Providing multiplatform coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was never going to be straightforward. The post production operation was more complex than ever before, as these Games were, in effect, the first ever 24/7 Olympics. There were 300 hours of coverage broadcast on BBC One and BBC Two, plus 2,450 hours on BBCi, as well as Online, Radio, News, Nations and Regions and CBBC. There was also live coverage on the BBC’s HD Channel. The time difference of 7 hours between the UK and China meant that live peak time coverage was heavily supplemented by interactive, broadband streamed media and a new focus on mobile content, all designed to improve the viewers’ access to the Olympics on demand.

BBC Studios and Post Production, the commercial facilities arm of the BBC, partnered BBC Sport to provide the multiplatform coverage for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Staff in Post Production and Studios worked together with BBC Sport and Siemens to create a multiplatform orientated facility, within the dedicated International Broadcast Centre (IBC).

For the first time, the entire event coverage of the Olympic Games was HD, enabling the core BBC Post Production operation to be HD and tapeless, although it handled some SD contributions upconverted from remote sites. There was parallel transmission in HD and SD and all live event coverage on the BBC’s HD Channel was carried in 5.1 surround sound.

The BBC’s space at the IBC comprised 1500m2 and included TV, Interactive (BBCi), Online, Radio, News and Nations and Regions. The facility included an Interactive control room, managing the output of a further seven streams of video being sent to London, where they were accessed by BBC Online to repurpose packages for web and mobile phones.

The post production area, which Post Production designed, housed 18 edit suites, two large server systems, plus connectivity to the Host broadcaster server and venues. Feeds from the Host EVS server and logging operation fed into the BBC’s EVS media server, which also supported fast turn around editing. The BBC’s EVS server was fully integrated with an Avid ISIS server on site, with file based transfers enabling packages to be edited and features to be made while feeds were coming in.

The Post Production team provided centralised access to the media, which was fully managed on site. Basic metadata was ingested alongside content into the Host server and the BBC supplemented this, using EVS IP Director logging and media management software.

It was a split site operation with media storage and editing taking place in Beijing, whilst logging was carried out by our team in London, which operated live throughout the night to compensate for the time differences.

Over the course of the Games, approximately 120 hours of media was sent as clips (average clip length ~ 4 minutes) from EVS to Avid using a 'clip & push' workflow for locating media to edit with. This was an average of 7 hours of media per day, around 120 clips per day, but peaking at over 400 clips per day during the Review Programme period.

The Post Production team put in 13,500 man hours during the Olympics and 2,300 hours during the Paralympics. More than 1250 edited sequences were created during the pre-Games and Games period and over 5000 HD P2 clips and in excess of 3.5TB of PSC media was generated.

The coverage was both innovative and complex, and it was exciting to see it all come together. Exactly as planned, viewers were able to access live coverage, news updates and any magical moments they had missed whatever the time of day or where they were. Perfect!

A version of this article first appeared in Regional Film and Video in summer 2008.

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