The summit, attended by 196 nations, set out to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.Host broadcasters, AV France, tasked with supplying live pool feeds to television and radio broadcasters and journalists, chose the Optocore solution to help create two distinct digital networks.
The first allowed AV France to provide the television and radio audio signal to the press. The second allowed connection of the OB vans and advanced SNG trucks that could live stream video, play out reports over satellite and record all the signals. Locations included two Plenary rooms and the Press Centre, which incorporated three press conference rooms and 44 Stand-Up positions. SNG vehicles or Flyaway Dishes were available to journalists - set within 200m of the IBC (International Broadcast Centre).
In addition to feeding OB vans and broadcast satellite trucks pool signals were provided to all workstations and cubicles in the IBC.
The Optocore networks were constructed around a series of DD32R-FX AES3 I/O devices, offering 32 AES ports with SANE and Ethernet, and X6R-FX converters. Also deployed were DD2FR-FX Network MADI I/O devices, offering 128 fibre MADI I/O channels with SANE and Ethernet.
The system in the Master Control Room (MCR) was fed to the various audio cabins via fibre and MADI, while the Yamaha digital mixing desks were equipped with 16-channel Optocore I/O mini YGDAI expansion cards and dedicated Yamaha SANE Interface I/O Y3R-TP cards (converting to Optocore's SANE Cat 5 protocol).
According to director of sound, Ghislain Leclere, AV France were contracted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Under his management, and the direction of Dominique Cerveau, AV France technical director and Mathias Langlois, AV France Audiovisual Project Manager, all audio streams were implemented and the entire broadcast set-up managed, including OB trucks, video display, CCTV and MCR.
The 180,000sq.m of space at the Conference Centre was divided into different zones, all of which had to operate continuously 24/7 over the two weeks of the conference, and this required a fully redundant system. "We provided all site flow visuals to the Centre using Optocore for 4-wire intercom signal distribution between the 44 press Stand-Up positions and 44 NSE OB's," said Mr. Leclere. This represented 176 Audio I/O channels distributed in four zones over distances of 100 to 800m each.
"We also supplied audio distribution of eight audio signals to five media conference rooms over distances of 50m-100m. This represented 24 Audio-In channels, distributed to the 37 press cabins."
(Jim Evans)
