Canal 13 Trusts EVS for Covering the 2008 Olympics

Canal 13, one of Chile s top television networks, trusted EVS technology for its coverage of the Beijing Olympics 2008. The Canal 13 team in Beijing used a six-channel HD XT[2] for recording selected Olympic events, and IPDirector to select clips from other venues or events throughout the day. The IPDirector was also used with a second workstation for all playout, including clip run-down and ads.
One extremely important element of the workflow for Canal 13 was that the XT[2] was working in Apple s ProRes422 codec, which meant that all material ingested on the XT[2] immediately compatible with Apple Final Cut Pro. Files were transferred from the XT[2] server through EVS XTAccess to Canal 13 s XSan, which was in turn connected to three non-linear editors, where pieces could be edited instantly. Once finished, the material was sent back to the XT[2] server for playout.
Canal 13 has successfully handled the Olympics in Beijing 2008 as the first sporting event based entirely on an HD workflow, from ingest to playout, said Marcela Paez, chief of engineering for Canal 13. It was a great challenge, as we had to design the whole technological architecture with all the HD requirements.
Canal 13 also contracted BOB to access the EVS Media Server at the Olympics. This central server was a cluster of 22 HD XT[2]s recording in the Avid DNxHD codec at 100 Mbps plus 22 XL[2] proxy servers recording the same material in low resolution. All ingested material was logged by BOB operators using the IPLogger function of EVS IPDirector.
With access to this setup, Canal 13 was able to browse up to 40 events simultaneously, all host broadcast feeds, ENG footage, and game summaries. Using IPDirector browsing stations, members of the Canal 13 team could clip any sequence from any event or discipline and send these clips in high resolution to a local XT[2] provided by BOB. The transfer from BOB s media server to the Canal 13 local XT[2] was done through the Gigabit Ethernet network, now standard on all XT[2] servers.
Canal 13 also used another IPDirector for playout control of the XT[2] server, as well as an XStore[2] for an extra 2.8 TB of storage.
Without a doubt, the feasibility of making all the content available in real time for each of the disciplines every time we felt it necessary made a marked difference, said Paez. Also, this workflow ensures that every part of our tapeless workflow is 100% compatible with EVS.
This is the first time a Chilean broadcaster used a tapeless HD workflow for such a major event, said Benjamin Mariage, sales manager,
Latin America , for EVS. Canal 13 has taken full advantage of the tools provided by EVS and we are looking forward to implementing this technology at Canal 13 s facilities in
Santiago.