EVS’ production solutions are in use at the All England Tennis Lawn Club Wimbledon Championships, working with various partners to provide international broadcasters with host broadcast services. EVS servers are also recording the first-ever 3-D coverage of the mens’ and ladies’ Wimbledon finals and — working alongside partners IMG Media and Timeline TV — EVS is providing instant searchable access to archive footage from the last four Wimbledon tournaments.
Since 2007, Timeline TV has provided a large host broadcast solution for the Wimbledon tournament, based on EVS servers and EVS IPDirector production management tools. This year the company is using 16 EVS XT series HD servers to record every televised match, and more than 60 EVS IPDirector terminals to manage ingest control, content distribution, metadata and on-the-fly editing.
Each point played will be logged in IPDirector, with the logs combining live statistical information from the on-court scoring system and producer-entered classifications to provide color to the edits, such as shots of players’ actions between points and close-up reaction shots of the crowd. The EVS system is also directly linked to the Wimbledon scoring system, giving producers access to instant statistics such as rally count, speed of serve, type of serve and winning shot. Producers and editors will use the IPDirector terminals to search for court action and either send the media to their chosen edit platform or directly to EVS servers for playout.
Timelime TV is also offering broadcasters instant access to highly searchable archive footage from all televised matches from the 2007-2010 tournaments, including supporting material such as press conferences and crowd shots. IMG Media, a division of global sports, fashion and media company IMG Worldwide, which owns the rights to the Wimbledon archive, will allow access to the fully logged footage on its own EVS servers in Chiswick, West London, directly from Timeline’s IPDirector terminals on location in Wimbledon. The archive material is giving producers and editors a wider choice of footage than ever before, and the speed of the search tools has facilitated fast turnaround edits and packages.
IMG Media is using the EVS system to produce a nightly highlights program, while the BBC is using it to enhance its live coverage across BBC ONE and BBC TWO, including its nightly “Today at Wimbledon” highlights program.
Several EVS servers will also be installed in NEP Visions’ Gemini OB units, which are providing host OB technical facilities for the tournament, including the feeds from the first ever 3-D broadcasts of the finals.
