The most challenging part of moving the Miami Marlins to Marlins Park was not getting physically into the new facility. It was desiging and implementing the kind of innovative all-digital workflow we needed to handle a significant increase in both volume and diversity of content built for, and distributed across, multiple platforms. Today, we serve as a full in-house production agency.
Starting the process in 2004, we adopted a smaller Avid storage solution set. Since then, we’ve pursued an incremental upgrade path that has ultimately led to the acquisition of a far more robust set of Avid production systems to accommodate the needs of our new on-site production facility.
From creating feeds for broadcast and internal scoreboards, to logging clips and putting together highlights packages, we cover basically anything that happens at a game, including ceremonies, first pitches, and player presentations.
Logged clips are added to our Avid Interplay asset management system, which we use to perform a wide array of search, retrieve and archive functions. From there, we send content to the board with multiple Avid AirSpeed playout servers.
This has made our production much faster and more efficient. If we need a commercial spot, we have the material we need right at hand. Producing all our own TV spots internally, we do a 15 and 30 for every Friday, Saturday and Sunday game in both English and Spanish. In a given season, we may do more than 400 spots for TV and radio, so we are glad to have the kind of workflow Avid provides to meet a dizzying schedule of turnaround times.
Our department is a key part of the marketing function, producing media for every application, from TV spots to in-game entertainment. To give the fans a better window into the lives of our players, we do scheduled interviews and put together featured pieces around them. We also do a “Meet the Marlin” segment to help create a more fleshed-out picture of our players’ lives and build identification with our fans.
Beyond serving the needs of the Miami Marlins, we do concerts and quick-turn packages for Comcast On-Demand. This allows us to provide a whole host of information on more than just the games. If a viewer misses a previous night’s concert, for instance, they can catch performance clips on our site or access it on-demand to view it at their leisure.
This type of anywhere-anytime access would not have been possible without the Avid systems we now have in place. And the best part is that the workflow just keeps getting easier and faster. For example, everyone has their XDCAM drive and can ingest footage at their edit station, so any shot that someone has logged in is accessible by anyone.
It’s what keeps us all working together in an entirely collaborative environment to create the kind of content that keeps fans coming back time after time, and get it faster and easier to air than ever before.
