In Broadcast - November 2013 - 24

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 25 - NOVEMBER 2013

N E W S

InFORM

EVS - The Heart Of Fox Sports' Workflow
Fox Sports' new studio and live production workflow delivers improved quality of content across multiple
platforms...
By Luc Doneux
Executive Vice President,
Sports Division at EVS

N

24

etherlands-based Fox Sports,
owned and operated by Fox
International Channels, Endemol,
the Dutch Eredivisie football
league and the Dutch football
association (KNVB), offers two
premium television services: Fox
Sports Eredivisie and Fox Sports
International - both launched in
August 2013.
Fox Sports Eredivisie holds
exclusive rights for live coverage
of the Eredivisie, Eerste divisie
and the KNVB Beker national cup
competition, broadcast via three
channels. Fox Sports International
provides live European and
International football, including,
UEFA Europa League, England's
Premier League and Italy's Serie A.
The entire workﬂow at Fox Sports'
studios - located at the MediaArena
on the outskirts of Amsterdam - is
based around EVS technology, from
ingest and metadata management
through to live studio production
and second-screen content delivery.
The aim with the two new Fox
Sports services was to deliver
improved quality of content
contribution across multiple
platforms and to improve the
overall viewer experience. EVS'
long-standing relationship with
Endemol Sports, combined with
its Sports360˚concept, made it
the obvious choice of partner
for the project. The scalability of
its technology, along with EVS'
reputation for reliability, were also
key deciding factors, as was EVS'

ability to offer a complete workflow.

Handling Ingest
Five EVS XS production servers,
each capable of recording up to
four signals, ingest up to 20 live
feeds simultaneously, providing
dual XCDAM HD/ DNxHD encoding
for greater interoperability and
reactivity during the production
process. EVS' IPDirector product
asset management suite controls
the XS servers and manages
content, including the Ingest
Scheduler tool to dispatch the
incoming feeds to either the nearline
storage - EVS XStoreSAN - or Fox
Sports' Avid Interplay/ISIS systems
and live logging (metadata input
and log sheet creation) via the
IPLogger application.
Fox Sports also has 30 licenses of
EVS' IPBrowse application, enabling
journalists and production staff to
quickly and efﬁciently search for
relevant material - as low-res proxies
- on the nearline storage from their
desktop or laptop. Users can use the
tool to select content and send it to
different destinations, including Avid
post-production systems.
Victor Winkelhagen, Head of
Production at Endemol Sport,
explains the beneﬁts: "The IPBrowse
application has been a real eyeopener for us. Not only does it
help us save time, it also allows
us to enrich our editorial work.
For instance, when a presenter is
referring to a speciﬁc event or player
during the post-game show, we can

The main Fox Sports studio

immediately search for the related
clip with IPBrowse and send it for
playout on the background monitors.
Being able to work with a centralised
media platform has led us to become
much more effective in our editorial
work and has even helped us to
promote different packages across
the network."

Managing Metadata
After ingest, two types of metadata
are added to incoming feeds:
objective metadata, including match
statistics (eg, goals, fouls and yellow
cards) and, subjective metadata
based on visuals (eg, reactions from
the players, fans or coaches and
quality of strikes). Both types of
information is used to compile a log
sheet containing several ﬁelds (eg,
description of the event, keywords
and colours to identify the action
and ratings, etc).
All the objective metadata is
compiled in London by sports
specialists Opta, Eredivisie's
official statistics provider, and
automatically integrated into the

IPDirector database via the Ingest
Scheduler tool.
The subjective metadata is added
by loggers at the broadcast centre
who view the match live, verify the
Opta log entries and add information
based on what they see. The
metadata is then made available in
real-time for all users of the IPDirector
suite. Using the EVS IPLog2Post tool,
all of the log entries are automatically
associated with media ﬁles within the
Avid editing systems. A total of six
logging stations are located at the
broadcast centre, with each logger
creating on average between 200
and 300 individual logs per match.

Live Production
Fox Sports' studio set-up includes
three production galleries, housing
six EVS XT3 live production servers
with LSM remote control panels.
These are used for live replays,
creating highlights packages and
quick turnaround of content. The
servers provide full dual encoding
support, capable of handling both
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 25

Fox Sports' facility on the outskirts of Amsterdam

The entire workﬂow is based around EVS technology

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