FOX Sports has designed a unique system for HD bumpers and sound bytes done on the fly in a live environment. Shown here at the World Series, the bumpers allow the network to cut material from the previous half-inning and stylize its presentation before going to commercial. Photo Courtesy FOX Sports.
For its 720p HD production of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, FOX Sports designed a unique system for HD bumpers and sound bytes done on the fly in a live environment.
The system, which included a 720p Apple Final Cut Pro editing system, an AJA Kona 720p video card and an EVS XT server, allowed FOX Sports to cut material from the previous half-inning and stylize its presentation before going to commercial.
Speaking with Sports Technology Update prior to the beginning of Wednesday’s World Series clincher from outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis, FOX Sports vice president of field operations Jerry Steinberg described the system as a way to create a “sexier piece of business in less time without tying up the switcher.”
According to Steinberg, working in a tapeless environment where material is recorded to a random access device, such as the EVS server network onboard the teleproduction trucks used for the World Series, has dramatically improved the speed of getting material to air. Incorporating a Final Cut Pro editing station into the system gave the sports network the means to stylize footage fast enough to hit the half-inning break.
Rather than being locked into a single stylized approach of doing something similar with conventional means, the Final Cut Pro-based native HD system allowed FOX Sports’ creative team to have more visual options and impact, Steinberg said.
