France 2 Plays “France 2 Foot” with EVS

After the
success of Roland Garros and the Tour de France, France Television has
reiterated its confidence in EVS technology by conscripting EVS to produce
“France 2 Foot”, a new and unique television programme airing each
Sunday. The programme presents results and summaries of the Ligue 1 and
the Ligue 2 football matches played each weekend, as well as extracts and
images of the matches of the on-going season, clips of which need to be
“on-line” in the click of a mouse.

“We
are proud of the strong relation and level of collaboration we have achieved
with France Television and VCF”, said Eric Karcher, Sales Manager of EVS
France. “We are continuously looking for workflow improvements and ways to
offer productivity through our work on major sports events. We are very
pleased that they have trusted us with the workflow for this new project.”

An
efficient tapeless workflow was needed to digitalise and archive all the
matches as well as
create
edits and highlights.

France
2 chose an EVS workflow which consists of three 6-channel XT[2] servers to
loop-record all matches, and one 5TB XStore[2] storage system, based on SATA
technology, to mass store all the matches.

Metadata
describing the action during each match are created by France Television’s
operators using their own XML file-logging system directly integrated with the
XT[2] servers. Once created, keywords and descriptive metadata allow producers,
editors, and operators to instantly retrieve any footage recorded on any XT[2]
server on the network, as well as in XStore[2] storage systems. In
addition, live feeds recorded on any EVS XT[2] are made immediately available
to all Avid stations thanks to the new live streaming application of EVS’ XFile
software. Thus Avid editors can retrieve any media by either researching the
logs or simply by browsing on the streaming live feeds in order to build their
edits.

“This
agreement is a major step in the development of sports production at France
Television,” said Henry Alexander, General Manager of EVS EMEA.
“Digitizing all of their studio production will provide faster access to
all matches and better content delivery for the end viewer.”

The
efficiency, speed, and flexibility of EVS technology ensure the highest quality
possible for the program.

As in the
past, the study and set up of this solution was accomplished in partnership
with VCF, a French audiovisual technical service provider, which hosted the
system and provided the required technical support to

France 2 during
the first months following the launch of the program. This same EVS-VCF
partnership has proven to be successful on the last four broadcasts of the Tour
de France.