Miranda to Outfit New IMG Studios Facility in London

Miranda Technologies sold its NVISION routers and multiple Kaleido-X multiviewers to IMG Studios, London as part of a major relocation of its sports production business to a new, purpose-built facility in west London this summer.

IMG Studios, the studio and post production arm of IMG Sports Media, a division of IMG Worldwide, the global sports, fashion and media company, is currently outfitting a 107,000 square foot, ultra-modern facility to the west of London near Heathrow Airport. The new building will include four studios totaling 6000 square feet, 13 production galleries, 72 edit suites, four sound dubbing suites, five radio studios, five transmission suites and a master control room.

Tying it all together are two Miranda NVISION 8500 Series routers, the first of which is an NVISION 8576 enterprise-class router for large facilities that will provide a 576×1152 matrix for all incoming and outgoing lines. A separate NVISION 8576 Plus enterprise-class router will anchor all routing for IMG Studios’ production galleries and studios via an 1152×1152 matrix. The hybrid aspect of the 8576 Plus router, referring to its integral ability to embed and de-embed audio without external devices, is crucial to IMG Studios’ workflow.

“Miranda’s routers are the absolute core of the entire facility,” says IMG Studios Chief Engineer Richard Allingham. “We knew their technology would not only withstand but thrive in the face of the rigors that we are going to throw at it. In sport, literally and figuratively, that resilience is vital. The same can be said for their multiviewers, which will ensure system integrity by enabling us to see precisely what is going on, anywhere, any time.”

To monitor all processes within the extensive facility, IMG Studios selected a 128×8 Kaleido-X multiviewer for its master control room; and every studio and live gallery will be fitted with multiple Kaleido-Modular multiviewer cards, in various combinations depending on the requirements for each. Kaleido-X multiviewers excel in master control and headend environments and, when integrated with routers, enable extremely large and versatile monitoring systems to be deployed for total system visibility and deep signal probing.

“This is one of the most impressive new studio complexes in recent years and we are proud that our signal distribution and monitoring technologies will form the backbone of its infrastructure,” says Micky Edwards, Miranda’s vice president of sales in EMEA. “We have worked closely with IMG Studios and their systems integrator, TSL, to ensure its seamless and successful completion.”

The facility is scheduled for initial use in the summer of 2013 with the total migration of all technical, production and administrative functions expected by the middle of 2014.