Paris 2024: Behind the Scenes at NBC Sports' Record-Setting At-Home Operation in Stamford The ST 2110 and Dante facility produces 1080p HDR, 50-Hz content By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Friday, August 2, 2024 - 11:36 am
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Since cutting the ribbon on its Stamford, CT, broadcast center following the London 2012 Games, NBC Sports Group has escalated the facility's role in its Olympics broadcast operations with each successive Games. Implementation of the at-home efforts were accelerated for the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Games because of COVID-related challenges, and NBC hasn't looked back. Stamford is squarely at the center of NBC's Paris 2024 production with more technical infrastructure, crew, and live shows located there than ever before.
The period of COVID production expedited a lot of technology and infrastructure that would have been implemented down the road but out of necessity were fast-tracked, says NBC Olympics Production Executive Producer/President Molly Solomon. We are now one unified team: there's no evidence of distance between us [in Paris and Stamford] because of three years of planning between production, operations, and engineering. There is no latency in our interaction. Aren't you always on a headset anyway [no matter where you are]?
The heart of NBC Sports' Olympics broadcast operations in Stamford, CT
Nearly 2,000 NBC Sports staffers - nearly two-thirds of the entire Olympics coverage team - are working at the division's headquarters in Stamford, handling what ultimately will be more than 7,000 hours of programming across NBCUniversal's linear and digital platforms. While the team in Paris is focused on capturing the Olympic action as it plays out, it's up to the crew in Stamford to take in thousands of live and ENG feeds from Paris and package them for the millions of viewers watching.
During the 19 days of Paris 2024 coverage, Stamford is housing 17 production-control rooms, the lion's share of NBC's live studio productions, 28 off-tube announce booths, a dozen flex rooms that can serve a variety of needs, 24/7 live ingest and editing, the massive Highlights Factory operation, the broadcast-operations center, and more.
Game-Changer: The Move to ST 2110 and 1080p HDR Across the Board Like NBC's Paris effort, the Stamford operation is a fully 1080p HDR, 50-Hz production with 10 channels of Dolby Atmos across the board. In addition, nearly the entire operation relies on SMPTE ST 2110 for video and ST 2110-30 for audio, with a separate Dante network for audio, thanks to significant upgrades in IP technology following Beijing 2022.
NBC Sports' Kevin Callahan: Production members get quickly acclimated to the new systems and new facilities, thanks to the flexibility we've created here.
The biggest shift for these Games, says Kevin Callahan, senior director, system engineering, NBC Sports, is that everything flows through Stamford in some form. There's not a single control room in Paris that can go to air without passing through Stamford. We're able to do that largely because of the [upgrades] we've made since Beijing, with about 95% of our control rooms being native 2110 and the entire facility [running in] 1080p HDR 50.
Stamford's routing core has grown exponentially with the move to 2110: from roughly 3,000 3,000 to 5,000 11,000 sources/destinations with the new IP router (a Cisco switch with Grass Valley orchestration and EVS Cerebrum router control). Switchers in the larger control rooms went from having 20 router feeds to 128 feeds. Each control room is outfitted with a Densitron 2RU touchscreen router panel, streamlining operations for the production teams.
With all the rooms being 2110, the sky's the limit, says Callahan. That has really unlocked our remote workflows. We're now able to do all our REMI workflows with split video and audio levels. Every control room gets their own source list that they can share across the board so they can name every source whatever they want - just like they do in the trucks. That's a simple thing, but it has been huge for our production teams.
Control Rooms: Record Number of PCRs Drive Stamford-Based Productions The 17 production-control rooms in Stamford comprise 12 full PCRs, four Riedel Simplylive rooms, and one mobile unit. That is up from the 11 PCRs and three mobile units deployed for Tokyo 2020.
PCR2 serves as the home of NBC's Primetime in Paris, marking the second Olympics that the primetime show has been produced in Stamford. The fully ST 2110 control room is outfitted with a Sony XVS-9000 switcher, Evertz ev670 multiviewers, EVS Cerebrum router control, and Calrec ImPulse audio-routing core.
[The crews in PCR2] are in preproduction most of the day, says Callahan, watching all the feeds and compiling [content] to go into the Primetime segments that evening. They are watching it happen as it comes in and compiling the best of' [content] to put in the Primetime show.
With technical infrastructure and layouts similar to PCR2's, PCR3 handles USA Network's round-the-clock broadcasts (being made available to distribution partners in 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos audio), and PCR4 serves the NBC broadcast network's daytime segments.
Parked at the loading dock, Mobile TV Group 49 Flex serves as PCR17.
Two new fully ST 2110 IP control rooms, PCR11 and PCR12, were completed just prior to the start of Paris 2024. PCR11 is the home of diving during the day, NBC's live Spotlight on Paris TikTok show from Team USA House in the evenings, and the late-night show closing out the day. The much-hyped Gold Zone whip-around show is produced out of PCR12.
PCR6 is shared by E! network, which carries daily Olympics coverage, and CNBC, broadcasting Olympics content on Sat
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