Golf Channel shoots high (def) for newly upgraded facility
Jul 1, 2010 1:03 PM, By Michael Grotticelli
The channel moved to a file-based workflow.
The Golf Channel’s transmission operations center maintains and adjusts the integrity of all satellite and fiber feeds, whether inbound or outbound.
The live coverage of golf tournaments has always been distinguished by the numerous camera angles used and the pristine quality of the televised signal. Viewers like looking at beautiful golf courses, and there’s no denying that the sport in HD — and more recently in 3-D — looks stunning.
Understanding this, Golf Channel, owned by Comcast, has upgraded its main production facility in Orlando, FL, in a multistage move to HD operations. The entire facility is now HD though the channel continues to deliver HD and SD signals to distributors.
Seen by more than 120 million households worldwide, Golf Channel produces more than 1000 hours of original golf entertainment programming as well as live coverage of golf (PGA Tour, European Tour, LPGA Tour, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour) and “Golf Central,” a daily half-hour news program. Highlights are often turned around within three minutes or less from when they actually happen on the golf course. The facility also supports Golf Channel’s Web and mobile video services.
The newly upgraded Orlando facility includes three full HD production control rooms, a digital media center (which houses most of the channel’s XDCAM HD and legacy formats, as well as two EVS workstations and an Avid ingest system), a technical operations center, four HD/SD master control facilities, a digital transfer center and ingest along with a digital media asset management center.
Making the move
In overseeing the move from SD to HD, Ken Botelho, senior director of engineering, said he wanted to improve image quality, but he was also tasked with moving the network’s production activities away from a predominantly tape-based workflow (from the Betacam SP to DigiBeta, IMX and HDCAM formats) to an environment that takes advantage of digital video and audio as files that can be easily handled and shared among the production staff. There was also a huge legacy of existing videotapes that had to be leveraged in the most efficient way.
This HD/SD MC (one of four) at the Golf Channel uses an Evertz QMC switcher and MVP multiviewer software.
Before 2009, the year Botelho joined the channel, the facility’s workflow was convoluted, he said, but it now has a consistent, cohesive engineering and production strategy within one of the most sophisticated HD facilities in the country. The facility is now “truly tapeless,” from acquisition to deep archive and the many steps in between.
Now that a file-based architecture has been implemented — which proved to be a challenge to streamline operations by getting systems to work together and recognize XDCAM 50Mb/s HD files natively — the staff is capable of producing more content in much higher quality and getting it to air faster than ever before. Thanks to the latest networking tools, they are also much more efficient in how resources are used on a daily basis.
Golf Channel operations executives have committed to the Sony XDCAM HD platform because they think it’s easy to drag and drop HD files, and the physical optical disc format lends itself to better organization in the near term. If it’s on your desk, you know where the footage is.
The XDCAM HD codec’s file-based capabilities help Golf Channel crews deal with the massive amount of footage gathered during a particular event. For example, when a crew is out covering a tour on a given weekend, it may come back with upwards of 600 XDCAM HD discs full of footage that not only needs to be edited and aired, but also ingested, stored and archived. Several XDCAM EX recorders are also used in a pinch.
They use more than 65 Sony XDCAM HD optical decks for program mastering and archiving. When XDCAM HD camera operators come in from the field, they hand a disc over to a producer for ingest (using Dixon Sports logging software), and that disc is then held nearby when a program is being produced. In addition, at 50Mb/s, the picture quality is outstanding and the file size is manageable, Botelho said.
Multilevel storage strategy
Once material is ingested into the system, editors work on 13 Avid Nitris HD systems, pulling clips from an Avid ISIS shared storage system. The integration of Avid Interplay, Transfer Manager, Archive and iNEWS systems provide flexibility in the movement of content. (The facility also has about 20 Apple Final Cut Pro systems in the creative services department, which also use the ISIS.) This allows them to search and retrieve the most desired clips of the day and then move the finished clips over to workstations running NL Technology AutoIngest software.
This software acts as a traffic cop and automatically sends files to where they have to go without human intervention. This destination could be the Sony PetaSite archive or XDCAM automated multidisc cart system for long-term storage. It could also be a Front Porch Digital DIVArchive system, which is being used with a SAMMA Systems robot system to help transfer the material on videotape to the PetaSite digital archive.
Overall, the streamlined HD post-production environment gives journalists and producers full access to the same clips from their desktops, which has fostered strong collaboration.
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