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48 executive summary theibcdaily The Olympians


Darryl Jefferson Director, Post Production Operations and Highlights


Factory Project Manager, NBC Olympics Region: US W


ith a career that spans several US Opens and Ryder Cups, Wimbledon, Kentucky Derby, various Super


Bowls and the Vancouver and Beijing Olympics, not to mention four technical Emmy Award wins, Darryl Jefferson thought he had seen it all. Not quite. London 2012 was an eye-opener which took content delivery technology to a whole new level. “Our numbers were quite amazing,” he said. “Ratings were enormous, and we achieved 1.5 billion page views, up 300 million on Beijing. It was the biggest digital event in American TV history.” Jefferson said particular attention had been paid to core metadata. “We dare not underestimate the importance of metadata. Without it we could never have hoped to identify footage and files. They could have been lost forever.” Adding to NBC’s complications were delays on satellite feeds to and from


London, and onward to its ’30 Rock’ facility in New York, and further distrib- uted to key technical locations in Stan- ford, Hialeah (Miami) and Denver. Jefferson oversees and maintains


NBC’s Stamford, Connecticut post production facility, where he also acts as the Highlights Factory project manager for delivering web, broadband, live stream, and VoD clips, and directs technical operations for NBC Sports Digital Group. “Previously, we had to re-build and re- think every time we built a content factory for each Games, but this will become our system for Stamford and our workflow for future Games,” he says.


London 2012 was the first Olympics that NBC aggressively used IP infrastruc- ture. All its delivery was IP, as was content creation, and the Games was the first that NBC’s team had enjoyed instant access to the entire NBC Olympic tape library through a new media asset management system which forms the heart of NBC Sports’ new tapeless environment.


We dare not underestimate the importance of metadata


“We launched the new NBC Sports Network – which put out roughly 60 hours of new coverage a day in addition to our other networks. Connectivity between US and London was incredibly complex. We threw out the old tape library and went to a file-based system to stream over 3,500 hours of competition live and


there were more digital streaming paths between London and the US than ever before.”


NBC had a huge presence in London, taking up more space in the International Broadcast Centre than OBS and the BBC combined. It put 2,800 people on the ground in London plus 700 in New York, delivering an all-file-based transatlantic workflow. About one-third of the equipment it assembled for London will move on to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Another third will be used in Stamford, and the rest returned to vendors or hire companies. AP


Exhibit at IBC2013


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from over 160 countries


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 accredited press


free feature areas including - IBC Connected World - Future Zone


- IBC Production Village  


- Industry Insights Conference 


 


IBC Third Floor 10 Fetter Lane London EC4A 1BR UK t. +44 (0) 20 7832 4100 f. +44 (0) 20 7832 4130 e. info@ibc.org


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 for professionals involved in the creation, management


and delivery of electronic media and 


  on the future direction of our industry


97% of 2011 exhibitors re-booked in 2012


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