Avid at Core of New NBC Olympics Workflow

Avid will deploy the most comprehensive Avid workflow in the history of NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group to support its coverage of the 2012 Olympic Games taking place in London this summer.

Marking NBC’s Olympics division’s and Avid’s sixth consecutive Summer or Winter Games working together, NBC’s Olympics division’s broadcast facility will house employees responsible for delivering 17 consecutive days of Olympic coverage. At the heart of this massive undertaking is the Avid Interplay Media Asset Management (MAM) system. Serving in conjunction with third party vendors SONY and Harmonic, the Interplay MAM system will be used to create two simultaneous feeds for use in London and at NBC’s Olympics division’s headquarters in New York City.

“Ingesting media and metadata directly into Interplay MAM early in the process allows us to have assets immediately available for video production in London and, at the same time, for the users at 30 Rock,” says Darryl Jefferson, director, Post Production Operations, NBC Olympics. “In NY, they need to access the same media and metadata to create their packages to the web instantaneously. Having MAM at the core is a critical component to making this happen.”

All of the video content’s metadata, including all athletic content, will be ingested directly from Sony’s XDCam Station into Avid’s Interplay MAM system and, once there, replicated from London to New York using Harmonic’s MediaGrid and ProCast solutions. In New York, more than 40 users will create highlights for Web distribution by accessing content on the Interplay MAM. London-based users and editors will get immediate access to Olympic footage, which can then be transferred from Interplay MAM to Avid’s ISIS shared storage for use in multi-user, simultaneous production across multiple networks and news feeds.

“For our Olympics coverage, we need industry-leading partners that can deliver a level of quality, speed and reliability everyone can rely on,” says David Mazza, senior vice president, Engineering, NBC Olympics. “And that’s exactly what Avid gives us.”

HD nonlinear edit suites in London’s International Broadcast Center (IBC) are outfitted with seven Avid Symphony and 26 Media Composer systems for high-end editing and 5.1 surround sound. The systems will be connected to Avid ISIS shared storage and Avid Interplay production asset management systems. Users will be able to quickly browse the Interplay MAM proxy and transfer material faster than real-time for use in Symphony and Media Composer editing software applications. AirSpeed 5000 is used in conjunction with ISIS 7000 to create turnkey production islands at the Olympic venues, including gymnastics, swimming, diving, and track and field.

“All of us at Avid are proud to be part of NBC’s Olympics division’s presentation of the Olympic Games for the sixth consecutive time,” adds Gary Greenfield, chairman and CEO, Avid. “For the 2012 Olympic Games, NBC’s Olympics division’s broadcast facility puts in play a great utilization of our core products, especially Interplay media asset management and ISIS storage, and serves to underscore our commitment to solutions that sports and news media companies count on to deliver the best programming in the industry today.”