Paris 2024: Intel AI platforms showcase world’s first 8K OTT broadcast

As the Official Worldwide AI Platform Partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024, Intel is set to introduce new, innovative AI experiences based on the company’s hardware and software that enable next-generation engagement for fans, organisers, athletes and viewers around the world.

Throughout the Games, AI-optimised broadcast servers will encode and compress OBS-produced 8K live signals that OBS will deliver to selected media rights holders across the open internet.

The servers are powered by the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors (Emerald Rapids) and 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors (Sapphire Rapids) with Intel AI accelerator (AMX) and Deep Learning Boost technology.

Intel is compressing live raw feeds measuring 48Gbps into a VVC-enabled livestream measuring 40 to 60Mbps – a compression ratio of 1,000 times – in under 400 milliseconds.

That 8K over-the-top (OTT) broadcast will then be delivered by OBS around the world to 8K TVs connected to the latest Intel-enabled PCs.

Intel has a long history in this space. Partnering with OBS, broadcasters and technology providers, Intel has powered OBS to livestream 416 hours of live and recorded Olympic Games content and processed 4.7 petabytes of data at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

That industry partnership deepened at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 where Intel made available to OBS and global broadcasters the world’s first fully produced 8K virtual reality feed.

“Our goal at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 is a step closer towards making 8K mainstream, and to deliver live 8K streaming using advanced h.266/VVC encoding technologies that reach the highest quality at the lowest bitrate possible around the globe,” said Ravindra (Ravi) Velhal, global content technology strategist and 8K lead in the Software and Advanced Technology Group at Intel.

The Paris Games, explained Velhal, will be the world’s first live demonstration of an end-to-end 8K VVC livestreaming experience utilising Intel’s 5th Gen Xeon CPUs to encode and Intel-based client CPUs and Arc GPUs to decode.

It provides a pathway for the future of low-latency, broadcast-grade 8K livestreaming over the internet.

That process of getting 8K live content from the Olympic Games stadium in Paris to an 8K-enabled TV on the other side of the planet is highly complex. It’s enabled by a constellation of Intel hardware and software technologies. The steps to accomplish the 8K broadcasts include:

• Broadcast-grade cameras in select Olympic Games venues capture live content in 8K at 60 frames per second in high definition (HDR) at 48Gbps bitrate mixed with 32 audio channels.
• A purpose-built ‘broadcast in a box’ encoder powered by the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon CPUs processes that raw content in less than 400 milliseconds and distributes it across the internet within seconds.
• Around the world, Intel Core i9 processor-based PCs with Intel Arc graphics processing units and Intel Core Ultra 9 processor-based laptops decode the OBS content in real time before displaying the video feed on an 8K TV protected by Intel’s high-bandwidth digital content protection technology.

During the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Velhal and his team will work on several events acquiring, processing and streaming petabytes of data.

They will utilise Intel-based AI platform technologies including Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) AI accelerators and Intel Deep Learning Boost (Intel DL Boost) that enable complex AI workloads to run without increasing the overall computing footprint.

“We leverage these technologies in our Xeon CPUs to analyse each scene, frame by frame, and to train our algorithms to process fast-moving data without compromising on latency and quality,” said Velhal, adding that the overall latency from camera to TV is just a few seconds, a figure unachievable in the past.

“Together with our industry and technology partners, we are solving the world’s biggest distribution roadblock that stands in the way of 8K live broadcasts. Paris 2024 proves that the future of low-latency, high-definition 8K livestreaming is here.”

Intel will work with OBS to stream selected events from Paris to Intel campuses and broadcasters worldwide.