EVS helps drive La Sexta basketball coverage

New Spanish broadcaster La Sexta achieved record viewings at the September World Basketball Championships 2006 in Barcelona following the introduction of EVS Broadcast Equipment’s live and near live production solutions. This was the station’s second successful collaboration with EVS following last summer’s World Cup in Germany.

High performance production equipment was needed to cover four simultaneous live games in ‘carrousel’ on generalist TV. This enabled continuous commuting between live games in order to follow all the best actions of each match. Through Unitecnic’s engineering department, La Sexta selected EVS to deliver a fully integrated solution for the production, editing and payout of the Championships.

Mariano Rodriguez head of production for the Sport Center from La Sexta said: “EVS’ instant tapeless technology is crucial for any successful live or near-live broadcast event. It allows editing, highlights and slomos to be available instantly for programme use, increasing speed-to-air and enhancing the quality and visual impact of our programmes.”

“Basketball replays must be almost instant in order not to loose key play during transmission and highlights need to be on air minutes after the final whistle, we are able to do this with EVS technology.”

Each day of the Championships more than 12 hours and 80 games of basketball were recorded by 2 XT[2] production and playout servers and at the same time stored onto XStore[2] sharing storage where 4 CleanEdit NLE were connected in gigabit.

XT2 operators created clips, playlists, game indexes and summaries which were sent to the XStore sharing storage and instantly available for journalist use from CleanEdit workstations. At the same time, journalists were able to edit the game with the live incoming stream directly through their CleanEdit for fast non-linear editing and were able to create video and transition effects, music and voiceovers.

Mariano Rodriguez: “What surprised me the most about the CleanEdit suite was how easy it is to use. In few minutes you can create a storyboard, search through the entire content of the server, edit and transfer the final edits to the XT[2] server to be put on air by the IP Director– while the game is still being recorded.”

The IPDirector is the ideal tool for this type of production as it gives the operator a general view of the whole network. With a very easy to use GUI, the operator can: organize and manage all content in different directories and bins; assign keywords and priority levels to clips; make playlists using any of the five different inputs of the server; log games and play out edited pieces during the show.

Operators in the control room said the IP Director was essential during post match production. Via a dictionary created in advance, editors/journalists could search for any image from the game and put it on air in time for the expert discussion in the studio.

This workflow was not limited to the Barcelona SportCentre. Using laptops with CleanEdit software correspondents in Japan downloaded material from P2 cameras directly and edited stories that were instantly uploaded to their broadcasters.

Marc Caeymaex Spain Sales Manager from EVS said: “Our tools are ideal for live broadcasts because they give operators, programme-makers and journalists instant access to all the footage they need to create exciting shows – as quickly as they can.”

EVS technicians at the Barcelona SportCentre played a central role in designing and building the system, as well as instructing editors, producers and journalists in using the equipment and its applications.

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