28 TVBEurope London 2012 Countdown
BBC Sport scores in tapeless production
BBC’s Sports Production System at MediaCityUK is a fully integrated and centralised broadcast production infrastructure ready for a summer of sport. Adrian Penningtonvisited the broadcaster for a close look at the new systems
BBC SPORT is one of the main departments that has decamped to MediaCity in a staggered but fairly rapid migration that saw Football Focus move at the start of the 2011-12 soccer season, then Match of the Day (MOTD) in the autumn. Sports News went live in March and next up are the Euros next month, for which MediaCity will provide main studio presentation, before the Olympics.
The decision to relocate a chunk of BBC network operations to Salford was taken long before the announcement of London’s host win for 2012 but inevitably the timeframes have had to dovetail. The multimedia galleries in the sports operation can handle 18 streams and up to 10 red button outputs simultaneously and will find optimal use during the Olympics where it will manage and feed 24 live HD streams to online platforms and cable and satellite providers. “We’ve unlocked all the potential of HD output which could never have happened in London,” says BBC Sport’s Technical Executive Charlie Cope, who was responsible for the technical migration — enabling BBC Sport to remain on-air and for planning production workflows in the new building. “In London we had no crossover of core infrastructure such as our editing systems or ISDN lines between Radio 5 Live and BBC Sport, but the premise here is driven by shared operations.”
No duplication The studio block (in a separate building and owned by Peel Holdings Media) features a high-end set used by Final Score and MOTD, which are mixed in Sport’s central production galleries so there’s no need to duplicate technology. “Everything is designed to be
reconfigured according to use and demand,” says Cope. “We can move playout into different areas, or different floors, or reset desks for graphics.”
archives 170,000 tapes in London — 12,000 of which have been digitised. “We identified primary content which is now available [on nearline storage] for browse on desktops,” says Cope. “It doesn’t make financial sense to digitise it all and since the peak use of archive is up to two years after the event, in time the demand for tape will lessen. In terms of our own processes we are moving to a file-based production, archive and delivery system. “Live is about 95% of our output so that drives our workflow choices,” he says. “The front-end tools we need to deliver live fast turnaround content are critical to maintaining the quality of our production aspirations on screen.”
From four-to-five different production systems at TV Centre there is now a single production system with single ingest for all sport (radio production is managed separately)
Cope says the layout of the
building itself brings together all the elements of Sport that used to be very disparate in TV Centre. Sports production is based on the ground and third floors, segmented by 5Live, the Corporation’s main sports radio station, with every
space here and to take that content live,” says Cope. Sports news teams work alongside text teams while radio production and senior editorial sit adjacent to ingest areas and galleries. “In the past, teams worked in siloed areas that
to content delivery means more efficient use of resources such as sending one commentator to a venue to cover events for TV and radio where appropriate, or giving every member of the sports production team the contact details and features
“The front-end tools we need to deliver live fast turnaround content are critical to maintaining the quality of our production aspirations on screen”
Charlie Cope, BBC Sport technical executive
operation closely integrated, while the open plan design encourages collaboration between different production teams. The ground floor of Quay House contains two sets, one mainly used for Sports news and a second smaller set for drop-in presentations, world service or international feeds. “It’s easy for us to jack up a simple presentation
prevented us from doing multimedia operations. This is all about trying to break that down. Technically I would say we are nearly there, although you are always looking ahead. The real challenge is getting the processes right and bringing people on board with the new workflows.” For example, more coherent communication from planning
planning schedule of smaller teams at events overseas. The ability to self-operate browse and retrieval, video clipping and planning packages is key. In theory an all file-based
facility, inevitably not all of production will be tapeless. Aside from using freelance cameramen and footage from other broadcasters, BBC Sport
Content access From 4-5 different production systems at TV Centre there is now a single production system with single ingest for all sport (radio production is managed separately under the VCS system). This Sports Production System (SPS) includes holding all content and associated metadata in centralised storage that can be accessed by users throughout the division. It gives all BBC Sport staff desktop access to content whereas before it was more of a bespoke post production system.
“The SPS is designed to allow 400 sports production teams and journalists to create more content of higher quality in a faster turnaround period,” says Cope. The entire project had to be finalised in nine months to allow BBC Sport production to go on- air from December 2011. In this time, production and operational staff were trained in use of SPS which combines EVS’ production management systems with Harmonic nearline storage and Final Cut Pro editing. IPDirector provides a
www.tvbeurope.com May2012
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