NBC Sports has revealed the list of technology vendors it’s working with on coverage of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing.
The broadcaster is utilising over 100 Sony cameras to capture footage at event venues and record athlete interviews, press conferences. A selection of the Sony cameras, including the HDC-3500, are being used for IP-enabled transmission, while the rest will operate in SDI.
NBC Sports is also incorporating more than 300 of Sony’s professional monitors, including the BVM-HX310 4K HDR master monitor for critical picture evaluation and PVM-X Series 4K HDR TRIMASTER monitors for on set and location monitoring. Additionally, other HD LCD monitors from the lightweight LMD series are being used in the studio and field.
Grass Valley is providing the broadcaster with a range of IP and SDI solutions, as well as the company’s Densité signal management products.
Its Dynamic System Orchestrator is powering NBC Sports’ coverage of the Games, including remote production from its International Broadcast Centre in Stamford, Connecticut.
MediaKind’s range of video processing and advanced modular receiver technologies are supporting the broadcaster’s video distribution to viewers throughout the United States.
The company’s engineers worked with NBC Sports on the installation of equipment and system setup, and are present on-site to offer multi-site support throughout both events.
For remote audio workflows NBC Sports has selected Calrec. Beijing is the first time ever that the broadcaster is using fully remote audio workflows for all its production of the Winter Games, with no audio consoles on the ground in Beijing.
NBC Sports is employing four Calrec RP1 Remote Production cores in the International Broadcast Centre in Beijing to cover numerous studios. Full control for the IBC remote production cores are being provided on Artemis consoles based the broadcaster’s facility in Stanford.
In addition, NBC Sports has installed four remote production units at four remote venues in Beijing, which are connected over Dante to Artemis consoles in OB units in Stamford.
Meanwhile, Telestream is providing media capture, automated media processing, closed captioning, and test and measurement equipment for NBC Sports to create and deliver coverage.
It is employing Telestream’s Lightspeed Live Capture and Vantage to deliver a unique, mixed HDR/SDR conversion workflow for NBC Sports’ content produced in HDR. The NBC Sports Advanced Technology group worked with Telestream to develop custom colour LUTs (Look Up Tables) that are used within Vantage to ensure the most accurate colour processing pipeline throughout the production and postproduction process, said Telestream.
NBC Sports is also using TAG Video Systems’ MCM MultiChannel software-based monitoring and multiviewing solution for end-to-end monitoring of their video network, delivering ultra-low latency of uncompressed ST 2110 and JPEG-XS signals in Beijing for live production, monitoring and probing of the transport between the host nation and the United States, and monitoring of the broadcasts over the Peacock OTT platform and CDNs.
For edge media processing, NBC Sports has selected Harmonic’s XOS Edge solution to deliver live 4K HDR broadcasts with immersive audio to local stations and affiliates.
Chyron’s LyricX CG systems are being employed for live production in Beijing at figure skating and extreme sports venues, as well as in remote broadcast trucks based in Stamford. Additionally, operators based in Stamford are employing the Chyron PRIME Live Platform to drive content for studio video walls in Beijing.
Signiant is providing NBC Sports with intelligent file transfer software for its production, enabling it to move petabytes of HDR and 4K footage from Beijing back to Stamford.
It means NBC Sports’ editors in Connecticut are able to begin creating highlights almost immediately as the action is happening. The software also allows for content to be transferred quickly and securely back to the International Broadcast Centre in Beijing.
