Auburn University Relies on Evertz DreamCatcher to Meet SEC Network Demands

In 2013, the SEC and ESPN announced a 20 year partnership that would result in the launch of a dedicated Network devoted solely to the SEC conference. The philosophy behind the network was based on a significant portion of the content being generated by each school in-house. This event was the driving force behind many of the SEC schools, including Auburn University, building state-of-the-art production facilities to meet the demands of their new Network.

In order to support hundreds of events each year, as well as producing original content for the SEC Network the Auburn Tiger’s production team required a flexible replay solution that could meet their constantly changing requirements. After careful consideration and testing, Evertz’ DreamCatcher platform was chosen as the replay solution which would handle the facility’s instant replays, package building, renaming/tagging of clips during the show and archival of melt from Auburn’s events.

“The DreamCatcher workflow helps support over 300 live event broadcasts from our facility each season. Many of these events are taking place simultaneously. The four servers, Media-Gateway system, and two logging stations are the backbone of our production,” says Andrew Young, Assistant AD of Video Services at Auburn University. “When looking to invest in a new replay solution, DreamCatcher was the clear choice. We had heard great things about the product from our peers and once we had the chance to demo the system, it was clear that we would incorporate DreamCatcher into our workflow.”

During a typical event the Tigers production team utilizes two replay operators and a logging station to produce their show. The first replay operator primarily builds packages and replays secondary angles. Operator two replays the primary angles and plays all videos and advertisements. The logger augments the production by renaming clips, adding meta-data and exporting content through DreamCatcher’s intuitive bin organization for the “Auburn Melt”. The integrated transcoding engines on all Evertz DreamCatcher servers allow the Tigers to export content to any location in a variety of codecs in parallel. At the conclusion of each event, the melt is exported for editing and archival. The content is also exported for social media using the custom export options on the DreamCatchers.

“Content Management has been simplified immensely with our DreamCatcher workflow. With the ability to archive entire games, you can be sure that even if something doesn’t get melted, you will always be able to go back and grab that clip in the servers internal storage. Another great feature of the DreamCatcher is the ability to easily jump to, and replay an input from another server. We typically place program, net cams, beauty cams, etc, on a server that isn’t in use, and pull those angles when needed,” adds Kevin Roberts, Assistant Director of Video at Auburn University. “The great thing about DreamCatcher is there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goal, so it’s easy to find a solution that best suits your own personal workflow. The DreamCatcher is very intuitive and gives its operators all the tools he or she needs to be successful in any show they are doing.”

“The DreamCatchers helped us immensely with logging clips and melts. One operator can rename and tag metadata for a single clip that is applied to all angles. All other operators have access to the metadata, which significantly helps with managing all the assets that we use throughout the show and later for editing,” says Weston Carter, Director of Video Services at Auburn University.

The speed of the DreamCatchers has increased workflow tremendously at the Auburn production facility. Operators can share video inputs and clips across all the servers, thereby avoiding redundant tasks throughout the progression of the events. Exporting and importing clips is extremely fast and efficient. Content can be easily watermarked for social media use during events and post-event melts with very tight turnarounds.

The DC-LOGGER has simplified the process for logging clips and melts. A single DC-LOGGER operator can rename and tag metadata for all other users and build playlists, which allows the replay operators to focus on the event.

“The DC-MG is a tremendous part of our workflow. It allowed us to cut the export time for our melts in half. During our football games, we export between 8-16 angles for most plays to our NAS – with some angles as 4x SSM. We then ingest to our Avid storage throughout the event, which allows our Avid editor to create very entertaining videos for our fans. We averaged 900+ files per game and the DC-MG chewed through these exports with ease,” says Carter.

By connecting all of their DreamCatcher servers to an Evertz 10GbE 3080IPX-16 the Tiger’s replay platform provides an unparalleled level of flexibility and access.  The Tiger’s have the ability to group inputs and outputs from multiple systems seamlessly to support the needs of their largest events which are typically SEC Football games or to split resources to support multiple smaller events simultaneously.

“DreamCatcher’s 10GigE Software Defined Video Network provides a platform that makes all content immediately accessible by any user on the network. This enables our customers to have the flexibility to scale the number of input/outputs and operator stations for every event dynamically.  This is ideal for a production facility like Auburn where the scale of each production varies greatly from event to event,” says Nima Malekmanesh, DreamCatcher Marketing Manager and Sr. Engineer at Evertz.

“We have a large staff of students that get to use the DreamCatchers and most of them adapt to the intuitive interface within 15-20 minutes of use. Seasoned operators love the shared functionality across each of the servers. All our operators enjoy using the powerful tools that the DreamCatcher offers, such as SSM, mosaic, quick playlists, etc. They look to utilize the tools in different ways, depending on what type of show we are producing,” says Carter.

One of the added benefits of adopting the DreamCatcher platform has been the tight partnership between the Auburn Tigers and the DreamCatcher development team.  In addition to a personalized approach to customer support, the DreamCatcher development team has taken a grass roots approach to product development.  The DreamCatcher team welcomes the opinions and suggestions of its partners in developing and improving its platform.

“The partnership with Evertz has been outstanding. The DreamCatcher team is always asking us what we would like added to the systems and have been great with incorporating our suggestions. On the rare occasion that we need to reach out for support, we get a very quick response. It’s great being able to call up support and get your questions answered within a couple minutes,” states Young.

“The feedback and suggestions we have received from the Tiger’s and other partners like them have been crucial in developing a product that surpasses the expectations of our customers.  Our philosophy from the beginning has been to develop strong partnerships with our customers in order to constantly move our product in the right direction, there is no better source of feedback than the people who are using your system on a daily basis,” adds Malekmanesh.