Big Brother Norge: 100 Days of Non-stop Production

IPDirector is essential to this production. During the live logging operations we can almost create the clips that end up in the finished programmes. We are more effective and produce better programmes because we have more time to create during post-production.

Andreas Printz
Freelance Technical Director

Customer Profile

Endemol is the largest independent television and digital media production company in the world, with a global network of more than 80 companies across 31 countries. Annually, it produces 10,000 hours of content across multiple genres, such as entertainment, reality TV, game shows, animation, comedy and drama. The company is also one of the world’s largest independent distributors of formats and finished programming.

Big Brother, a reality TV show, is one of Endemol’s most successful formats. The show follows a group of people who have never met before and are then entered into a fenced-off compound. They are completely isolated from the outside world for a period of 100 days, and everything the housemates do during this time is recorded and broadcast on both television and the internet.

In August 2011, Endemol produced the fourth season of Big Brother Norge for the Norwegian commercial television channel TV2 Bliss (part of the TV2 Group, Norway's largest commercial media company). The Norwegian version of Big Brother was produced in Endemol’s studios in Stockholm and required a crew of 100 people. All the production equipment, including 43 cameras and 83 microphones, was provided by Best Broadcast Hire (BBH), the Swedish rental company.

Challenges

For the first three seasons of Big Brother Norge, content was recorded on tape with a separate logging system. This required complex operations, all of which were dependent on a large stock of tapes being available. It was also very time-consuming because the logging had to be done in two stages.

Freelance technical consultant Andreas Printz, who was technical director during the first season and head of technical operations this time around, wanted to create a more efficient workflow with an integrated logging system for the new season. "Tape-based storage is labour intensive and time consuming and I wanted to implement a tapeless workflow based on a reliable server that would give producers more time to create and save valuable resources,” said Printz. “I also wanted to streamline logging operations so post-production could easily access fully logged shots within minutes."

EVS Solution

Looking for a production system that would meet his objectives, Andreas Printz put together the specifications he’d need to make it work. Once the details had been finalised, he worked closely with equipment provider BBH and decided that an EVS solution, which could power the heart of Big Brother’s production infrastructure, would provide the best solution. Printz needed:

  • A six-channel XT series production server – the server allowed for 24/7 loop recording in IMX30 and would ingest content on 4 channels, with 2 channels for playout during the live shows
  • An IPDirector workstation – provided ingest control and scheduling as well as background live streaming of the four feeds in one hour blocks to a 16TB XStore nearline storage
  • Additional IPDirector workstations - were used for live logging and browsing

Another element was the use of EVS’ gateway software, XTAccess, which provided file transfer and EDL export to an Avid Unity/Media Composer via a 4Gbit fibre network. XTAccess also provided a content backup from the XStore via 2TB removable XF2 disks. Additionally, an IPDirector was used for browsing clips and to control the export of content to the Avid post-production system. Edited programmes were transferred via XTAccess back to the XT series server for playout.

24/7 Multicam Ingest & Live Logging

Signals from the 43 cameras and 83 microphones entered a router, splitting the signals and feeding two identical production units in the control room. Both production units were staffed with a vision mixer, a camera controller and a sound engineer, enabling the production of two independent live programmes from the house. A producer would then instruct two crews on which stories to follow.

The XT series production server was used to ingest these two programmes as well as two other feeds from isolated cameras. Due to the loop recording technology of the EVS server, it had the ability to record approximately 20 hours of content per channel, including the recording of 32 (4x8) audio tracks. The two programmes would then be simultaneously streamed to TV2’s web services for live coverage on the internet.

Two loggers working with IPDirector would log the live content with a keyword grid to facilitate the subsequent search for content. The producer would then use an IPDirector to browse logged content and create the storyboards for the daily programmes and the live shows. Freelance producer Maria T. Haag had previously worked as a logger for another reality TV show using dedicated logging software. In her opinion IPDirector provided a better workflow: "IPDirector is like a media map with instant access to content. Having the logs in the same system as the media gives a much smoother workflow compared to other systems. Within IPDirector I had all the tools I needed to search for metadata and keywords, browse the clips and decide which clips I want to transfer to post-production. The workflow was essential for such a production and it felt like the EVS solution was designed for it."

Nearline Storage

Recorded blocks of one hour were continuously transferred from the XT series server to the XStore, through the ingest scheduler of the IPDirector. This meant that all the ingested content was instantly available on the IPDirector for search and browsing. The XStore would hold up to ten days worth of content and as the XStore filled up, the oldest files would be archived on 2TB XF2 removable disks via XTAccess. If directors wished to use some of the archived material, they could easily be restored from the removable disks.

Freelancer Christopher Ralston was the engineer in charge of the production. With the tapeless storage system, a more dynamic workflow was obtained: "With the EVS workflow, producers could start working on the content immediately, while it was still fresh, and because the content was always available on the EVS system, producers can easily change their stories up to the last minute,” described Ralston. This made up a very dynamic workflow and gave producers much more time to create better programmes."

Post Production

The producers used IPDirector to browse the logged content and mark the clips that would end up in the daily programme. The logger would make an EDL with IPDirector and transfer the corresponding files to the Avid post-production system via XTAccess on the fibre network. The logs were embedded in the files and available in the timeline of the Avid Media Composers to help editors in their search for content. During the live programmes clips were edited on Avid Media Composers and transferred back to the XT series server, so they could be played out to TV2 Bliss for broadcast. "One major benefit of logging using EVS’ IPDirector is that the logs are integrated in the files every time a clip is created and transferred to the Avid system,” said Ralston. “The editors use the logs to navigate faster in the transferred content and it’s a great time saver.”

Key Success Factors

The tapeless workflow based on the EVS solution for Big Brother Norge (the Norwegian version) in August 2011, was the same one that was used for the production of Big Brother Sverige (the Swedish version) earlier that year in February 2011. Due to its success, they will continue to use it in the first half of 2012 for the new season of Big Brother Sweden, as well as the fourth season of Big Brother Denmark. This would see a total amount of 400 hours of non-stop production take place across Scandinavia. The project worked due to:

  • Outstanding reliability of the EVS production server
  • Fast tapeless workflow that increases the efficiency of production
  • Powerful networking that provides instant access to media
  • Intuitive IPDirector solutions with live logging features, browsing and media management saving valuable time in post-production
  • Fast and seamless integration between the EVS production system and Avid Unity/ Media Composers
  • IPDirector log and metadata embedded in the files for post-production
  • Extensive capacity of the XStore nearline storage
  • Easy backup with removable XF2 disks and XTAccess gateway software

Production Workflow

A single EVS server is at the heart of the system, undertaking 24/7 loop recording of 4 channels throughout the 100 days of production. And we have not experienced any irregularities with the server. The independent power lines with UPS to the power supplies of the server was the only redundancy solution that we cared to install. We did not have a backup server, tape machines or additional redundancy. I believe it is fair to say that we have 100% confidence in the reliability of EVS technology.

Christopher Ralston
Freelance Engineer in Charge

Looking back it is hard to understand how it was possible to produce Big Brother without the EVS solution. The IPDirector software used for logging and browsing is very intuitive and provides a fast and smooth workflow that I find ingenious.

Maria T. Haag
Freelance Producer

 

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