ESPN Star Sports selects OmniBus Opus For Facility

OmniBus Systems today announced that ESPN STAR Sports (ESS), Asia’s definitive and complete sports provider, is integrating OmniBus OPUS automation into a new tapeless production environment at the broadcaster’s state-of-the-art, 60,000-square-foot facility in Singapore.
Nicknamed “Home Run” by ESS and systems integrator TSL, the project encompasses the transition from tape-based to more efficient file-based workflows that enable improved media handling, greater collaboration among ESS personnel, and faster turnaround of live sports and sports news.

“ESS operations include production for 13 different channels,
broadcast in eight languages, so the functionality provided by OmniBus
Systems’ automation is key to making our new production environment a
success,” said Tom McVeigh, senior vice president, operations and
technology, at ESPN STAR Sports. “Implementing a collaborative
production workflow on this scale will transform the way we get sports
content to air, and we’re looking forward to this change and the
business and operational benefits it promises as we bring all our
new production systems online in 2007.”

OmniBus OPUS News & Sports Logging enables fast and intuitive logging
of both live and recorded events, in real time and across multiple
systems. It features fast one-button event logging, task-configurable
user interfaces, and intuitive desktop functionality such as
recalling, sorting, and accessing logged events within content. The
easy capture of key frames allows users to build storyboards rapidly,
and the ability to review and filter logged events lets the user focus
on highlights and quickly create shot lists.

ESS staff also will use the OmniBus HeadLine desktop editor to create
sports packages. The software will provide voiceover recording for
eight channels of audio and audio-level control and mixing at the
desktop. The finished piece can either be sent as an EDL directly to
the automated playout system or to a craft editor for further editing.

The OmniBus OPUS suite will integrate with ESS’ existing transmission
and a DIVArchive digital archive system from Front Porch Digital.
OmniBus automation will control nearline storage comprising an Omneon
MediaGrid active storage system with a 2,000-hour cache (50-Mb/s
DVCPRO) and four Omneon Spectrum server systems configured with 50 I/O ports. The system will be linked directly to 25 Apple Creative Studio
systems running Final Cut Pro to enable large-scale edit-in-place
capability.

“OmniBus Systems’ automation solutions will integrate smoothly with
new and existing gear at ESS to enable leveraging of live content to
its maximum potential,” said TSL Head of Sales Russell Grute. “A
primary goal of ‘Home Run’ is to facilitate, through a tapeless
workflow, the rapid production of high-quality breaking news segments
and the latest sports highlights. In sports media, time is of the
essence, and OmniBus offers the control and functionality necessary to
manage production in a complex multichannel and multilingual
environment.”