The 2014 French Open tennis tournament marked a new era for VER as the company snagged a three-year contract to be the technical backbone for Tennis Channel as well as for sub\u00a0rightsholders ESPN, NBC, and ESPN International. One year later, VER is onsite with an improved technological offering, experienced staffers, and an expanding presence in the live\u2013sports-production marketplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took notes on what the clients wanted and tweaked the cosmetics, cable management, [and] cable layout and, with our \u2018versa pack\u2019 furniture, can create our own world by doing things like moving monitors and giving people more room for printers, routers, and other creature comforts,\u201d says Howie Rosenthal, director of broadcast, VER. \u201cWe have a much more mature technical system, our engineering staff has grown, and we\u2019re used to serving this type of business so we can anticipate needs and have less reacting.\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of the overall production of the French Open, the biggest change is the addition of nine TV courts, thanks to the Hawkeye production system. That increases the number\u00a0of sources available to the production teams as well as the amount of content flowing through the Evertz router that is the backbone of the VER flypack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see how the flypack business has made a comeback in the industry, especially outside of the U.S.,\u201d says Rosenthal.<\/p>\n
The flypack itself has also expanded with the addition of an RF video and audio system that gives additional coverage flexibility\u00a0and\u00a0also signals the start of yet another era for VER, serving as a test bed for a new RF division that will be headed by Mike Foreman.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a new Cobham wireless video system and a Wisycom wireless audio system that is available through Jetwave Wireless,\u201d says Rosenthal. \u201cIt\u2019s an awesome system, and we\u2019re happy with the results.\u201d<\/p>\n
The core of the facility, once again, is four control rooms and 11 commentary booths. Two of the control rooms are identical and are shared by Tennis Channel, ESPN, and NBC. At the center of those rooms are two Grass Valley Kayenne video-production switchers, 19 EVS XT[3] replay servers, 23 EVS IPDirectors, two Calrec Artemis audio consoles with 64 faders, and an Evertz routing switcher. The two smaller control rooms \u2014\u00a0one used for Tennis Channel\u2019s French Open Tonight<\/em>\u00a0program, the other for ESPN International coverage \u2014\u00a0are built around a Grass Valley Kayak switcher and Yamaha DM2000 audio mixers. There are also 23 cameras deployed across the grounds in commentary booths and also as ENG and roving cameras and three Avid editing systems.<\/p>\n \u201cWe made a lot of investments in monitoring and now have a lot more over HD-SDI,\u201d says Rosenthal. \u201cWe have 100 new Boland monitors, which allow us to feed any flavor of video, saving us a lot of time on setup.\u201d<\/p>\n The new technologies, workflows, and more experienced team signal to Rosenthal that the market is responding positively to VER\u2019s decision last year to expand its broadcast services. VER systems designers Bruno Brunelle and Pay Daly, video engineers-in-charge Derrick Whittington and Jay Johnson, and audio engineers-in-charge Craig Lapsley and Steve Koubridis are a big reason for the success.<\/p>\n \u201cOur new internal saying is \u2018If you build it, they will come\u2019 as we also have two new systems being used in Vancouver for the Women\u2019s World Cup and all three of the systems are booked until December 2016,\u201d he says. \u201cSo this is definitely an emerging market for VER. From last year to this year, it has just exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2014 French Open tennis tournament marked a new era for VER as the company snagged a three-year contract to be the technical backbone for Tennis Channel as well as […]\n More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":79559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2160,155,393],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91628,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79558\/revisions\/91628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}