Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 5

Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 5 - Index

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ScheduALL (Hollywood, Fla.), a leading provider
of broadcast production and operations
management software, announced that NBC
is implementing the ScheduALL solution to
schedule and manage feeds for NBC’s coverage
of the Olympic Games in Beijing. ScheduALL will
originate and distribute scheduling information
of the event content across a wide array of
broadcast and broadband media outlets.
The Beijing Olympics marks the third consecutive
broadcast of the Olympic Games in which
NBC has used ScheduALL, and the broadcasting
logistics are by far the most complex. With
more than 3,600 hours of coverage planned,
more than the total hours for every Summer
Olympics ever televised in the U.S., the Beijing
Olympic Games represent the most ambitious
single media project in history. Also, for the first
time in the US, NBC will provide live streaming
video coverage of events over broadband outlets
including Web sites and cell phones.
ScheduALL is a key component of a comprehensive
digital media asset solution currently in
implementation at NBC that will manage 48 highdefinition
feeds and up to 32 streaming encoders
for transmitting Olympic content. ScheduALL
will store and manage critical information such
as start and stop times for each event, video
router assignments, and satellite uplink scheduling,
and then pass this information automatically to
downstream systems to facilitate on-air coverage
for each feed. In addition, ScheduALL will generate
reports with scheduling and resource allocation
data that can be easily accessed by personnel in
the NBC’s Beijing operations center as well as
the company’s central broadcasting facility at 30
Rockefeller Plaza in New York.
“ScheduALL provides a graphical means for
us to track, schedule, and manage people,
resources, and equipment across multiple time
zones in a highly complex, constantly changing
environment,” said Craig Lau, vice president of
IT for the NBC Olympics.
Prior to its first ScheduALL implementation for
the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, NBC relied
on a manual, spreadsheet-driven process for
managing and scheduling feeds. “Even in those
days, sharing of information and tracking of all
different components of a broadcast had become
very burdensome,” said Lau. “Now that we’re repurposing
huge volumes of content for broadband
streaming, in addition to providing 24-hour
broadcasts from any number of our networks, we
have far too many feeds to handle manually.”
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