Avid at the Beijing Games

NOTE TO READERS: The whole idea of a blog is immediacy, and this column is, uh, shall we say a trifle dated. Let’s just say that there were circumstances beyond my control. In Beijing, I was unable to blog (per my last post). At home….well, once again, those circumstances out of my control. In the spirit of a good recap, read on:

Avid Technology and NBC have a long history when it comes to the Olympic Games. The 2008 Beijing Olympics is the fifth consecutive Olympic Games working together. For the Beijing Olympics, NBC had particular needs, due to the broadcast network’s unprecedented coverage.

NBC reported that it will present more than 3,600 hours of coverage, more than the combined total of every Summer Olympics ever televised in the U.S. “In Beijing, we are surpassing the combined total for every televised Summer Olympics in U.S. history,” said Dave Mazza, Senior Vice President, NBC Olympics Engineering. “Avid was once again able to deliver a workflow to help us meet these rigorous demands. We have installed the largest and most integrated Avid environment to date for NBC Olympics, particularly with the addition of the Avid Unity ISIS and Interplay systems.

To find out more about how Avid planned for and implemented this challenging end-to-end editing workflow, I spoke with John Walsh, Avid project manager with the Professional Services Group, who manages implementation of Avid systems and technical support.

First, to put Avid’s contribution in context, it’s necessary to understand the scope of NBC’s broadcast presence at the Beijing Olympics. In a word: impressive.

Inside NBC’s IBC headquarters is an astounding operation staffed by 2,800 employees: two main studios, controlled by two main control rooms for production and direction of live pieces; a broadcast operations center, central tape library and tape archives, which allows producers to pull clips from past Olympic Games.

The two studios are used for prime-time sports and news coverage as well as interviews with visiting dignitaries (such as a recent interview with President Bush). The control rooms enable producers to pull in any footage from any sporting event, so that if Bob Costas refers to a specific event, for example, appropriate footage will play. The Broadcast Operations Center is the high-pressure traffic center for all the feeds.

In this environment, Avid’s contribution is much more than simply nonlinear editing machines; the company’s gear plays a role in the management of precious assets in a high-pressure, real-time news operation.

The Beijing Olympics represent another first, for NBC, Avid and U.S. viewers: it’s the first Olympic Games to be broadcast entirely in High Definition, on all of Universal NBC’s networks (NBC, USA, MSNBC, and CNBC)

According to Mr. Walsh, Avid is supplying 34 Media Composer Adrenaline systems and four Symphony Nitris systems, all connected to Avid Unity ISIS and Avid Interplay systems. . All the broadcast networks at the Beijing Olympics take the feed from the host country. Because that feed is PAL HD (1080i/50), Avid DNxchange systems integrate with an EVS XT[2] play-out system for real-time conversion of EVS HD media to the Avid DNxHD 120 format. Because Avid DNxHD files support full raster 8- and 10-bit media, they deliver the quality of 10-bit uncompressed HD images, but at dramatically reduced file sizes.

According to Mr. Walsh, Avid’s core storage system is made up of 24 servers and 14 chassis, which equates to about 4,000 hours of HD content or about 224 terabytes.

To manage all this data, the whole system ties into Interplay, the asset management system that indexes all the Avid files ingested to the servers and catalogues video files, FX files, audio files and sequences and clips that the editors built. Avid also has 15 Assists, an asset manager browser application. “Assist allows people to search for the files they want,” said Mr. Walsh. “The workflow is key to the success of the whole system, from ingest/acquisition, to editing, special effects and titles, and transferring those to the storage system where they’re catalogued and indexed.”

In addition to the main installation at NBC’s IBC headquarters, Avid gear can also be found in three NBC sub-systems, found at compounds adjacent to the National Stadium (i.e., Bird’s Nest), the National Indoor Stadium and the National Aquatics Center (Water Cube). Each sub-system is a mini-IBC set-up, said Mr. Walsh.

NBC also uses portable field recording systems for on-the-floor interviews and other remote capture at the main venues. Each remote unit is made up of a Sony XDCAM optical disk-based camera, connected to a laptop using Media Composer, with the Avid’s Mojo as interface, enabling real-time capture of HD images. The camera’s output is captured in Avid DNX-HD format, and the laptop comes back to the venue, where it’s edited. “The laptops in the field are for capture, not for editing on site,” said Mr. Walsh. “The remote systems enable them to wander around the do interviews and all kinds of man-in-the-field shoots. They can move into areas they might not otherwise have access.”

Mr. Walsh reported that Avid’s participation in NBC’s Beijing Olympics project began with the staging at Avid’s headquarters in Tewksbury, MA, where all the engineering and equipment was assembled and tested. Those systems were shipped to Beijing around March/April. Avid personnel arrived the first week of July to start implementing those systems. Second phase is on-air support, from the August 8, 2008 Opening Ceremony until the end of the Games on August 24. The last phase will be a focus on logistics, as the equipment is packed up and shipped back to the States.

“The most challenging aspect has been the scope of the project,” Mr. Walsh said. “The system is based on file-transfers and asset management of these files generated by the Avid system. The infrastructure which was put together over a short period of time is really what provides the basis for all our interoperability for the system and is key to the success of the systems.”