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MillimeterHD Olympians
Mar 13, 2006 11:25 AM, Michael Goldman
The recently completed Torino Winter Olympics featured several improvements to NBC’s method of producing and broadcasting major sporting events in high definition. These Games represented the first time the Olympics had been broadcast on a major network in HD during primetime. As part of that effort, the network created an unprecedented storage infrastructure at its International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Torino to ingest and edit reams of 1080i/50-resolution HD material flowing in from various venues throughout the event.
That network was built around six Avid Unity ISIS systems, three Avid Unity LANshare shared-storage systems, and one classic Unity system that collectively handled 119TB of storage, according to Bill Lorenz, project manager for NBC’s editing facilities at the Olympics. Those storage pods safeguarded data flowing out of 27 Media Composer Adrenaline systems at the IBC facility, all equipped with Avid’s DNxcel board for HD capture and realtime editing. An additional 11 HD Media Composer Adrenaline systems joined the pipeline from various venues around Torino, along with six SD systems at a handful of locations. Imagery also flowed into the network from selected EVS HD editing systems, using IP Director to allow interoperability with the Avid infrastructure. Three more HD Media Composer systems and another Unity storage system located at NBC headquarters in New York were remotely tied into the IBC network, dedicated to the Olympic broadcasts exclusively.
“Our big challenge was how to store all this HD footage,” Lorenz says. “We decided to have two major work groups—the first built around graphics, which amounted to 11 Media Composers served by one ISIS system (40TB), and the second built around a group of editors putting together features, housed in another ISIS system (24TB). We connected these two storage systems together with (Avid’s) Transfer Manager system, allocated storage between them as needed, and we had managers for each work group, rather than a single manager.
“This easily surpasses anything we have ever done, and in fact, it’s the biggest storage element I have ever heard of,” Lorenz says. “It may be the biggest HD facility ever put together (for broadcast).”
NBC also employed new wireless HD RF transmission technology to incorporate roving, untethered HD cameras into its coverage. The network used LinkHD wireless transmission technology in combination with Sony HDC-1500 progressive scan cameras—the first time in the short history of the Link HD system’s use covering major sporting events that it was used with a camera system other than Thomson’s LDK 6000 cameras. NBC used the wireless cameras during the opening and closing ceremonies, and at various events for feature interviews, B-roll, and crowd reaction material.
Chip Adams, director of venue engineering for NBC at the Olympics, says the network partnered with vendor Total RF of Salem, Pa., to develop a specialized mounting bracket to permit the LinkHD microwave transmitter to attach properly to the Sony cameras, which were not originally designed for wireless applications.
“We had to work out those kind of challenges to use the (Sony HDC-1500) as an RF camera, but it all came together nicely,” says Adams. “Total RF designed that special bracket to get the transmitter going on the camera, and then we had to figure out batteries so that it wouldn’t get back-heavy. Instead, we just regressed and moved back to a battery belt on the operators, so they didn’t have all that weight on their shoulders, and it all worked great.”
NBC used what Adams calls “a diversity system setup” in the stadium to send the signal to multiple, strategically located fiber transmitters, which then pushed the signal onward to production trucks at the venue.
For a detailed examination of how NBC used the LinkHD system in Torino; and how it has been implemented at other major events, from the Super Bowl to the NBA All-Star Game and E! Entertainment’s Academy Award coverage; as well as a look at the emergence of wireless HD technology for broadcast applications, see the upcoming April issue of Millimeter.
Also, look for an article in the April issue that examines in more detail the Avid-based storage infrastructure used at the International Broadcast Center for the Torino Olympics.
