The 2014 World Rowing Championships held in Amsterdam at the end of August, did not only test the athletes but also the production professionals from Netherlands national broadcaster NOS, Broadcast Rental and United Broadcast Facilities.

“We provided all the wireless connections for the cameras to NOS in support of the multilateral signal,” says GP Slee, founder and CEO of Broadcast Rentals. “In this case it is seven HD video connections for six separate cameras.”

Covering a rowing event can be a tricky mix of coverage from both the water and the land. A total of 18 cameras, including a Flycam with a Grass Valley compact camera over the course were used. Two Sony HDC-1500 cameras, for example, were mounted on cars provided by Filmotechnic Europe (one mounted on a hothead and the other on a Russian Arm RF and both with 40x Canon lenses) that will drive alongside the course, while two other Sony cameras with 86x Canon lenses will be on chase boats on the course. There is also one NAC Hi-Motion super slo-mo camera as well as a Grass Valley LDK8000 camera in a boat at the finish line. That camera can also quickly be taken out of the boat for other production needs.

“The NAC Hi-Motion camera is on the same infrastructure as the other cameras. It will use two RF transmitters for live and the ultra slowmotion signal,” says Slee. “The camera runs in autoplay function and will be transmitted via wireless to the OB truck and, to my knowledge, that has not been done before in the Netherlands,” says Slee of the 1080i signal transport via four SMPTE fibre paths.

“From a technical point of view this project isn’t really that complex, but what contributes to the complexity is that different types of cameras are being used and each of them have unique camera controls, and use their own RCP,” says Slee.