FC Barcelona Take Advantage Of Riedel's MediorNet

One of the world's football giants, FC Barcelona have deployed Riedel's MediorNet real-time signal network to share video resources across the city.

The solution has helped connect the club's official broadcaster Barça Studios with the Camp Nou Stadium and Sport City. It also facilitates decentralized signal acquisition, processing, and routing between different areas of the stadium using several Riedel MediorNet MicroN and MediorNet Compact PRO units.

The setup consists of a Compact PRO frame and nine MicroN app-driven devices equipped with the Standard and Processing Apps that handle connectivity between all three locations. CWDM optical multiplexing allows the connection between Barça Studios and Camp Nou to function redundantly on just two dark fibers. Five of the MicroN devices are used in the stadium: one on the pitch; one each in the TV compound, data processing room, and video scoreboard control room; and one as a mobile node that can be flexibly positioned anywhere in the stadium. The remaining four MicroN units, also equipped with the Standard and Processing Apps, are located in the Barça Studios and FC Barcelona Sports City.

"The built-in signal processing capabilities of MicroN allow us to take advantage of the device's onboard embedders/de-embedders, frame sync, frame store, and a timecode generator," said Xavier Fontoba, Audiovisual Operations Supervisor of Barça Studios. "The Processing App adds color correction in the RGB and YCbCr color spaces, up/down/cross-conversion, and two multiviewers — all of which streamline our workflows and eliminate single-purpose devices."

For control and operation, Barça Studios uses Riedel's MediorWorks software on its corporate network. For authorized users, 2300-Series SmartPanels loaded with the MediorNet Control App allow routing of signals directly from the panel.

"Ensuring total reliability and flexibility were the biggest challenges of this project," said Adrián Lorenzo, System Consultant for Southern Europe at Riedel. "With MediorNet we were able to deliver the perfect solution, providing the essential redundancies that the client required for their critical live TV and sports production environment."