EVS SPORTS

CASE STUDYJUNE 2015

BEIN SPORTS BUILDS MAX HIGHLIGHTS SERVICE WITH EVS TECHNOLOGY

BEIN SPORTS BUILDS MAX HIGHLIGHTS SERVICE WITH EVS TECHNOLOGY

CUSTOMER PROFILEbeIN SPORTS is a leading international sports network providing exclusive access to prime sporting events, including the world’s biggest football, tennis, basketball and motorsport events. Rebranded from Al Jazeera Sports to beIN SPORTS in 2014, the company is headquartered in Doha, Qatar and transmits channels in four languages across more than 30 countries.

PROJECT BACKGROUNDDuring planning for the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ beIN SPORTS decided to design and implement a state-of-the-art workflow to create and manage sports highlights. Built as part of the centralized production operations at the company’s Doha headquarters, the end-to-end workflow needed to give users quick and easy access to media and provide advanced interoperability with third-party systems.

For this workflow beIN SPORTS’ turned to EVS to incorporate the latest in live broadcast production technology. Having already used EVS products to build an ingest and playout center at the same Doha headquarters and a fully integrated digital workflow for its French channels in Paris, beIN SPORTS knew the speed and reliability that EVS technology provides. With this quality guaranteed from EVS equipment, the beIN SPORTS MAX Highlights Service room has been operational since June 2014. Additionally further integration with Adobe Premiere Pro and the remote access of content was also added.

beIN SPORTS needed a workflow which could ingest a significant amount of content, turn it around quickly and efficiently and package it into pre-formatted video highlights. Operators needed to have immediate access to content in order to browse and retrieve specific media. Access to files via the web was needed by foreign offices.

THE WORKFLOW INNOVATIONS AND BENEFITSTo achieve requirements set out by beIN SPORTS, EVS technology was built into every point of the workflow.

INGEST

Clearly the ingest and creation of replays was the most important element of this workflow and five XT3 live production servers and LSM remote control panels provided this functionality. The XT3 features a unique non-stop recording system and powerful networking, which provides complete media control – from ingest to playout – with up to 12 flexible SD/HD channels. Because of the servers’ future-proof qualities, beIN SPORTS can easily choose to begin broadcasting in 4K at any time.

With this server set up, beIN SPORTS records 20 live HD SDI feeds simultaneously while using up to ten channels for output. This allows simple content review and delayed playout. Ingesting multiple channel feeds at once was key for beIN SPORTS’ workflow – this solution enables operators to package multiple streams of content up quickly and easily.

To create pre-formatted highlights on-the-fly beIN SPORTS uses EVS’ Xedio CleanEdit. The software is specifically optimized for the production of sports highlights. It supports multiple formats and resolutions in the same timeline. Two-, five- and 25-minute highlight edit templates are used in the workflow to quickly optimize content delivery.

EVS SPORTS

CUSTOMER > beIN Sports

INDUSTRY > Sports

CHALLENGE > beIN SPORTS needed a workflow which could ingest a significant amount of content, turn it around quickly and package it into pre-formatted video highlights. Operators needed to have immediate access to content in order to browse and retrieve specific media. Access to files via the web was needed by foreign offices.

SOLUTION > End-to-end workflow enabling beIN Sports to ingest multiple feeds simultaneously, manage and share content, as well as edit and deliver replays and highlights in a quick and efficient manner.

BENEFITS > Centralized ingest and shared storage that gives editors and producers instant access to content

> Multi-format support and integration with third-party post-production systems

> Interconnectivity with production studios and foreign offices

> Robust and scalable solution that allows beIN Sports to continue to grow

HIGHLIGHTS

STORAGE AND ACCESS

All of these key workflow elements are servicing content that needs to be stored. EVS’ XStore is being used as the workflow’s central storage system. The connection between this and the five XT3 servers in the MAX Highlights Service room are connected to a network of 22 EVS servers across nine production studios. This allows easy video and data file access and exchange between operators from either facility.

The central storage system offers media storage optimization for integrated EVS production and content management solutions and gives beIN SPORTS a capacity of 1200 hours of high resolution content at 100Mbps and 9000 hours of low resolution content at 2Mbps.

IPWeb has also been included, allowing production teams all around the world to search and browse content that’s available in the XStore central storage. “The inclusion of IPWeb,” said Israel Esteban, executive director of technology at beIN SPORTS, “enables a file-based media sharing system through the beIN Media Asset Exchange. This allows our global production teams, based in France, USA, and Australia, as well as in the Qatar headquarters, to easily access content through the web interface for further editing and broadcasting.”

The speed, ultra-reliability and interconnectivity that allows the users to share and exchange media swiftly is one of the key factors contributing to this project’s success.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Acting as a gateway solution, EVS’ XTAccess units are controlled by an Xsquare interface. This generates low resolution growing files while feeds are still being ingested. XTAccess can handle a series of automatic media-conforming operations, such as on the fly transcoding, media rewrapping and playlist rendering. This offers a smoother interchange of non-natively supported media. Xsquare’s workflow orchestration functions make it easy to create and configure this kind of production workflow.

Implementation of these elements in this gateway gives beIN SPORTS the ability to transfer both low resolution and complete, high resolution files to multiple locations. These include its central storage location, production studios and post-production suites of Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro.

EVS’ IPDirector is used to schedule ingest and manage content effectively. IPDirector is an integrated suite of video production management applications, which gives users total control over recorded content. Users working with Xedio CleanEdit and Adobe Premiere Pro edit stations benefit from having instant access to files and their logs while they’re being created. The integration between Adobe Premiere Pro and the IPLink plug-in enables users to preview and import content recorded with the EVS servers directly into edit bins. This speeds up the workflow and saves the need to transfer any files at all. They can then export finished edits back to the servers or directly on to the central storage system.

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CASE STUDY beIN SPORTS

To learn more about EVS go to www.evs.com

beIN SPORTS MAX Highlights Service is designed to facilitate our studio production processes during live events. The inclusion of EVS equipment eliminates the need to duplicate assets across multiple facilities and gives the editors and producers instant access to browse and playout content. This includes the ease of creating condensed matches and ten and two minute highlights as well as compilations of the best clips, reactions, even allowing for analysis creation,”

Ali Salem, Technical operations director, beIN SPORTS

INNOVATIVE WORKFLOW RESULTS

beIN SPORTS was delivered a comprehensive and innovative way of quickly and efficiently producing highlight packages. This workflow takes care of everything – ingest, management, delivery and storage of a huge amount of live content, all managed in this single EVS-based workflow.

Even with its extensive functionality, the entire production solution has been built to remain scalable. It’s able to grow as beIN SPORTS does without requiring any more resources. The XT3 server is a great example of this scalability. With technical innovations like 4K on the horizon, beIN SPORTS can choose to broadcast in this higher resolution without issue. Simply put, beIN SPORTS innovative, state-of-the-art highlights production workflow allows the broadcasters to ingest, manage, edit and deliver replays and highlights of the world’s favorite sports in a quick and efficient way.

BEIN SPORTS BUILDS MAX HIGHLIGHTS SERVICE WITH EVS TECHNOLOGY

LOGGING/BROWSING

5x IPDirector Workstationswith IPLogger and IPBrowser

POST-PRODUCTION

IPLink with Adobe Premiere &Avid Media Composer Interplay

9x IPDirector Workstationswith IPBrowser

STUDIOS

22x production servers

IPWeb

FOREIGN OFFICESFRANCE, USA, AUSTRALIA

Webstorage

10x XTAccess

TRANSPORT & TRANSCODING

EDITING

5x CleanEdit NLE Workstations

2X IPDirector withIngest Scheduller

INGEST

5x XT3 with LSM

20x SDI-HD RoutingMatrix Signals

STORAGE

XStore1200 Hrs DNxHD @ 100 Mbps9000 Hrs Mjpeg @ 2,5 Mbps