"The commitment of Rai for the World Cup 2014 has suffered a significant decline compared to the original design, typical of the latest editions of the FIFA World Cup, due to cost containment. The main idea is however of keeping high quality editorial contents and a complete coverage of the event. In practice a small part of the shootings and the connections provided to some external locations in Brazil were cut, resized accordingly the means of production and fewer resources, carefully limiting the impact of these interventions on the tv product offered to the Italian public.
It is still maintained, albeit in reduced form, the classical scheme of production for large events of this kind that always includes the installation in Rio at the IBC (International Broadcast Center) of an important technical production system capable of sending to Italy different signals live HD or recorded at the same time, to ensure shooting in the studio, working in post-production and broadcast dedicated to the Eng Rai crews operating in Brazil.
The technical system assembled in IBC is connected through eight optical fibers with Italy; the signals are sent live from the stadiums, those produced by the studio at IBC and all other audiovisual contributions for the two TV studios of Rai Centre in Saxa Rubra who are engaged to cover the event for Rai Sport 2 channel, with programming dedicated to the World Cup in Rio 24H, as well as for RAI 1 and RAI 2 that is broadcasting the matches live and the related in deep analysis programs.
The heart of the plant at IBC consists of a traditional master control in high definition, and a large central matrix can handle all the signals produced by the Host Broadcaster, mostly coming from the stadiums, those produced by Rai both externally and within the TV studio at IBC and by local editing systems, routing them as necessary to Italy and/or distributing them locally.
Increasingly important is the role of the "FIFA MAX" mega server that FIFA has already made available to broadcasters since a couple of editions of the World Championships, very enhanced in all of its features in this edition, 2014, allowing research and online availability for broadcasters of all contents of the Championship.
At IBC the live mixing involves also audio in Dolby 5.1 associated with HD footage with a commentary from the stage by RAI journalists before everything is sent to Italy.
This technical system is sized appropriately for the backup of the signals produced in the stadiums transmitted via satellite and via fiber in such a way that for any game there are at least two different signal pathways from Brazil to Italy.
With regards to the productive effort outside the IBC, RAI has given up to the live broadcast from the training field of the Italian National Team; the coverage here is carried out with ENG crews and possibly transmission systems via UMTS. The possibility of live filming from Casa Azzurri is kept including the press conferences of the National team, and interviews with the players, and the possibility of forwarding stories to the IBC which is connected by a terrestrial microwave radio system that also provides full access to RAI's intranet connection and necessary signals for monitors, the return signals of Italian channels, coordination communications and so on."
