Cincinnati Reds Great American Ball Park
The Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ball Park features a huge scoreboard display and hundreds of LED and fascia boards throughout the stadium. The in-house production team’s goal was to build a new control and production facility to maximize the fan experience while improving the workflow for producing HD videos, highlights, player profiles and more. A centralized storage solution from EditShare integrated with software from Dixon Sports Computing and EVS servers delivered the winning combination for the Reds.
The Reds’ senior director of media and events Jennifer Berger and production manager Dave Storm looked for a system that would offer short- and long-term benefits and make it easy to capture the best shots and create packages for stadium display while streamlining media management. Because the production unit acts as a full-service agency, producing TV ads for sponsors, fan events, community outreach videos and in-game stadium coverage, they wanted to centralize the management of both media and metadata, which includes every play of each game. Berger and Storm also wanted to allow multiple editors to work simultaneously on the same media and projects. Working with Diversified Systems of Santa Clara, CA, and in conjunction with Cutting Edge Audio and Video Group of San Francisco, CA, the Reds acquired a 40TB EditShare Storage series server to facilitate the group’s media sharing.
The system is connected via 10GigE to an HP ProCurve network switch. Five editors working on Apple Final Cut Pro workstations are connected to the switch via GigE for simultaneous media access. The storage servers are fully compatible with industry-standard editing and compositing tools, and editors can freely share media regardless of size or format. EditShare also enables project sharing for the Final Cut editors with user management tools designed specifically for real-time collaboration in post and broadcast workflows.
The integration among EditShare, Dixon Sports Computing and EVS servers give the Reds a complete media management package with metadata crossreferencing capabilities. Typically, games are being recorded by EVS from six different ISO camera positions. During each game, a logger using Dixon’s logging interface monitors in-house time code to match it to particular events (player, pitcher, ball counts, etc). Roster and statistical information from the Reds’ DakStats scoring system is automatically incorporated into the Dixon logger. Working in tandem, EVS operators identify the best angles on key plays by marking the time code ins and outs. All metadata becomes part of the Reds’ Hilite Database and is made available to Final Cut Pro editors, who create the instant replay videos from subclips generated from the database in the EVS system. All subclips are automatically rewrapped in QuickTime and moved to the EditShare system to be used for highlight packages and additional post-production projects.
EditShare has proven to be a powerful workflow engine for the Reds. The RAID 5 configuration of the system provides the production team with additional data security and the ability to work quickly and in teams, while simultaneously using different applications.
- Post & network production facilities
Submitted by EditShareDesign teamCincinnati Reds: Jennifer Berger, sr. dir. media and events; Dave Storm, prod. mgr.
Cutting Edge: Brian Botel, Sig Knapstad
Diversified Systems: Gerald Kaminitz, sr. sys. eng ; Jacques Verdier, proj. mgr.
Dixon Sports Computing: Brad WilleTechnology at workApple: Final Cut Pro editors
Dixon Sports Computing: Hilite management software
EditShare: Storage Series
EVS: XT[2] servers, XFile
Hewlett-Packard: ProCurve switch
© 2009 Penton Media, Inc.
