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The Grand Slam season begins at the Australian Open, where fans from across the globe come for stellar tennis and a laid-back atmosphere in Melbourne. Of late, the Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific has been a playground for the Big Four, with either Novak Djokovic (10; 2008, ’11-’13, ’15-’16, ’19-’21, ’23), Roger Federer (6; 2004, ’06-’07, ’10, ’17-’18) and Rafael Nadal (2; 2009, ’22) having won all but two of the Australian Open titles since 2004.
Across the entire precinct, there were 165 cameras including Sony HDC 3500/4300 channels along with various robotics solutions using Sony P43, Hitachi DKH 200 and Panasonic robotic cameras with Mark Roberts PTZF heads. The entire precinct was covered with receive sites allowing 16 roving RF cameras to work anywhere within the venue plus two remote RF robotic cameras delivering broader views of Melbourne.
The production facilities were housed at Tennis Australia’s headquarters. These facilities were connected via 500 metres of fibre to the central apparatus room. The production facilities consisted of seven production galleries using Kahuna Maverick panels and six audio control rooms using Calrec Artemis audio consoles. Gravity Media also utilisied 10 x ViBox vision mixer systems to provide coverage on the ten outside courts.
To achieve system connectivity, Gravity Media used an IP-based large “fly away” system with a level of base band systems to provide a system that is effectively a 3900 x 3500 video router. An integrated audio solution between Audio Live and Calrec cores delivered the ability to route over 2500 audio signals within the facility.
All slo-motion replays plus archiving and media management was achieved using 25 x EVS servers, 52 x EVS IPDs, 16 x XT Access, 3 x X Files plus 4 x DB Servers. During any day’s play, Gravity Media delivered 25 to 45 streams to the 900 Tb of storage on site which allowed all the action to be accessed by the host and unilateral broadcasters.
Gravity Media worked with Tennis Australia to deliver the Australian and international all-screens coverage of the 2023 Australian Open. This was Gravity Media’s 9th year as the broadcast and technology solutions partner for Tennis Australia for the Australian Open in Melbourne, and its 19th year as the host broadcast technical provider for the entire event.
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