Avid Sports Solutions Being Embraced By Top College Athletic Programs

Avid announces that numerous NCAA Division-I schools have invested in Avid’s new generation video servers. Tightly integrated into MediaCentral, Avid FastServeTM enables the schools to create and manage high-quality content for live broadcasts on national cable network ESPN3, while giving students skills that prepare them for success in their future careers.

The Department of Media Arts at Avid learning partner Middle Tennessee State University is the largest and longest-running program for creative media production in the state. The school’s on-campus production company, Media Arts Productions, produces events and high-quality live sports broadcasts including MTSU football, basketball, volleyball and soccer, which are regularly featured on ESPN3.

To help the students quickly produce live content in real-time and meet ESPN3’s rigorous content requirements, the college has deployed FastServe I Ingest, so its dispersed creative teams can access and edit incoming media as it’s being captured—even in demanding UHD resolutions—from anywhere, using any device.

“Adopting FastServe has helped Media Arts Productions’ workflow,” says Eric Lilly, school liaison campus production coordinator for ESPN3.

“They were able to dedicate one operator to do specific player highlights and game trend packages. The fact that both sides of those machines were networked meant that the person cutting the packages had access to the replays as he was cutting his packages. Neither operator workflow interfered with the other. Knowing what other schools are using for their replay systems and the limitations they put on their operators, I have to say, the Avid system helped make Media Arts Productions’ workflow more efficient.”

“Avid FastServe is super reliable, super powerful, and super flexible. The speed at which we can do stuff now is at a really professional level,” says Isaac Shaw, MTSU student and lead package editor for Media Arts Productions.

“With Avid, we’ve really been able to hone in on and figure out how to tell a story, and we have the flexibility to do so. For my personal development, having that skillset and the ability to make fast decisions and put packages together quickly has made me much more marketable to a potential employer.”

Other schools that have invested in FastServe for ultra-fast production turnaround include the University of Hartford, the University of Vermont, Binghamton University, Quinnipiac University, and Rider University through Avid’s world-class network of reseller partners, including Key Code Media, Metropolitan Interactive, and HB Communications.

“Through ESPN3, top Division-I colleges and universities across the country can showcase their schools and athletes on the national stage,” says Alan Hoff, vice president of market solutions, Avid.

“Avid’s powerful sports production solutions give them the capabilities required to create high-quality content for ESPN3 at an affordable price, while giving students access to the same industry-standard tools they can expect to use in professional sports media environments.”

The new FastServe family of video servers builds on the rich heritage of Avid’s AirSpeed and PlayMaker servers. Its unified modular architecture supports UHD and IP I/O to enable ultra-fast ingest, turnaround, and playout in broadcast, news, sports and other live production environments. Higher channel counts per server result in a lower overall cost-per-channel, and a smaller footprint requires less cooling and power.