When the East Carolina University (ECU) Pirates host teams at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville, NC, fans are seeing major changes. The stadium, which was renovated in time for this year's football season, has added about 7000 seats and a new 16:9 jumbo video screen and scoreboard. Video displayed on these screens is being produced with a new Broadcast Pix Slate 1000 video production system.
In the past, ECU Athletics would rent a production truck and hire local television station personnel to produce the stadium's video presentation. Now, below the video scoreboard in the stadium, a control room has been built to provide a permanent production solution.
In addition, five new Panasonic AG-HPX500 HD cameras with Fujinon lenses are positioned around the stadium to capture game action, crowd shots, halftime activities and any presentations or ceremonies on the field during game breaks. The Broadcast Pix system was purchased from Technical Video Systems in Cary, NC.
The team also uses a number of Broadcast Pix Fluent workflow tools during game coverage, including Fluent Clip Store, which is used to run commercials during the game, and Fluent Macros, which is used to create an animated ECU Pirates wipe. In addition, the built-in Fluent Multi-View reduced the number of monitors needed in the control room.
ECU Athletics was attracted to the Slate 1000 because of its affordable price and a familiarity with the system through other departments at the school. The Slate systems create affordable hybrid HD/SD/analog productions, and integrate well with the suite of Fluent file-based software tools, including clip and graphic stores, CG, multiview, watch-folders and macros.