Discovery adopts a decentralised remote production model and augments The Cube for Beijing 2022 coverage By Heather McLean, Editor
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - 14:37
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Discovery is taking Winter Olympics fans to its new virtual world in the augmented version of The Cube
Discovery is all set to bring 50 countries and territories live coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics next month using an enhanced Cube mixed reality studio and numerous workflow innovations that go over and above its technical achievements at Tokyo 2020.
The broadcaster will deliver 1,200 hours of live content for its linear and digital platforms, including discovery+, Eurosport and the Eurosport app, over the course of the Games, using a completely decentralised remote production model that has hubs all around Europe.
More complex by nature
Although the Winter Games, with a maximum of 15 concurrent events happening as opposed to the Summer Games' 39 simultaneous events, is significantly smaller than last year's blockbuster, it is no simpler for Discovery to manage technically.
Speaking to SVG Europe, Simon Farnsworth, senior vice president of technology and operations at Discovery, explains: I guess in theory [the Winter Games] should be simpler, but the way that the Olympics works is that technically at the back end it's a bit more complex [in China] because in Tokyo, we had one IBC, [whereas] in Beijing, we've got two. We've got the mountains IBC and we'll have the Beijing IBC, which really covers what I would call the ice events, so your figure skating. Coordinating all the circuits across all the two different sites makes it more complex by nature.
But what we did which I think was smart is we are using exactly the same technical IP set up that we used in Tokyo for Beijing, he goes on. The same equipment got shipped, because we just simply couldn't pull all the equipment back to Europe and then send it all again and have everything ready in time; just the sea freight times alone wouldn't allow us to do that. So in terms of the set up time, it's much, much quicker in Beijing, because we had it all configured ready for Tokyo. We're just essentially a bit more plug and play.
Beijing will be the first time that we'll have everybody on that central editing platform, which is huge for us in terms of searchability of content and distribution of content
Farnsworth adds: The Olympic Games by its very nature is extremely complicated as you have a large number of simultaneous sports going on at any one time. For Beijing, the biggest day will have 15 simultaneous events and when you're broadcasting that across 19 different languages in 50 markets across Europe with 150 control rooms from Norway down to Madrid through those countries, you get complex pretty quick. So, there is an enormous amount of complexity across our network.
Simon Farnsworth, SVP technology and operations at Discovery
Decentralised remote production
On how Beijing has evolved technically from Tokyo for Discovery, Farnworth says: We're certainly doing a lot more remote production, even more than we were doing in Tokyo. Lots more remote commentaries, lots more remote editing, than we've ever done before. And partly that's driven by the technology, but more so the COVID restrictions that we're facing.
He goes on: I don't think we're now going to have any live commentators in Beijing, whereas we actually did in Tokyo. I think we had probably up to about 40 commentators in Tokyo. So all of those people will be remote.
We've now built essentially two commentary platforms in the cloud that does what we call auto mixing, so we don't have an audio operator mixing any audio; we've simply got software using AI algorithms that level the software. So that's been a big innovation for us.
We now have our overall WAN that we've built, which is bigger than Cisco's WebEx network. So we're at 400-gig connections to all of our main sites, so we can chuck an awful lot of data around that network
Discovery has embraced a decentralised remote working model for around 1,000 people working behind the scenes on the Winter Olympics in Europe. Farnsworth explains: We've got production control rooms in all our sites, not just [a single] production control room. So Oslo, Stockholm, Denmark, Copenhagen, Munich, Warsaw, Hilversum in the Netherlands, Paris, Madrid, Milan, and the UK; everywhere now it is remote production.
When we built our infrastructure, it was all around the ethos of remote production, but all the equipment sits in two datacentres and then it just gets assigned to control surfaces in all the different markets. So one day we could have two PCRs in Madrid, [and the] next day, we could have three, or four, or five, he adds.
The datacentres are Discovery built and owned, based in London, UK and Hilversum, the Netherlands, the latter of which was opened in March 2020 following a 40m investment to create a new technology hub.
The Cube has evolved significantly from the version used in Tokyo. Bespoke avatars built to closely resemble athletes from specific winter disciplines will float in the Cube, so experts will be able to walk around them and analyse the minutiae of an athletes' movements and performance in more detail than ever before
He adds that this Games marks the first time Discovery has been able to allow all its editors to work remotely across a centralised editing platform in the cloud, following digital investment that began in 2018. He explains: Beijing will be the first time that we'll have everybody on that central editing platform, which is huge for us in terms of searchability of content and distribution of content.
We've now migrated all of our editors onto our central editing p
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Discovery adopts a decentralised remote production model and augments The Cube for Beijing 2022 coverage By Heather McLean, Editor 
