Venezuela. The Venezuelan statue Divina Pastora is one of the most important religious figures in Venezuela and is celebrated with one of the largest Marian processions in the world. With more than four million attendees, the historic procession takes place in mid-January each year and lasts 24 consecutive hours, achieving the largest television audience in Venezuela.
Promar TV's head of engineering, Jorge Kossowski, has been following the Divina Pastora event since childhood, with a strong desire to be more than just a spectator. "When I was 16, I had a fake ID card, but it wasn't for going to a nightclub. I got it so I could get on a helicopter to handle the air transmission of La Divina Pastora. That shows how committed I was to being part of this historic movement," Jorge said.
The romance with the procession of La Divina Pastora began with Jorge's grandfather. Mr. Kossowski, an immigrant from Poland, brought a camera from Europe to film anything that piqued his interest. At that time (around 1949) there were practically no televisions in Venezuelan homes and Mr. Kossowski sold his projects to the cinemas to support himself economically.
"One day my grandfather was driving through Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and saw a mass gathering. It was literally the largest number of people together I had ever seen. The group was carrying a large wooden box. Intrigued, he decided to follow the march and record it with his camera. At the end of the procession, the crowd lifted the lid of the box and inside was the Virgin Mary," Jorge explained.
This experience moved Jorge's grandfather so much that he decided to settle in that city and work on his film projects. Eventually there he established Promar TV, an entity that would become the largest radio station in Venezuela and the main producer and transmitter of all the processions of La Divina Pastora since 1949.
Powerful Production House
Being a third-generation broadcaster who grew up in the world of production, Jorge has seen first-hand the evolution of technology. "I've been a part of Promar TV basically since its birth and I can honestly say that I've witnessed how TV streaming technology has changed. Now we can do things we wouldn't have even dreamed of 10 years ago, just by using the Blackmagic ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K live production switch and the Blackmagic Teranex pattern converter. Both are technological innovations that have changed what we are capable of doing. Thanks to these solutions, it is possible to capture the procession of La Divina Pastora from any angle, with the flexibility to transmit it in multiple formats, ensuring that almost everyone can experience it."
The infrastructure of Promar TV clearly shows the evolution of technology. Promar TV features state-of-the-art broadcast "hardware" ranging from a custom 23-foot tactical OB truck equipped with Blackmagic Design's ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K, a Universal Videohub router, four Teranex 3D processors, seven HyperDeck Studio broadcast covers, an UltraScope for waveform monitoring, an UltraStudio 4K capture and playback device and numerous Mini Converters, to form a fully equipped studio with six Blackmagic Studio Cameras, an ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K, four Teranex 3D processors and DaVinci Resolve Studio for color editing, classification and finishing.
In addition to the modern OB truck and studio on its premises, Promar TV also has eight Blackmagic URSA Mini 4K digital cameras, two ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K mixers and seven Teranex 3D processors dedicated to live events, such as the Procession of La Divina Pastora. The 2017 event required 24 hours of broadcast to satellite and cable channels, commentary on news coverage and distribution of the two masses of the procession, one at the beginning of the procession and one at the end, on large LED screens of 12 square meters.
Jorge explained, "La Divina Pastora is the most complex live event production we do throughout the year. It requires 160 more production people and almost every piece of production equipment we own. This year, we used a different approach to production. We wanted to capture more of the event, the excitement and the images of the crowd."
"We created four production points: one at the beginning, one at a midpoint, one at the end of the procession, and one more at the Promar TV station. We used fiber to connect each production station, and each piece of equipment used to capture and broadcast the event was connected to one of these production centers. We put four ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4Ks at the heart of the workflow to handle the eight URSA Mini 4Ks, switching, lower thirds and more. The ATEM 2 M/E 4Ks production studio was impeccable in managing the massive amount of video we captured and streamed during those 24 hours."
Creating consistent image quality
To convey a crisp and consistent image, the team purchased, specifically for the broadcast of La Divina Pastora, eight URSA Mini 4K digital film cameras. The purchase not only provided continuity with respect to image quality, but allowed to continue using existing lenses. "We have large lenses, including a 55mm and 70mm that cost quite a bit of money. We couldn't afford to replace all our existing equipment and there was no reason to do so. They work well for us and, more importantly, the URSA Mini 4K has a B4 connector that powers these lenses," Jorge said.
"I can control the cameras remotely with the CCU control of ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K, which is very important. While the URSA Mini 4Ks boasts the same look, feel, white balance and same color temperature, if we didn't have centralized control of the cameras, we might have struggled to maintain the same look throughout the procession, especially in a large production like this. The ATEM 2 M/E 4K production studio helped us give a uniform look to the entire production and, combined with the URSA Mini 4Ks, the image quality was exceptional this year."
Jorge explains in more detail how he managed to achieve the consistent look: "We have a dedicated 'CCU' operator, whose task is to ensure that all cameras maintain continuity in terms of appearance. The emission transits from dawn to dusk and vice versa, covering the entire spectrum of natural light. Some cameras are inside a church, some outside walking with the crowd and others on rooftops to capture the magnitude of the event. The CCU control of ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K allows us to balance the cameras and get the exact look we want for a specific time of day. We then "copy and paste" this aspect into the other cameras. There is no need to white balance on each individual camera. The whole white balance is centralized, so we get the same look for all the images."
Dynamic broadcasting
Capturing great quality in the images was only one part in terms of ensuring a successful production. Promar TV also had to come up with a streaming stream that would work across the multiple playback scenarios. Because Venezuela has not fully adopted the HD format, Promar TV is still tasked with offering its SD stream, forcing the team to produce four formats in total for live streaming: 1080 HD, 720 HD, 480 4:3 SD and 480 16:9 SD. They captured the event in HD and managed format conversions using the Teranex 3D processor.
"One of my favorite features of the Teranex 3D Processor is that I can set the output and automatically reconfigure the input," Jorge said. "It doesn't matter what kind of video resolution I've set for input because the Teranex 3D processor will recognize it and convert it to the format that's default. This is incredibly useful when you're handling multiple cameras and formats."
This was also useful for the transmission of the two Masses of The Divine Shepherdess offered by the Archbishop. Both were broadcast live via satellite, cable television and on large screens at two different locations in the procession. To capture all angles with the URSA Mini 4Ks, Promar TV had the camera crew spread out among the crowd and near the stage. The camera's power channels entered the Teranex 3D processor to perform conversions through the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K and then return them through the ATEM for distribution, with the large LED screens emitting HD and NTSC SD 16:0 power, NTSC SD 4:3 and HD formats being transmitted via air.
100 percent accuracy every time
In addition to having the Teranex 3D processor for handling every major input on all major connections for Promar TV conversions, it was the last step Promar TV took before final distribution to ensure that video levels were correct. Just before the broadcast, Jorge ran in the studio all the content through the Teranex 3D processor, which was paired with the UltraScope via Thunderbolt. This combination allowed the team to ultimately know the levels of video and audio that they transmitted to Promar TV. It was also useful for Promar TV customers, including national and international networks such as CNN en Español and EWTN Catholic Television Network, as they picked up promar TV's signal for their viewers. Because it was a simple computer-controlled video output, Promar TV easily sent it through a dedicated satellite feed for direct monitoring stations and networks. This gave customers confidence that their dedicated feed for La Divina Pastora was passed on according to plan.
Keeping records
As with any live event, backup is key, and Promar TV records all streams to solid-state drives (SSDs) via HyperDeck Studio. Jorge said: "I record all our broadcasts for various reasons. First of all, it is mandatory by law to keep all emissions for one year, so I need a clean feeding of all the chambers. Also, my director may make a mistake when he is changing or perhaps a camera may fall. Having clean camera channels means the ability to edit possible errors later in the post. I also have the Blackmagic H.264 Pro Recorder in the studio, which I love. Because this is an H.264, the files are very small, and I use it for 24/7 live event streaming and recording projects."
Reports on the big event
In addition to capturing and broadcasting the massive procession of La Divina Pastora, Promar TV was also in charge of providing the news around the event. "We had journalists walking around the entire event, interviewing participants and reporting on various events. We also had presenters commenting on the event 24 hours a day," Jorge said. "You can't have a wireless microphone, walk seven kilometers, and expect the microphone to be reliable; it is necessary to be able to go from one point to the other of the production station. To do this, I put each microphone in each camera portable receivers and used an ATEM Studio Converter to carry and bring the video and audio."
The ATEM Studio Converter and fiber cabling allowed Jorge and his team to manage the cameras remotely. Taking advantage of the possibilities of the Blackmagic Design Mini Converter SDI to audio, the team was able to extract the embedded audio from the cameras, convert it to analog and use it for transmission.
The on-camera feeds by journalists walking along the procession were sent to the studio, compiled into half-hour segments, and then edited in DaVinci Resolve Studio. The finished content was traced back through the broadcast workflow for reproduction, either as a support piece for procession commentators, as an update to the independent news package about the procession, or for post-event newscasts in the form of highlighted facts or excerpts from the procession.
Jorge and the Promar TV team are already planning the Divina Pastora 2018 production and, without a doubt, Blackmagic Design will march by his side.
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