Panasonic AW-HN40H TV Technology: Guide to Sports Production - Page 6

Solutions for 3 Challenges when Moving Media Files for Major Sporting Events By Megan Cater, Signiant Media coverage for a major sports event requires layers of technology and talent at every stage. Signiant's secure, accelerated file transfer solutions come into play as soon as recording begins and are used throughout the life of media files. Here are a few examples. 1. INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTERS: QUALITY CONTROL AND GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION Most major sports events have one or more main broadcasters covering a range of responsibilities, from project managing of the entire event and ensuring quality control for facilities at all venues to delivering unbiased footage to billions of viewers around the world. They produce live coverage of every match, race or performance and transmits a feed as a service to rights-holding broadcasters. But the live feed is only a portion of what they handle. Two of Signiant's accelerated file transfer solutions are critical in preparing for the massive global workflows that surround a major live sports event, both the pre-planned distribution and unknowable number of requests for short and long-form content files. Signiant Manager+Agents for Automatically Transferring Captured Footage Across Locations Throughout a major sports event, every match is recorded locally. At the same time, everything is transferred back to a central repository (often halfway around the world) and to the main broadcaster's headquarters. Manager+Agents is used to automatically transfer files quickly and securely between locations, providing lights out, rules-based or automated global content distribution from a centralized control. Media Shuttle for Specific Content Requests and Temporary Staff Media Shuttle, in this case, is used for ad hoc requests for content when human intervention is required. For example, if a rights-holding broadcaster puts in a request for a specific match or even a specific moment, a media manager would use a Media Shuttle send portal to send the file directly to that person, wherever they are in the world. Media Shuttle is especially useful when additional staff and freelancers are brought on, a common practice for all major sports events. With browser-based portals that require no training to use, a SaaS pricing model that ensures budget efficiency, and a cloud architecture that automatically scales to production demand, Media Shuttle fits the needs of high volume, high demand broadcast events that only come around a few times a year, or less. 2. RIGHTS-HOLDING BROADCASTERS: GROWING FILES, REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION AND REMOTE CREWS Depending on the country or region, there may be one or several broadcasters that own rights to televise and capture footage at an international sports event. Rights-holding broadcasters not only receive the general feed, they also run their own unilateral production coverage. Large Scale Manager+Agents Deployment into Multiple Countries and Production Locations International sports broadcasters often have teams geographically separated but working on the same production. They not only need to capture all the footage and get it back to a central hub in their home territory, they then need to distribute it to regional broadcasters (for example, across ADVERTI