ITN Productions, the in-house TV production business from ITN, recently signed a three season contract to produce all content from the Football League to be shown on national and international networks. The production arm partnered with EVS, installing XS video servers, IPDirector live content management and a Xedio CleanEdit NLE as its primary production workflow.
Over 1,800 matches are set to be produced each season for the next three years and ITN Productions will produce edits of each of these matches beginning with the 2015/2016 season.
With filming requirements ranging from one pitch-side camera to expansive multi-camera OB productions, ITN Productions needed to make sure the solutions and workflows used would be scalable and able to handle the deployment of additional camera feeds during the season if needed. ITN Productions’ configuration of 12 EVS XS video servers can ingest up to 44 HD SDI feeds simultaneously while maintaining four outputs as back-up. ITN Productions has also installed EVS’ live production asset management suite IPDirector, which allows operators to control the servers, schedule ingest, log, browse and review media as well as create clips and playlists.
With EVS’ XStore shared storage and Xedio CleanEdit installed, ITN Productions is able to produce the variable edits needed by its multiple broadcast partners. Ten-minute highlight packages are produced for Channel 5 without voiced commentary and then for clubs and archive with commentary. A two-minute unvoiced package is also produced for uploading on YouTube.
The workflow has been installed across ITN’s data centre outside of London and its headquarters in central London. An IP network managed by ADI links signals from each match to the XS servers installed at the data centre. After ingest here, the editors working on Xedio CleanEdit in London have immediate access to the content in order to create highlights packages. While working on content recorded and stored 40km away, editors in central London experience latency of less than one millisecond.
“This contract win is a transformative moment for ITN Productions and ITN,” said Mark Browning, MD of ITN Productions. “Our workflow needed to produce the high quality content that our audiences expect from our productions while providing ITN Productions with the ability to create content for multiple sports quickly and easily.”
