Fox Sports Streamlines Ingest, Delivery Workflow with Aframe’s Cloud-Based Platform

FOX Sports 1 is currently relying on Aframe’s cloud video production and asset management platform for automated ingest and delivery of content from its global network partners and freelance sports journalists for news media submission workflow.

Launched in the fall of 2013, FOX Sports 1 features a variety of sports including: NFL programming, college basketball, college football, NASCAR, soccer, UFC and starting in 2014, Major League Baseball.

FOX Sports 1 leverages Aframe’s ability to accept secure footage of various sporting personalities and events, from a wide range of professional equipment from around the world, and then to convert this content into the DVCPRO format for editing or playout to air. Aframe also creates a traditional H.264 proxy for their review and approval process, which provides a more efficient contribution file delivery model.

The Aframe-backed workflow won a 2014 Visionary End User award for FOX Networks Group at the Storage Visions conference in January.

“Aframe’s private cloud solution provides an easy mechanism for making content easily accessible for people who need it immediately, in a self-service model,” says Wendy Allen, vice president of media engineering at FOX Sports.  “It’s a new paradigm shift that will save FOX time and money.”

Aframe transcodes FOX Sports 1’s original content to the h.264 proxy at the time of ingest, instead of requiring Fox download all footage prior to transcoding – thereby saving valuable bandwidth on proxy transcoding.

By using Aframe to handle the heavy lifting of transcode work, FS1 lessens premise transcoding software reliance since Aframe can accept a wide range of professional video formats.

Since FOX Sports 1 doesn’t need to download all footage that is sent in by stringers, it requires less onsite storage capacity, mitigating capital costs and maximizing storage utilization.

”Broadcast workflows today still contain steps where manual intervention, such as transcoding, is essential –  and in competitive TV formats like sport, that simply can’t exist any longer,” says David Peto, CEO of Aframe. “We’re honored to be recognized by FOX Sports 1 for the innovative way Aframe saves time and money in getting content from around the world and on air in dramatically improved efficiency.”