RTÉ has made some important improvements since Tokyo 2020, including the introduction of a Dante-based audio routing infrastructure.
The 2024 Paris Olympic Games saw the largest Irish delegation ever, with 133 athletes competing in the Games. To cover all the action, RTÉ is broadcasting over 250 hours of live action from France on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, including three daily live programmes.
Michael Moriarty, Live Operations Support Supervisor at RTE, said at IBC in Paris: “Technologically, we have come a long way since Tokyo. Back then, everything was analogue and connecting audio jacks was a manual, labour-intensive task.”
This required an overhaul of the audio infrastructure, including the introduction of a digital Dante-based system, enabling RTE to transition from an analogue system to a remotely controlled digital network.
“With Dante, we never touch the front of our racks,” said Moriarty. “Everything is now controlled remotely, which greatly reduces the need for manual intervention.”
RTÉ uses NEP Connect as its service provider. Through this connection RTÉ sends four HD video streams back to Dublin and two HD video streams from Dublin back to Paris. For audio over IP a separate trunk is used, an AQ based system with 16 audio channels from Dublin and 16 audio channels back to Paris. The codecs are all analogue and the conversion from analogue to Dante is done via Tascam units.
RTÉ has also recently upgraded its routing infrastructure in Dublin to SMPTE 2110, using EVS Cerebrum as the orchestration tool.
“From here we have a remote panel in Dublin that allows us to control the switching of our lines from Dublin to here. This is a really useful tool because it means we don’t need anyone in Dublin sitting at a desk day and night.
“And adopting Dante as our audio routing and distribution was a game changer. I wasn’t in that role in Tokyo, but I spoke to some team members who had to look for audio and headphones on patch panels. So being able to easily see everything and distribute it was really effective.”
RTE receives about 82 feeds from OBS for commentary positions from different stadiums in Paris via a MADI trunk.
“When it comes to combining audio and commentary, it’s a bit of a combination, with some of it being done in Dublin. We have 16 satellite feeds coming into the building via satellite and the majority of what is broadcast comes via satellite. Anything else, if we have ad hoc sport that isn’t available on the MBS, we switch over here and send it back via fibre.
“But all our commentary comes in here at the IBC. The satellite feed comes to Dublin, they remove the international audio and then add our commentary from the venue.”
Looking ahead to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Moriarty said it might be possible to cover the Games with significantly reduced equipment.
He said: “I learned a lot at my first Olympics and we could probably do what we do today in Paris in LA with a lot less equipment.
“We could use the OBS cloud service and run everything directly from the cloud. We could still have a connection in LA and a hub, but it could be very far away, which would save on transportation, staff, etc., since a lot of the operations can be done from home.
For the Winter Olympics (Milan-Cortina 2026), RTE plans to use the OBS cloud feed as a test before the games in LA.
“We never have an IBC at the Winter Olympics. So we will see how the workflow works for us and whether everything works out. If that is the case, we will have passed our test.”