The Challenge
GoPro, together with the World Wingsuit League (WWL), wanted to achieve their first-ever live point of view Wingsuit broadcast — in this case, the “Human Arrow” flight of Jeb Corliss at the Great Wall of China. Particular challenges when broadcasting this event live were linked to the extreme environment and the high-speed nature of the descent with multiple body worn camera transmitters travelling in excess of 193km/h (120mph) without a clear line of site.
It was necessary to be able to capture RF transmission from ground level through to about 4000’ (1.22km) over a radius of 2km (1.2 miles) on uneven terrain. To do this the antenna sites were spread over a wide geographic area to capture uninterrupted coverage for all the cameras through this highly mountainous region. The antenna fibre heads had to be battery powered, some with backup generators locally, as they were left in situ for extended periods.
The Solution
Live POV coverage of the jump was made possible using HEROCast™ technology designed by Vislink. It’s the lightest, most compact wireless HD micro transmitter available. HEROCast connects directly to the back of GoPro HERO 3+ Black and HERO 4 Silver and Black cameras and works with all the GoPro’s ecosystem of mounts to deliver the most versatile, mountable high-definition broadcast solution and is already changing the way broadcasters cover events by adding body worn and dynamic point of view shots. For the live aerial shots, two GoPro Hero4 Black cameras with the HEROCast BacPac transmitters were mounted on Jeb, one on his helmet with the standard antenna and the other chest mounted with an external 1 watt amplifier and omni antenna. A second wingsuit pilot, James Boole, followed with another HEROCast BacPac helmet mounted system and external Vislink 1 watt amplifier to capture the ‘in air’ wide shot.
The drop helicopter was fitted inside with a fourth discreetly wall mounted GoPro Hero 4 and HEROCast Tethered system with a 1 watt amplifier and the standard omni antenna extended onto the aircraft skid. Inside a HHT3 handheld receiver was used to monitor all four airborne feeds. Both the wingsuit pilots and helicopters were rigged using the standard HEROCast kit cables mounts and antennas.
For the receive system, Vislink provided a MDR (Modular Diversity Receiver) four channel receive system used with approximately 2km of fibre optic cable to connect to four dual antenna receive heads placed at strategic locations.
Utilising Maximum Ratio RF antenna combining and seamless multichannel ASI packet switching between receive sites to feed each decoder was essential to ensure uninterrupted coverage of the event. The particularly rugged aspect of the location required receive sites to be left overnight and still perform faultlessly throughout the event. All signals were transferred to the outside broadcast van mixing and onward transmission.
The MDR system is specifically designed to receive multiple RF video channels to enable unrivalled coverage of an event. MDR’s modular card design makes it particularly well suited for TV Sports systems, multi-car “onboard camera” and multi camera POV systems where flexibility, reliability and ease of use are the key requirements. The plug and play card-based system means cards can be easily scaled to suit the broadcast requirements. Its advanced real time diagnostics enable the operator to monitor all aspects of the system in an easy-to-use graphical display, essential for live broadcast environments.
The Result
The set-up of the solution was quick and simple and didn’t compromise any part of the flight safety. The high-quality video from multiple camera angles brought this incredible live footage to a worldwide public audience for the first time.
“Clean video was delivered all the way from just before Helicopter take off right through to Jeb landing. It was sent out by the TJTV OB truck to an additional 14-18 TV stations which carried the event live or delayed broadcast. We estimated a total audience reach of about 1.25 billion, which is amazing. HEROCast video footage was used approximately 80% of the time while our cameras and transmitters were active. In other words, they grabbed and telecast almost everything we sent out when we were live, and we were live for the entire duration of the target hit flight on Sunday morning.”
Hemang Mehta, Senior Manager – Professional Products and Services at GoPro
