EBU’s ESC has always been a technical challenge – and driving innovation. This year’s 70th anniversary edition, hosted by Austrian ORF in Vienna, has not fallen short, premiering latest camera techniques for dynamic colour grading or immersive sound experience for the audience.
On the far end, at SWR, being responsible for ARD’s TV playout for Germany, a group of sound engineers dared a test drive to take the audio experience onto the next level: Setting up a PoC for NGA Live Streaming of the event – the first ever at ARD.
Both, a local ESC warm-up show in Karlsruhe and the full length event from Vienna were produced in MPEG-H, demonstrating all benefits that the technology offers: selectable adaptive main and secondary commentary and audio description tracks, choosing auditory perspective – stage or fan zone – during the pre-show gig, and immersive sound in both 5.1.4 or binaural.
Alexander Beer and Matteo Alessandrini Lupia from SWR will explain how they did it – and that it’s obviously quite feasible to hook-up as add-on in an otherwise conventional production.