TV & IT Technology: Olympic Games: 11,000 Hours of 8K Live Streaming Online

The numbers at this year’s Olympic Games in Paris are impressive: 11,400 athletes, 32 sports and 45 competitions. The four sports of breaking, climbing, skiing and surfing will be included for the first time. The total television broadcast time is more than 11,000 hours, so that an expected four billion television viewers can follow all the competitions live. Responsibility for television production and distribution is the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), a subsidiary of the International Olympic Committee.

The broadcasts of the 2024 Olympic Games will set new standards not only in terms of quantity, but above all in terms of quality. Instead of the old satellite broadcast introduced in 1964, this time 379 video and 100 audio streams will be broadcast over the Internet. This transmission offers many advantages: it is more stable, safer and easier to set up than aligning a satellite dish in an OB truck. Long transport routes with unpleasant time delays are also avoided.

The new infrastructure now also includes multi-camera replay systems with flawless slow motion, impressive 3D representations, and real-time 3D analytics that provide completely new insights into athletes’ movements. All of this is produced in 8K, which offers much higher dynamics and a faster frame rate. Added to this is Immersive Audio 5.1.4, which provides a realistic 3D audio experience. “Paris 2024 will give global TV viewers a cinema-like experience for the first time,” says one. a report From the International Olympic Committee.

The problem with this is the huge bandwidth required for 8K. Only through extremely powerful real-time compression can 8K be safely transmitted to a TV. To achieve this, AI-enhanced streaming servers need to encode and compress the live 8K signal first before sending it over the internet to media rights holders. Broadcasters can then broadcast the stream either in classic TV quality or as an 8K stream (OTT) directly to end customers. In the latter case, powerful computers are required to decode before the images can be displayed on 8K-capable TVs.

One of the most important technology suppliers for OTT transmission is Intel. The company is officially recognized worldwide. AI Platform Partner For the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Intel is bringing a number of innovative AI features to the table. “We are providing the enabling technology for 8K TV, bringing it closer to mainstream TV,” said Ravindra (Ravi) Velhal, Global Content Technology Strategist and Head of 8K at Intel. “It’s important to have a lot of AI features and cutting-edge encoding technologies that achieve the highest possible quality at the lowest bitrate,” continues Ravi Velhal.

This includes the following components:

• Image processing servers that also feature the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors and are equipped with Intel AI Accelerator (AMX) and Deep Learning Boost technology.

• PCs with Intel® Core™ i9 processors and Intel Arc™ graphics processors as well as laptops with Intel Core Ultra 9 processors decode the live stream in real time at the receiving location before it is output as an 8K video file.

One controlled by Amnesty International platform Helps automate the creation of standout videos with universally supported editing enabled by the Intel Geti™ platform and Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

The world’s first 8K VVC livestream was successfully deployed at Paris 2024. Intel 5th Gen Xeon processors were used for encoding and Intel-based client CPUs and Arc GPUs for decoding. “With these Olympic Games, we have entered the era of low-latency, high-resolution 8K livestreaming,” is Ravi Vilhal’s succinct summary of the new level of performance.

This new technology is not limited to the Olympics alone, but will also make many future live streaming events much easier and of higher quality. Sarah Vickers, head of the Olympic and Paralympic Office at Intel, is already looking beyond the horizon: “We see these measures expanding to many more events and sporting disciplines, especially as this technology evolves so quickly,” is her assessment.

Intel at the Olympics