Broadcast
Traditional
MAMs are too slow for fast turnaround sports, but asset management
remains vital to exploit digital rights for second screen and for
archive. A look at how four sports producers use MAM.
Wimbledon
and Rugby World Cup
IMG
manages the archive rights for both the AELTC for Wimbledon and World
Rugby for this summer's World Cup. Asset management workflow is
similar in both cases.
“The
live feeds are recorded into EVS and logged and clipped using EVS IP
Director as live and sent to Avid for quick turnaround,” explains
Dave Shield, SVP Global Director of Engineering & Technology at
IMG. “Where heavier editing is required the material resides on
near line Avid ISIS and accessed for browsing via Avid Interplay
Production Asset Management or by IPD.”
Finished
programming is sent to the archive. “For Wimbledon this means
keeping whole matches as well as finished daily highlights packages
and any digital clips published online. The MAM is not really used in
live production, it comes into its own as a media management process
at the end.”
IMG's
MAM is from Ardome,
software acquired by Vizrt and incorporated into its latest MAM Viz
One to which IMG will be upgrading by year end.
Henley
Royal Regatta
For
the first time since 1968, boating extravaganza Henley Royal Regatta
was broadcast live. Earlier this month, eight hours a day over five
days of action was live streamed to the Regatta's YouTube channel
under production command of Sunset+Vine Digital.
“The
workflow is similar to the one we employ for Crufts,” explains
James Abraham,
S+V's digital strategy director.
Working
with facility partner Timeline, S+V ingest RF feeds from drones,
hoists, Thames-side positions and ENG cameras, plus onboard GoPros
into a nearby flyaway gallery where the world feed was cut by
editorial director Michael Cole. Streaming specialist Nexus
Entertainment encoded the content, published online and provided a
duplicate stream for producers to assemble a 20-minute daily
highlights show and individual clips of all 200 races.
Logging
for the event was nowhere near as complicated as the mammoth data
collection that went into S+V's host broadcast of the Commonwealth
Games - but just as important.
“The
track is a well-defined straight mile so we know where we are in a
clip and we've known the names of teams, coxes, coaches and schools
for months to prepare stories,” says Abraham. “We took expert
advice to understand who was playing for a Team GB place and where
any hysterics might come from.”
Metadata
is held with the video in perpetuity. “It is important to us and
Henley that if someone rows for a school today and they make the
Olympic team for Tokyo 2020 then we are able to find that footage and
react to it.
“There
are a lot of assumptions that Henley is simply a posh day out – a
perception which used to exist about Wimbledon,” he adds. “It is
possible to elevate the sport to a wider audience and show that this
is not about lifestyle but a true bluechip sports event that
represents one of the pinnacles of rowing. Henley needed to invest in
broadcast in order to raise its brand profile and an internet-based
solution helps them reach a wider audience. The story we are telling
is able to give context to the athletes and that is only possible
with an editorially-led approach to asset management.”
US
Golf Majors
US
media management and distribution company T3Media has honed its MAM
over a decade in live sports and claims major US golf tournaments as
clients. For these events it negotiates with the host broadcaster to
access select feeds (from up to 100 cameras ringing the course) and
pulls them into EVS servers which amount to 20TB or 300 hours over
four days.
The
archive is used to post produce tournament packages and acts as a
repository into which rights holders can dip at any time including
augmenting coverage in the build up to the following year's
tournament.
According
to T3Media, the host broadcaster (Fox Sports in the case of the US
Open in June) is able to access the archive in some cases faster than
from their own EVS recordings. T3Media also produces around 700
clipped highlights (such as a Rory McIlroy
birdie and all the approach shots), encodes and publishes those to
the organiser's live mobile app in about 15 minutes.
The
heart of the operation is T3Media's Library Manager which gives users
access to frame accurate previews of every piece of archived content,
and tools that create search terms to quickly locate a specific
moment.
“The
software provides the means to load, review, and add frame accurate
metadata to assets,” explains explains
Greg Lose, T3Media SVP product and engineering..
“Users interact with the tool’s video player to create custom
category timelines (such
as scene, legal, descriptive or trivia) and
vocabularies and can use it to edit, preview and export metadata. The
tool supports both title-level metadata (such as title, talent
roster) and frame-based metadata at the moment of its creation (such
as sports play-by-play, scene detection).”
It's
a process which could be elevated in partnership with tennis
federation USTA for whom T3Media also works. “We would take the
data feed produced by IBM detailing the speed, type and tracking of a
shot and sync that to our metadata with the video,” explains
Lose. “Then
we'll hire loggers to input subjective description like 'Prince
Charles spectating' or 'fantastic backhand' to the scientific
metadata. The more we enrich the metadata the greater the possible
search and discovery of those time-based moments.”
UEFA
Champions League
Deltatre
provides two platforms for rights holders of UEFA's production of
Champions League. One is a
browser-based on-demand clips distribution solution called Livex. The
other is a full archive management system of content called Legacy.
With
up to eight matches per night, this represents a considerable
operational and technical challenge.
Legacy's
MAM based components are EVS based and Deltatre provides the workflow
around it for contributing video content and integrating match-based
metadata to auto-populate the system.
Deltatre
also create video assets and related metadata that populates Legacy,
such as match highlights, pre and post-match content. Editorial
team's use Legacy content to then populate UEFA digital media
channels (.com, social, YouTube).
The
archive runs from 1992 to the present and houses all CL matches
including additional ISO angles, pre/post match footage. Users
are able to select footage and pull down content in a variety of
formats from broadcast through to digital mezzanines, stored at
Interoute in Geneva.
“All
match assets are searchable on Legacy to enable the creation of fast
turnaround editorial content as distinct from fast turnaround match
highlights,” explains Pete
Burns, Delatre's UK commercial manager. “Editorial means the
creation of packages like 'goals against former clubs' or 'late
winning goals' or 'great comeback compilations' during the game for
playout at halftime or post-match because we have access to this
wealth of content.”
Legacy
combines match video with metadata which Deltatre collects on behalf
of UEFA.
This
data feed contains automated data, such as player tracking to
generate heat maps, with stats such as 'shots on target' which are
logged manually by Deltatre staff in the stadium. All the data is
validated to check for any inconsistencies at the company's Turin HQ
before being synced with the video in Legacy.
“For
fast turnaround match highlight content the traditional MAM is not
really used because of time constraints,” says Burns. “We are
seeing a move toward a ecosystem using Forscene (cloud-based clip
assembly) that allows us to combine live video with graphics (from
Deltatre's own Magma graphics platform) with data in realtime,
overlaid with commentary to create match highlights. If you are
creating highly reactive fast turnaround editorially-led programming
it makes sense to use the archive MAM.”
Since
off-the-shelf MAMs are less suitable for such near live content
creation, sports producers including Deltatre prefer to develop their
own bespoke MAM software.
“There's
no doubt that sports archive is valuable but the real value is in
live or near live content,” says Burns. “Broadcasters want to
enhance their main coverage with access
to a wider selection of clips and content for second screens
platforms, such as web, mobile and tablet.”
That
is the focus of Deltatre's latest initiative which captures a variety
of camera angles, graphics
and data feeds via EVS C-Cast to enhance broadcasters digital
coverage. Already in use
by Sky Sports forThe Ashes, the full extent of the service will be
applied by UEFA from the start of the 2015-16 Champions League.
UEFA
is also introducing audio watermarking, a process that involves
embedding audio stamps into one of the audio tracks of the live feed.
The idea is that these stamps will enable broadcasters to further
market their second screen experience.
For
instance, a Lionel Messi goal would be audio watermarked linking the
match action to a series of relevant additional content available on
the viewer’s second screen, such as further information about the
player, an opportunity to view a selection of his previous Champions
League goals or an Adidas e-commerce promotion.
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