China Central Television (CCTV) used EVS’ XT[2] servers and related software and hardware to manage the production of the Olympic Games in HD. The servers were used in an integrated production solution from ingest to playout for live and near-live production.
At the CCTV headquarters in Beijing, seven HD XT[2] servers provided permanent recording in DNxHD format of 32 live feeds from the host broadcaster. All XT[2] servers were linked together via the EVS XNet[2] media sharing network, along with two XF[2] digital archive stations.
A total of 10 IPDirectors were installed at CCTV to manage all content available on the production network, providing indexing and cataloging facilities; preview of any footage from any station of the 32 feeds; clipping; faster-than-real-time transfer to Avid for craft editing; and playout, including turnaround, delays and playout of Avid-prepared content.
For field production, seven HD XT[2] servers with full Multicam LSM software functions allowed CCTV to prepare additional live production at selected venues. This also allowed delays, turnaround and highlight creation to be performed on-site. Five field-based XF[2] stations also enabled CCTV to do digital archiving on the spot.
In total, the EVS system recorded 3200 hours of media in loop recording mode, broken up into 27,000 total minutes of backup playout; 3400 minutes of highlights and replays; and 4400 minutes of ads, background, delay, turnaround and insert footage to CCTV1, CCTV2, CCTV5 and CCTVHD.
For more information, visit http://www.evs.tv/.