Live from Rio 2016: SMT Crunches the Numbers for NBC Olympics

For the ninth straight Olympics SMT is once again on hand within the NBC Olympic operations at an IBC, once again providing real-time data and timing information that helps enhance the production via on-air graphics, scheduling, and searches for content in the media asset management system.

Stass Iordanov, SMT senior IT manager, says SMT has a team of 10 people on site to support whatever needs NBC Olympics may have, in particular for the primetime broadcast.

“At every Olympics the amount of data is increasing and it’s always a challenge to deal with the volume of data and the latest and great information,” says Iordanov. “NBC has a graphics crew that works non-stop and we work with them on things like virtual graphic insertion in swimming, cycling, and racing events.”

SMT is handling real-time delivery and seamless data and graphics integration with all NBC Olympics’ graphics display systems for their presentation of golf, beach volleyball, diving, artistic gymnastics, swimming, and track & field events.

Golf is a natural fit for SMT as it is involved in the live scoring of premier golf tournaments and events and SMT is bringing all of its golf expertise to the scoring and production of golf at the golf venue in Rio. Also for select NBC Olympics broadcast venues SMT’s Point-in-Time software system will integrate live results data to provide NBC’s commentators the ability to locate a specific “point in time” of a competition in both live and recorded coverage. In addition, the SMT’s Point-in-Time software graphically shows key events on a unified timeline so that NBC Olympics’ talent can quickly see, for example, how a race began, when a lead changed, or where an athlete’s performance improved.

SMT’s Point-in-Time software tool dramatically enhances NBC’s storytelling capacity, giving NBC Olympics on-air talent the ability to highlight the triumphs and defeats that are intrinsic when witnessing the extraordinary level of competition in the 2016 Summer Games.

“We are the source for any data that is available, making it available to different sources like live on-air graphics or log-in information for the MAM for searches, and also information for scheduling,” says Iordanov. “And the way our software works it can be operated from anywhere and we also have multiple backups with diverse hardware and software streams. So we can cover ourselves with respect to any possible failures.”