SABC selects Gearhouse Broadcast to kit out its Rio IBC base

Gearhouse Broadcast, a leading supplier of specialist broadcast solutions, has been selected by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to deliver technical facilities and support at its temporary base this summer at the international broadcast centre (IBC) in Rio de Janeiro. The public service broadcaster required the setting up of three temporary post-production areas; technical, EVS and edit, and newsgathering, to process and QC content before it’s sent back to Johannesburg, SA for broadcast.

Within the IBC, SABC’s technical area is used to monitor all of its incoming and outgoing feeds and has been equipped with multiple quality control positions. A dedicated area has been set up with an EVS live production infrastructure. This ingests and manages content captured from four Sony PDW-700 ENG kits that are being used at venues across Rio de Janeiro. The rushes are cut on one of two FCP edit suites, before being exported to an EVS XT3 server and sent back to South Africa where it will then be broadcast. There’s also a news area that operates two additional ENG kits and a standalone edit suite to quickly turn around news packages. SABC has three temporary voice over suites located on site from which it can provide its own event commentary where necessary.

“SABC has worked with Gearhouse previously including four years ago in London,” said Ms Bessie Tugwana, GE: Sport, at SABC. “This local set up they have delivered enables us to make the most out of our coverage and gives us flexibility to cover the stories as they emerge that are relevant to the people back home.”

Ed Tischler, head of projects at Gearhouse Broadcast added: “We have lots of experience of working with broadcasters at major events, so understand that despite the fact they’re covering the same thing, each has their own specific needs that must be addressed. The SABC job is about giving them the ability to quickly turnaround the content they’re capturing so that it can be sent on to South Africa ready for playout.”