ST. PAUL, MINN.— The Ottawa Senators recently upgraded the production capabilities of its home arena, Canadian Tire Centre. The project included replacing its older gear with all-digital HD switchers, routers and replay system that would meet the production crew’s specific requirements.
The production team selected two Zeplay replay systems for sports from Tightrope Media Systems.
Stan Kertesz, audio and video production manager for the Ottawa Senators, said his crew needed a reliable and easy to use replay system for its new LED score board and monitors located throughout the arena.
“We realize that when you’re a fan watching a game at home, you get these great angles and replays, but that’s not always the case when you’re in the arena watching the games live,” said Kertesz. “With that in mind, I wanted two replay machines from the start. We had one SD system from another vendor but the front-end control wasn’t very good, and it had some bugs. It also only gave us four angles, and I wanted many more.”
Each Zeplay system allows operators eight channels of live replay and a built-in multiviewer for studying angles. The unit’s controller and jog/shuttle wheel with magnetic stops gives operators the accuracy and speed needed when working under pressure.
Zeplay’s tagging options assist with storage, recall and fast highlight package creation was another essential feature for Kertesz. His operators archive game-day footage for highlights, promo packages, posting videos online or even as complementary footage after a game during player interviews.
“The archiving capability and full HD quality is very important to us, and overall it is the biggest way that Zeplay enhanced our game and workflow,” said Kertesz. “It’s great that we can show replays during the game, but with the tagging features, we also have that ability to create these HD highlight melts after the games. We can digitally transfer those to our edit suites and build databases.”
