The highlight of the 37th World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, saw Pope Francis address an estimated 1.5m people at the Vigil in the city’s Parque Tejo – a perfect setting for the 86-year-old Pontiff’s messages. Alongside the address, the stage hosted a number of artists’ performances during the day.
Broadcasting the event was handled by Optocore partner Auditiv, who were responsible for capturing, amplifying and distributing sound on the Parque Tejo stage, and delivering all signals for broadcast distribution from the TV control compound. To give an idea of scale, 109 delay towers were spread across the 3km2 site, along with 69 LED screens.
According to Auditiv Director and Project Manager Daniel Bekerman, signal distribution included delivery to host broadcaster, RTP (Radio Televisão Portuguesa), in multitrack format and also the live mix to the delay towers. The distribution required two Optocore loops with DiGiCo racks and consoles, and a third for the interconnection between these loops and the TV compound.
Auditiv had been brought in by SRU (Sociedade de Reabilitação Urbana) – a company owned by the Lisbon Municipal Government and was contracted in a joint venture with a professional lighting company FX Road Lights.
All signals were transported from the stage on Optocore devices – some inserted in the DiGiCo consoles serving the event , others operating as stand-alones. The Optocore modules were largely used to share and deliver Madi signals via M12 switches and a further DD4MR-FX for bi-directional Madi signal exchange between the racks and the broadcast truck. These were supplied by the manufacturer’s Portuguese distributor, Garrett Audiovisuais.
Summing up, Daniel Bekerman says: ‘We chose Optocore for its proven reliability, and we were fully satisfied with the systems and the way they performed.’
It is not the first time Optocore has been involved in World Youth Day visit by the Pope. In 2016 their networks were deployed extensively at sites in Krakow and Brzegi, in Poland.
