Live From Super Bowl LIII: NFL Films Embrace Revamped NEP Super B for Fiber Needs

Live From Super Bowl LIII: NFL Films Embrace Revamped NEP Super B for Fiber Needs By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Saturday, February 2, 2019 - 6:36 pm

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The Super Bowl is one of those rare events where one compound is simply not enough as it is split into a domestic compound for the U.S. rights holder and an international compound. The former this year is home to CBS while the latter is home to NFL Films operations and the international rights holders. Missing this year is the NFL Network which is instead located in the Georgia World Congress. And that is just fine with those who still call the international compound home as the NFL Network might not have been able to fit.

Michael Greenwood (left) and Kevin Clifford of NFL Films have taken steps to consolidate and simplify fiber-based operations in the Super Bowl LIII international compound.

The NFL Network would typically have four trucks in our compound, and we don't have that this year, says Michael Greenwood, NFL Films, director of engineering services. And it's a good thing because the compound is a little challenging because it is uneven.

The NFL international compound this year includes 16 production units, including NEP's EN1 A and B unit which is where the world feed will be produced (the other trucks support international needs). There are also 23 production trailers and five satellite uplink trucks.

The biggest change for us is the redesign of NEP's Super B, says Greenwood of the truck that was previously used to route all of the audio and video signals. We worked with NEP to reconfigure that as we've grown our fiber infrastructure and previously had to have part of that infrastructure in a separate trailer. So, NEP worked with us to redesign it and all of the fiber infrastructure is now included in Super B. Cable management is easier and more efficient.

Kevin Clifford, NFL Films, director of broadcast engineering, says the redesign removed the need to have two routing switchers as the unit now has an Evertz Trinix router with multiviewer that is large enough to meet the demand with room to spare.

It's made a big jump this year and NEP did a really great job on it, he says. They were involved with our signal distribution before, so they were very familiar with what we were asking for.

NEP's Super B has been revamped to meet the growing fiber needs of NFL Films.

Clifford says another improvement this year is that Lance Design, which provides audio gear that is in use in the compound, made the move to Dante, the uncompressed, multi-channel digital media networking technology.

It gives us much more flexibility to do things like distribute audio signals from the field to the broadcaster and from the broadcaster to Sirius radio, says Clifford.

NFL Films operations are also located in the compound as the NFL's team will deploy 32 Arri Amira cameras to capture the sights and sounds of the game with that unique NFL Film look and feel. Nine players and coaches are also wired for the game. The days of flying film on a Lear jet to get it turned around quickly have been replaced by a Signiant circuit to NFL Films in Mt. Laurel, NJ. Cfast cards are transferred from readers in the stadium to the NFL Venue Transmission Network in the stadium and then to SSD and local storage before getting sent north via Signiant.

One anticipated change for next year will be that the Butt Farm cable junction box that is located right next to Super B will move from outside Super B to inside.

Once we do that everything will be combined in Super B, says Clifford. Also, hopefully next year we will get rid of the last few pieces of copper for things like our intercoms.

The NFL Core Group located in the compound oversees the fiber triangle that connects Mercedes Benz Stadium, State Farm Arena, the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC). There are 288 fiber strands from the stadium to the GWCC; 144 from the GWCC to State Farm; and then an additional 60 out to Centennial Park.

We are also taking some of the fiber transport from the State Farm arena to a parking deck where the domestic broadcasters are located, says Clifford. The run from the GWCC to Mercedes Benz is 4,600 feet over glass which is the longest run we've ever done for a Super Bowl.

The NFL has also built its own Web-based application that is designed to keep track of every cable run, its status, what cables are sharing a cross point, what client it is assigned to, notes, and more. It is also sortable, making it much easier to identify and more importantly solve problems.

We can intervene from here to both ends of a run and what the issue is or if the cable length isn't long enough or if its broken and needs to be replaced, says Clifford. At Super Bowl 50 we had a failure rate of 40% and after deploying 50,000 feet of fiber had to shift things. A lot of what we've done here with this software would have mitigated those issues.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/02/02/live-from-super-bowl-liii-nfl-f...
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