EVS Powers Dual-Format French Open
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/8/2007 12:15:00 PM
Instant replay specialist and production server supplier EVS has created a file-based production network for host broadcaster France Television to support both standard- and high-definition coverage of the French Open tennis tournament, which concludes this Sunday.
Initially chosen for instant highlight editing and live slow motion replays of the tournament, EVS servers are now being used as part of an integrated network through all stages of production. Over the course of the two-week tournament, all of the matches from seven different tennis courts, representing a total of 21 SD and 28 HD camera feeds, have been brought into the France Television media server and recorded onto four EVS XT2 servers, which are connected through the XNet2 high bandwidth media sharing network.
Metadata describing match action is created by France Television's operators using their own XML file logging system and directly integrated with the XT2 servers, which allow producers, editors and any operators of France Television to instantly retrieve recorded footage from any XT2 server on the network. In total, more than 830 hours of content including the key matches, the best clips and highlights of the tournament have been recorded on a total of 38 Xfile2 removable hard disk drives for a total of almost 20 terabytes of archived footage.
"We needed a technical set up that would perfectly meet our requirements for multiple productions at high speed," said Denis Vivaldini, Sports Production Director of France Television, in a statement. "The new media server we've put in place with EVS technology perfectly achieves our goals to speed up our production process during live events and improve creative possibilities."
