The Tapeless IBC in Rio

The Hardware for the 167 Ingest Channels to Record all the Olympic Events

For the first time ever the wide range of production and technical services provided by OBS is completely tapeless. A combination of dozens of EVS XT3 servers, hundreds of EVS IP Directors and other EVS technologies play a key part in leaving tape behind. The EVS server farm is much, much larger than the system for the London games as there are more feeds and the Multi-Clip Feed services didn't exist in 2012 so that makes 12 more feeds to log. And there are all the mixed zones and interview areas. On the first two days there were already 70,000 logs per day. Getting the EVS side of the facility up and running required 15 EVS support personnel to be on hand (currently nine EVS staffers managing the project during the games). There are 33 EVS XT3 servers on hand for OBS at the IBC, providing 167 channels of ingest (more than 160 IP Directors can be find throughout the facility). Most of the servers are six-channel units while the mixed zone units feature 12 channels. The main equipment room houses the servers that store footage from around the Games. There is, however, a running back-up created on another site so that live Olympic coverage is reduced, but not suspended, in the event of server failure.