UFC delivers the ULTIMATE HD experience
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY TIM O'TOOLE
In the ring
When it comes to capturing the action on fight night, directors switch between as many as 11 Sony and Ikegami HD cameras, eight of which may be recording at a time.
Graphics designer Howard Zryb uses the Deko 3000 to call up premade graphics templates during a live UFC event.
By show time, our staff has grown from approximately 15 in preproduction to 80 strong. Our facility company, Concom, which is based in Bloomfield, CT, subcontracts the mobile production needs to Game Creek, ensuring we have top-quality vehicles on-site.
During the actual event, the seamless interoperability between the Media Composer Adrenaline systems and the portable Media Composer software stations allows for anyone involved in the content creation — whether they're sitting in the live truck, the secondary edit suites, or in the new media department where the Web site content is managed — to edit in HD. This is a big plus for an event and production team that is always on the move.
The video and audio are clearly important parts of the broadcast product, but without quality SD and HD graphics, our broadcasts would only tell half the story. Graphics are an essential storytelling device for sports programming. For a sport like UFC, where some of the competitors are not widely known, the ability to provide background information via graphics is a necessity.
The Deko 3000 hybrid system is operated in the production truck and provides up-to-the-minute, fact-based scrolls and lower thirds packaged with dynamic, eye-catching graphics. This setup enables Zryb to enter new text as needed to capture the live results in real time.
Deko's motion effect features are a production team favorite, allowing Zryb to add visual impact to text by animating it with such graphics as flares, lightning bolts and flashes. Edge, in fact, says that the system is as important as the cameras because it is actually on-air from the very beginning of the broadcast to the end credits. It keeps working until the last credits roll. The files are then stored in the Unity system for use on future shows.
To fully optimize media assets, UFC shares its multilayered, pay-per-view footage across departments — and with the producers and editors of those future television shows — using the Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage setup.
In addition, the Unity system allows storage of hours of HD preproduction video and graphics online. If anyone involved in a production needs to find, for example, a shot of a specific fighter executing a specific technique or move, it can be found instantly.
The system also allows us to more easily supply content to Zuffa's new media department. The department uses four workstations loaded with Media Composer software plus one Mojo SDI hardware accelerator to input media for conversion to Web formats with a high degree of portability. With the use of SDI inputs and the right decks, almost any format can be ingested.
The next move will be equipping the Unity MediaNetwork with Unity TransferManager software. This will streamline production even further by transferring preproduced media directly to the server rather than laying it back to tape.
Protecting the UFC brand
The move to HD has been a rapid one for UFC. Two years ago we had one Adrenaline system and Xpress Pro software on a laptop. As our popularity has risen, we've become increasingly protective of our brand. That's why we expanded our Avid solution to a full-blown setup in early 2006, giving us the total creative control we need.
Tim O'Toole is director of production for Zuffa, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Design team
Curtis Edge, editing director
Tim O'Toole, director of production
Mike Sak, audio producer and music supervisor
Howard Zryb, graphics designer
Technology at work
Adobe After Effects software
Avid
Deko 3000 hybrid HD/SD graphics system
DN×HD codec
Media Composer Adrenaline editing solution
Media Composer software
Mojo SDI connector
Unity MediaNetwork storage
Unity TransferManager software
Xpress Pro software
Digidesign Pro Tools audio system
EVS XT2 server
Ikegami HDK-70 cameras
Microsoft Excel software
Sony HDC-1500 HD cameras
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