Bexel, Bluefoot Productions roar with EVS, ESPN for NASCAR

ESPN resumed its live coverage of NASCAR races this season in grand style, with the introduction of several groundbreaking features that include all-HD in-car cameras, enhanced on-screen race information, and robotic cameras that allow viewers to enjoy interesting new vantage points at every venue.

Bexel Broadcast Services, which has extensive live event experience
with EVS’s entire product line, advised and supported Bluefoot’s
integration of a four-channel EVS XT[2] HD video server, EVS X-File
digital archive server, and several IP Director workstations.

EVS Broadcast Equipment’s IP Director production tools and server-based digital asset workflow systems allow each race’s complete program, three additional ISO’s chosen on-site, all highlight/melt clips, and field logs that create all metatags to be published from ESPN’s onsite production hubs to EVS servers and databases located in ESPN’s third party post-production facility at Bluefoot Entertainment.

There, ESPN’s feature producers can readily repurpose these complete digital archives for further programming and other uses. The IP Directors not only facilitate the transfer of over twenty hours of HD material onto 3-4 hard disks, they also provide sophisticated program logs that make it far easier for editors to browse, search and select specific material. This new workflow, which is the first of its kind in the US, entirely replaces a painfully slow video tape melt process, and reduces the accompanying tape stock and personnel costs.