EVS at Heart of BT Sport Workflow at iCITY

EVS has been selected by Timeline Television to provide part of the technology core of the live sport production workflow for the soon-to-launch UK sports broadcaster, BT Sport.

The channels will be based in iCITY, London’s new digital quarter, the former International Broadcast Centre (IBC) at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Part of the IBC Olympic building has been refitted with three TV studios, a control centre, 20 editing suites and an audience holding area. The BT Sport facility will broadcast BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN. BT Sport will show 38 exclusively live football matches from the Barclays English Premier League, plus FA Cup, UEFA Europa League, as well as a range of new studio debate and information shows such as BT Sport Live.

“This new infrastructure provides BT with the most advanced tools on the market, allowing them to offer editorial content to viewers in a speedy manner and optimise productivity across their workflow,” says Dan McDonnell, Managing Director of Timeline Television. “Throughout the course of the project we’ve had very close collaboration with EVS, and drawn on their expertise in sports production workflows to ensure that the system is fast, responsive, reliable and robust across the board.”

Timeline Television is providing a complete managed service to BT Sport, based around EVS’ fast turnaround live production workflow. EVS has supplied 12 of its latest XT3 and XS studio servers for live production to handle all video feed ingest and highlights playout. EVS’ IPDirector production asset management suites will control the entire media workflow, including video ingest scheduling, logging, playout control and scheduling, as well as media exchange with Avid Interplay. There is also integration with Harmonic nearline storage, with high and LoRes files available for instant access via EVS IPBrowse terminals. An IP2Archive system has also been supplied to enable content so be stored – and easily re-used during production – on LTO and integrates tightly with BT’s chosen HSM.

“In a project of this size and scale, the flexibility and seamless third-party integration that EVS systems provide really comes to the fore,” says Luc Doneux, executive vice president sports division at EVS. “The fact that the XT3 and XS servers are at the heart of the BT Sport workflow speaks to the absolute trust our customers have in the reliability and robustness of our technology.”

BT Sport’s operators, editors and journalists will be using a total of 200 IPBrowse stations, providing smooth and instant access to hundreds of hours of logged content via EVS’ LoRes network. This will allow them to create reviews, rough cuts and quick highlights or transfers directly to their Avid timeline, resulting in faster production turnaround.

“At the core of our new studios build is a spirit of collaboration that brings the best of industry – and sometimes competitors – working together toward a common aim: to make the BT Sport studios a world-class hub for the best ideas and talent,” says Jamie Hindhaugh, Chief Operating Officer of BT Sport. “We believe talent attracts talent and our partnership with EVS has helped us to foster that mind-set.”