NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group, has selected Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, to provide infrastructure solutions for its production of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games, which take place in PyeongChang, South Korea, from February 9-25. The announcement was made today by Terry Adams, VP, IBC Engineering, NBC Olympics, and Kyle Luther, VP of sales, Western U.S., Grass Valley.
Grass Valley has been supplying infrastructure solutions to NBC Olympics since 2006, and in 2018 is again providing a number of solutions that will enhance NBC Olympics’ production efficiency within NBC’s studios inside the International Broadcast Center in PyeongChang. The SME-1901 Streaming Encoder is filling an important role, providing multiformat video/audio over IP and featuring 3G/HD/SD SDI inputs. This capability offers tremendous flexibility, enabling the NBC Olympics production team to view video feeds from any camera directly, as well as edit low- and high-resolution content from their desktop or laptop computers.
The SME-1901 accepts any video format and provides two H.264 streams, one high resolution and one low resolution, and is housed in the Densité 3+ FR4 Frame alongside the XVP-3901, which handles all essential video, audio and metadata signal processing functions on a single module. The XVP-3901 offers up/down/cross conversion, color space conversion, frame synchronization, audio embedding and de-embedding and supports fiber optical I/O.
To help ensure the highest quality content and seamless movement of signals throughout the production, NBC Olympics is using Grass Valley’s iControl Customized End-to-End Facility Monitoring and Control system. With iControl, the team is building an integrated monitoring and control surface for QC operators, consolidating multiple key functions into a single interface for greater efficiency, such as control of XVP-3901, monitoring of WFM feed and control of the QC router. iControl also improves the flow by allowing operators to select feeds that they wish to pay more attention to.
Grass Valley is providing a range of other solutions to NBC Olympics for coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics. These include:
- Densité Remote Control Panel for Densité cards
- Three NVISION 8500 HYBRID routers with a highly intuitive graphical interface and simplified video/audio signal processing and control
- NVISION Compact CQX router providing clean and quiet outputs for 3G/HD/SD signals and six auxiliary outputs for preview or monitoring to enable seamless video and audio transitions
- LUMO Series High Density Fiber Converter to greatly streamline the cabling for the production with a 1 RU frame and 36 SFP-based fiber converters
- 34 Kaleido-IP Multiviewers for monitoring both IP and SDI sources on one monitor
- To assist with production needs at remote venues in South Korea, Grass Valley is providing three NVISION 8500 HYBRID routers and Kaleido multiviewers, solutions that will be deployed by NBC Olympics anywhere a flypack is used.
“This will mark NBC Olympics’ eighth consecutive Games that we have worked with Grass Valley on our critical infrastructure at the NBC IBC and venue facilities,” said Adams. “This long track record of rock solid reliability and flexibility is without reproach. There are hundreds of incoming and outgoing feeds, in multiple locations, all requiring routing, control and monitoring. The integrated solutions that Grass Valley provides allow us to proactively manage all of these complex workflows in the highly charged live environment of the Winter Olympics.”
“A broadcast production that is the size and scope of the Winter Olympics presents a number of challenges that must be considered when building the infrastructure to efficiently manage and move all the signals that are coming in from different sources and in different formats,” said Luther. “Because all of our products are designed to address common industry standards, we are able to process any signals and move them through the workflow to deliver the high-quality content expected from NBC Olympics during its production of the Winter Games.”
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More