Superleague Formula Has a Vision For Next Year

By Kevin Hilton

The first season of Superleague Formula comes to a close tomorrow this weekend at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain but this strange marriage of motor racing and football has been successful enough to warrant an extended run of nine races next year, with UK OB company Visions signed up to once again provide broadcast facilities.

In this twist on motor racing identical cars race in the colours of leading international football teams to combine the enthusiasms of two very tribal sets of supporters. Going into the final race Chinese team Guoan Rigon is some way ahead of the field, with PSV Eindhoven, Liverpool FC and AC Milan in the following pack.

Visions has been using its Voyager nonlinear editing trailer for the Superleague Formula season. It was adapted for the task by having one edit suite turned into a viewing gallery, with 50 monitor screens to show the outputs of on-car cameras before being mixed into the main transmission.

This makes Voyager more like a standard OB truck, incorporating tape and server recording facilities, including two EVS multi-channel systems, and a vision mixer, as well as, graphics, video editing and Pro Tools audio equipment.

HBS has worked with Superleague Formula’s in-house host broadcast department SFTV, supplying cameras for the main broadcast signals. Coverage was 16:9 digital standard-definition, with the possibility of adopting high-definition in the future. The 25 cameras supplied by HBS included a super-slow-motion unit, a Jimmy Jib-mounted camera, four minicams, and RF cameras for the pits. On top of this, SFTV put two cameras on each car, bringing the grand camera total up to 65.

Two separate signals were generated in an OB truck, with the world feed distributed by satellite-uplink provider GlobeCast. HBS had a crew of 60 production staffers on-site for each race, working with Infront Italy, which is also involved in the SBK.