent McCoy, operations manager at Lyon Video and Technical Manager for this Red Bull project. “We were especially pleased that Grass Valley gave us one of their first multiviewer systems for our onboard Trinix router, because it allowed us to keep track of all of the various feeds coming in from the venues. The client was very pleased with the overall results and we’re excited to add multiviewer capability to our other routers soon.”

The Lyon team used the 3 M/E Kalypso switcher to handle the live international HD feed and another single M/E Kalypso panel in one of its supporting trucks to display live images of the entire Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship course on several large presentation screens, set up at The Cathedral of Saint Paul. In the US, NBC broadcast the event a week later (Saturday, Jan 21).

“Lyon Video is a valued customer of Grass Valley that continues to push the boundaries of live HD sports production,” said Jeff Rosica, executive vice president of Grass Valley. “This event proved once again that our cameras, slow-motion systems, production switchers, routers, and now our multiviewer are the best in the business.”

The new Trinix NXT multiviewer option supports infrastructures up to 3 Gb/s while providing up to eight SDI monitor outputs per card, along with powerful audio monitoring and image scaling features that are ideal for simultaneously viewing multiple sources within all types of broadcast control rooms, live production and distribution facilities, and mobile trucks.

The 3G Transmission system from Grass Valley is the company’s third-generation camera transmission system, capable of carrying 1080p50/60 signals over triax and fiber and offers maximum transmission flexibility. As a bonus, 3G Transmission extends the range of triax connectivity by 25%, to a conservative minimum of 4,921 feet (1,500m).

Lyon Video’s entire fleet of 14 production trucks features a mixed variety of Grass Valley live production equipment.

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