BeIN Sports deploys EVS MAX

Doha-based sports broadcaster beIN Sports recently updated its EVS MAX Highlights Service by integrating it with its latest post-production solutions. BroadcastPro ME delves deeper into the production workflow of the broadcaster’s facility to find out how beIN Sports catches the action live

Early this year, Doha-based beIN Sports enhanced its highlights solutions by integrating it with third-party solutions and updating its IPWeb service. IPWeb, an EVS offering, provides remote browsing while facilitating the search for content in the IPDirector database from a distance. Integration with third-party solutions not only gave MAX Highlights Services more flexibility but also helped deploy it throughout the broadcaster’s network.

This recent addition offers advanced integration with the latest post-production solutions such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer Interplay. The integration between EVS’ IPLink plug and Adobe Premiere Pro enables users to preview and import content recorded using the EVS servers, and add them directly to active editing bins. To enable a faster workflow, Adobe editors can also directly create edits using content stored on the XStore system. This saves the need to transfer any files at all. Editors can then export finished edits straight back to the EVS servers or on to the central storage system.

Access to the recorded media is available for beIN SPorts’ foreign offices via a web-based portal. Both the immediate and remote nature of this workflow were the key challenges that EVS’ workflow design and implementation quickly overcame. Using IPWeb’s online interface, foreign offices are able to search and browse low resolution content that’s available in the XStore central storage or on the EVS servers.

This addition of IPWeb creates a file-based media sharing system in the beIN Media Asset Exchange. It means, global production teams based in France, USA and Australia can, via the internet, easily work on all the content that’s being ingested for sports productions.

The first deployment

As a major sports broadcaster, beIN Sports provides access to prime sporting competitions including the world’s biggest football, tennis, basketball and motorsports competitions to viewers around the globe. A robust sports bouquet also means the viewers expect to watch highlights that encapsulate the action and thrill of the live events and these need to be delivered in an effective and user friendly way. This is why the broadcaster deployed the latest MAX Highlights Service last year with the objective of facilitating studio production processes during live events. The highlights service is now a part of the centralised production operations housed at the company’s headquarters in Doha.

The goal of beIN Sports was to implement an end-to-end highlights creation and management workflow which not only gave users quick and easy access to media, but provided advanced interoperability with third-party systems while remaining fully scalable for future expansion.

It needed to deliver highlights in the most effective way possible and without complication.

To design and implement this highlights workflow, beIN SPORTS turned to EVS to incorporate its latest live production technology. Having already implemented EVS products into both its centralised ingest and playout centres in Doha as well as the digital workflows for its French channels, the broadcaster was familiar with the technology and workflows that EVS solutions entailed.

The workflow

The MAX Highlights Service room was first set up to broadcast the FIFA World Cup last year. Subsequently, beIN Sports enhanced and updated this with several new additions to the workflow.

To achieve the goals set out by the network, EVS technology was built into every point of the workflow. This enabled beIN Sports to ingest a significant amount of content, turn it around quickly and efficiently, and package it into pre-formatted video highlights. It is then delivered to a number of destinations so the broadcaster is able to maximise the deployment of its content.

The key role of the MAX Highlights Service is to create replays and action highlights. EVS claims its XT3 live production servers are a fit-for-purpose solution for this with five servers and LSM remote control panels providing functionality. The XT3 features a non-stop recording system and powerful networking to provide complete media control from ingest to playout with eight flexible SD/HD channels. Owing to the future-proof qualities of XT3s, beIN Sports is able to broadcast in HD, 1080p and 4K.

With this server solution, beIN Sports can record up to 20 live HD SDI feeds simultaneously while using up to ten channels for output to review content and delay playout. Ingesting multiple channel feeds at once is key for beIN sports’ workflow and the EVS servers enable them to do this while packaging content up quickly and easily.

To create pre-formatted highlights on-the-fly, beIN Sports uses EVS’ CleanEdit. Being specifically optimised for sports highlights production, the software allows for multiple formats and resolutions in the same timeline. Two-minute, five-minute and 25-minute highlight edit templates are used in the workflow which allows beIN Sports to package the content in whichever way it is required.

The workflow was designed around the fact that beIN Sports needed to be able to quickly produce condensed matches and a number of different length highlights and compilations. It also needed to allow the production of sports analysis content.

EVS’ XTAccess units are implemented as a gateway solution in the workflow, and are controlled by an Xsquare interface. This generates low resolution files of growing content as it is being ingested. XTAccess handles a series of automatic media-conforming operations, such as on-the-fly transcoding, media re-wrapping 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.

The 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 Interplay and Adobe Premiere Pro.

IPDirector, EVS’ integrated suite of video production management applications, is used in beIN Sports’ workflow to manage the content effectively. It allows users to control and schedule the ingest process and log content using descriptive metadata. This facilitates the easy browse and retrieval of files once ingested and stored.

During ingest, editors working with CleanEdit and Adobe Premiere Pro edit stations benefit from having instant access to these logs to begin immediately working with the content. Fast access to the content being ingested and the workflow’s integration with edit suites was something that was very important to the broadcaster in this facility. This functionality ensures editors can immediately begin working with content quickly, easily and without interruption.

While these ingest and management operations take place, operators are able to have immediate access to content to begin working on material. More importantly, users can begin working with content while feeds are still being recorded. 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. It offers media storage optimisation 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.

The central storage and the five XT3 servers in the MAX Highlights Service room are connected to a network of an additional 22 EVS servers across nine production studios. This allows easy video and data file access and exchange between operators from various facilities. The inclusion of EVS equipment eliminates the need to duplicate assets across multiple facilities. It gives editors and producers instant access to browse and play out content – something very important to this kind of workflow. beIN Sports handles a huge amount of data so saving the time and resource of heavy-duty media transfer is a huge bonus.

The EVS-based workflow takes care of everything – the ingest, management, delivery and storage of a huge amount of live content. The new facility enables beIN Sports to share and exchange media with speed, ultra-reliability and advanced interconnectivity. The workflow was delivered in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup with new implementations and additional third-party integrations being installed this year.

The entire solution was built to remain scalable. It’s able to grow in the same way that the broadcaster’s production demands do without requiring additional technical resources. The XT3’s inclusion in this workflow is a great example of this functionality. With technical innovations like 4K on the horizon, beIN Sports’ purpose-built workflow is capable of handling this higher resolution without issue.

This highlights production workflow allows beIN Sports to deliver replays and highlights of sports events. The live broadcast of some of the recent football games such as the FIFA U-20 in New Zealand and Copa America in Chile, saw the updated highlights service in action.

BeIN Sports aired South American football tournament, Copa América, with exclusive coverage of the event for US football fans. Alongside the live games, news, editorial analysis and multimedia elements around Copa America 2015 were also broadcast live.