Sports Production | Feature
U Florida Boosts Sports Production Control Room
The University of Florida (UFL) has updated its GatorVision control room with two new slow motion instant replay systems. GatorVision, managed by the College of Journalism and Communications, produces live and on-demand event streams and game day coverage for U Florida athletics.
The institution selected Tightrope Media Systems' Zeplay solution. The systems enable the school's production team to create "multi-angle replays, on-the-fly highlight packages and more," according to the company.
Running the system is part of the educational training for students in the Journalism and Communication programs, said Brad Noblitt, director of engineering for the College of Journalism and Communications, in a statement.
”We have a lot of student involvement at GatorVision, being part of the College of Journalism and Communications" explained Nobblitt. An experienced operator runs the primary Zeplay, he said, while simultaneously training students to run the second system. "Our primary operator teaches students how to use Zeplay keystroke by keystroke. Within an hour, the student can really understand the concept of the workflow.”
The Zeplay comes with a four input and four output configuration and built-in multi-viewer. The production team can easily monitor the different camera angles and rapidly generate multiple replays.
"This gives us a true four-by-four system," said Noblitt, referring to its four input and four output configuration. "We rely heavily on the system for the fan experience, and I am astounded by how quickly we can produce multiple replays. We can fire off a replay even as our opponent heads back down the basketball court. It is the meat and potatoes of our system."
The team also produces "melts" after each game, archived for later use, "with direct playout to our XDCam disc or as an exported .mov files."
Noblitt said the system has enhanced the learning opportunities for students in the program.
"We can easily set up a simulated game by taking our four camera feeds from the previous game, and using one of our Zeplay units to playback the game through our switcher,” he noted. "This helps us teach our students how to direct, how to TD and how to do replays offline. If there is a problem we can hit stop, discuss what went wrong, back up a few plays and try it a different way. We built that functionality into GatorVision because it is a teaching facility."
About the Author
Kanoe Namahoe is online editor for 1105 Media's Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].
