The MotoGP World Championship is one of the world’s most watched sports, and one of the most demanding to produce, with 120-125 cameras in operation during 12 hours of live coverage at raceways around the world.
The motorbikes can each carry four cameras, and there are also cable cams and helicopter shots, feeding the two OB trucks.
“You need a very powerful server,” said Sergi Sendra, TV production & contents director, Dorna Sports, Spain, which has been covering MotoGP since 1992. Dorna bought nine of Grass Valley’s K2 Dyno replay systems, after seeing them at IBC 2009.
“Each hour of sport creates 40 hours of material. Previously we couldn’t record more than four channels, now we can record six per Dyno,” Sendra explained. Eight frontline systems and a further Dyno are used for content management running with the K2 Dyno production assistant live event management software. The Dynos can move material automatically, using rules set by Dorna.
“Before, we needed three to four people to manage the workflow, now we can do it with one,” Sendra said.
Dorna has 25 edit suites, running Final Cut Pro, and a 64TB Xsan, so metadata is vital. This is added by the Dyno operator and easily imported into FCP. “The touch-screen monitor makes it very easy and fast to use and to add metadata to the clips.” The system allows “our staff to produce a number of different replay feeds and highlight reels – as well as share clips between systems – quickly and easily”, Sendra added.
Each MotoGP Grand Prix is watched by more than 320 million viewers in 200+ countries.
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