Vizrt is supplying BBC Sport with their HD graphics engines to deliver the broadcaster’s live television graphics for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Working in conjunction with Vizrt are two London-based graphics providers – Mammoth Graphics and deltatre. The two firms are using their Vizrt expertise to design, operate and manage the delivery of the live HD graphics operation, which is based within the broadcaster’s studio at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in London.
The graphics suite is equipped with 12 Viz Trio character generator (CG) systems, with each of six Trio live graphics systems paired with six Viz Engine HD/SD rendering systems for real-time compositing of HD video and graphics.
Two Trio/Engine combinations are dedicated to graphics creation for BBC-1, while two more combos support different events being carried on BBC-3, a channel targeted to a younger demographic. The remaining two Trio/Engine combos serve as spares for failsafe redundancy. All of the Vizrt systems have access to all live video feeds coming into the IBC from all the venues, and many live graphics integrate live video.
“All graphics and templates will have a unique BBC style created in advance using Viz Artist design software including full-screens, lower thirds, and side panels, as well as a visually riveting 3D ‘medals table’ that illustrates the medals count by nation,” said Phil Long, managing director of Mammoth Graphics. “Most of the graphics for nearly three dozen sports—roughly 2,500 events—will be live and coming from the Vizrt boxes.”
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