ST. PAUL, MINN.—The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets athletic department comprises 17 sports teams competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The university upgraded its game production capabilities prior to last season, delivering an improved live sports experience for fans in the arena and watching the ESPN3 broadcasts.
The production upgrades, first centralized in the Hank McGamish Pavilion’s new control room, have since been extended to other venues on campus via fiber connectivity. The result brings the benefits of a modern digital control room, including slo-mo instant replay courtesy of Tightrope Media Systems, to football and volleyball games – with baseball and other sports soon to follow.
Tightrope’s ZePlay slo-mo instant replay system was installed alongside a complement of new cameras, switching and signal processing gear designed to simplify technical operations and improve the fan experience. ZePlay provides the ability to natively archive and export clips, as the team is tasked with sharing content with multiple sources almost immediately following games. Similarly, much of that archived content is seamlessly imported back into the workflow to show recent highlights in subsequent games.
Georgia Tech Director of Video Operations Andy Blanto said he’s been able to train operators to use ZePlay “within minutes,” including tagging plays with the right information to further accelerate the post-game archive-and-export process. That simple tagging capability also helps his operators keep track which players are hot, as well other developing trends of a game to create home and visitor highlight packages. Further down the road, Blanton plans to integrate a Tightrope Carousel digital signage solution into the overall workflow to deliver content to display screens Hank McGamish Pavilion. He cites the cost and flexibility of Tightrope solutions as an overall attraction.
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