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Swiss-based Infront Sports & Media is one of the leading international sports marketing groups in the world. The company covers all aspects of a successful sport event - including distribution of media rights, sponsorship, media production and event operations. As a key player in winter sport, football and other summer sports, Infront enjoys long-lasting partnerships with 120 rights-holders and hundreds of sponsors and media companies worldwide. In this article, Mat Shell from Harris Broadcast Communications explains how, in Italy, Infront Sports & Media is using advanced digital asset management (DAM) technology from Harris Broadcast Communications to provide Italian football fans with access to high definition highlights from Italian football league matches. Fans can view the highlights on their mobile phones, PDAs and laptops within minutes of the live event.
Serie A...everywhere I
talian football fans are amongst the most passionate and ardent in the world. Whether you support Juventus, Inter, Milan, Lazio or Roma, one thing is for sure - supporters will go to (almost) any lengths to keep up with their team’s exploits. In this scenario, the multi-screen era is a God-send to soccer fans. Any means of keeping tabs anywhere and anytime is well worth its cost to the average soccer fan in the street. It is so important that laws have been passed by the Italian national parliament. Infront Italy is contracted by the Italian football leagues (Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie A and Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie B) to provide domestic media outlets with highlights for news purposes in compliance with the Italian law. The broadcasters can select interesting action during a live match stream, and will receive that content rapidly from the central production and archiving workflow system for their personalised editing.
Mat Shell, Harris Broadcast
Communications.
Also, thanks to Harris technology, Infront is providing Italian mobile phone network operators with live football video content for distribution to their subscribers. Through a media gateway connected to the system, the Infront editors can create goal clips directly on the timeline of the NLE (non-linear editor) during the live event. The clips are sent to the mobile telecom operators for immediate distribution to end users.
Finally, to exploit archive rights both inside and outside of Italy, Infront has created and manages an indexed HD digital archive of Italian league football, which is remotely accessible by broadcasters, production companies, football club TV channels and event sponsors.
How does Harris do that?
Infront Italy’s business requirement was to have soccer action available for viewing on a mobile device three minutes after it took place, allowing the mobile platform to charge for this service. The Harris workflow, based on intelligent media asset management (MAM) systems and super-fast video servers, enables this to take place. The solution deployed by Harris system integrator Prevideo at Infront Italy is a highly integrated digital workflow built around an Invenio
30 l ibe l november/december 2012 l
www.ibeweb.com
The tight integration of the Invenio digital asset management with the NEXIO AMP video servers not only allows Infront to record content into a central storage facility, but also allows the live logging and editing of content in high or low resolution as the game is being recorded.
The system includes 14 record ports, all offering scheduled live ingest through Invenio Capture as well as live proxy logging. Invenio Insight allows users to view the live content being recorded and to add metadata to clips. Simultaneously, low-resolution files are created by the third-party IPV Curator system, which is integrated into NEXIO. Curator streams files out of the NEXIO SAN and makes them accessible for annotation to low-res clients or transcodes them for mobile phone distribution.
30 Final Cut Pro editors are connected to NEXIO and provide direct access to content on the NEXIO SAN as it is being recorded. Editors can prepare TV, web and mobile phone
digital asset management core. The system integrates a number of Harris technologies such as NEXIO AMP video server and storage units, a large Platinum router with a 512 x 1024 video matrix and 6800+ fibre technology; as well as third-party IPV Curator low bit-rate video technology and EMC Isilon storage.
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