IPV, a developer of media, metadata and low bitrate, frame-accurate video technology to the broadcast and professional video sectors, is implementing its Curator Production Asset Management system at the Golf Channel to provide a fast turnaround solution for live sports production. Following on from the success of the live logging project in January 2011, Golf Channel is adding Curator to complement the IPV’s advanced browse solution for live logging and highlight creation at its broadcast facility in Orlando, Fla.
The addition of Curator enables users to search for media from a common user interface and initiate manual and automated workflows. Curator manages and integrates a number of different databases and ingest points, providing a single user interface unifying search and workflows across the operation. Multiple users can get rapid and efficient access to media assets and metadata across the operation– a proxy of the asset is instantly available regardless of its source, right at the desktop. At Golf Channel, the IPV solution consolidates metadata and material from Avid Interplay, Avid AirSpeed and Avid ISIS, Dixon Sports Computing’s sports logger, Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive as well as the existing library system.
“We were keen to implement a single management point across our operations which we achieved with the implementation of the IPV Curator’s and Process Engine solution,” said Ken Botelho, Senior Director of Engineering at Golf Channel. “The system’s ability to search media and metadata across different databases and ingest points and have this media readily available at the desktop was essential to our collaborative production process. The beauty of the tool is that these files are made instantaneously available to operators annotating bookmarking and cutting the highlights packages, even while the material is still ingesting.”
The solution at Golf Channel includes a file-based transcoding XCode and streaming engine from IPV that can ingest live and growing media files — to provide instant browse access while high-resolution files are still being recorded. Material is ingested onto an Avid Interplay and ISIS network and the XCodes transcodes the live files within the Avid network as the record starts. A sports logger provided by Dixon Sports Computing adds metadata as the action is being captured.
“The challenge for sports broadcasters in particular has been how to create a frame accurate growing browse of an indeterminate length of live content coming into a facility,” said Nigel Booth, Executive Vice President for Sales and Marketing at IPV. “The benefit of the solution being installed at Golf Channel is that these live streams can be paused, scrubbed, annotated and shuttled back and forth to the record point to ensure that all the actions and plays are captured as close to live as possible.”
Booth continues, “The integration of IPV with these other systems dramatically simplifies the logging and production processes, reducing some of the hardware, labour duplication and production costs associated with creating fast turnaround packages, and enabling users to access high-quality video, with the right production tools at their desktop.”
