Miami HEAT speeds video production workflow with storage technology

The National Basketball Association (NBA) 2006 World Champion Miami HEAT awarded SGI the contract to upgrade its tape-based ingest environment to a scalable content management solution. The HEAT asked SGI to design a small, bundled system that could fit in one rack and provide ingest, storage, editing and archive of game footage. It wanted to eliminate the duplication of digitizing media, as well as increase its edit stations from three to five.

Its media production department purchased an 8TB SGI Infi niteStorage NAS 2000 comprising of an SGI Infi niteStorage S330 storage array and an SGI Origin 350 server to create a turnkey Network Attached Storage (NAS) environment for its five Avid Liquid editing stations and two graphics workstations (one Mac and one PC).

Housed atop the AmericanAirlines Arena in downtown Miami where all home games are played, the media production department functions as an in-house post-production studio for the HEAT’s marketing department. The rotating staff of 15 producer-editors uses the SGI NAS system to create content for HEATV, an in-arena network that broadcasts to 20,000 basketball fans each game night. The department also produces content for NBA TV, seen nationally, as well as Sun Sports, the exclusive regional TV partner of the HEAT.

Seventy broadcasts are produced by the Miami HEAT on Sun Sports. In addition, HEATV produces a half-hour exposé-type program, “Inside the HEAT.” The network’s content is also streamed to www.HEAT.com. All types of corporate presentations and sales presentations for big sponsors are produced by the mini post house, in addition to promotions to boost ticket sales for the numerous events that come to the AmericanAirlines Arena during the NBA off-season.

Working in an SGI shared storage environment, where content is digitized once and then immediately accessible as context-specific data to all, allows producers and editors to put more time into the actual creation of a promo, graphic, program or marketing piece. While the 8TB system suffi ces to take the team through the season, it also chose the scalable SGI NAS system because it’s plug-and-play.

SGI Professional Services integrated the encoders, asset managment software, Avid nonlinear editing workstations and graphics workstations to create one centralized, shared environment. Creating a workfl ow where media gets digitized to a central storage provides the tools needed to produce all the different presentations for all the different mediums, and has signifi cantly improved workflow and efficency.