Sportsnet stays ahead of the
game with SAM
Case study
Leading Canadian Sports broadcaster
taps ‘nimble and creative’ Enterprise sQ.
Over the last 15 years, Sportsnet has risen
to become one of Canada’s leading
sports media operations. The Sportsnet
and Sportsnet One TV channels are
complemented by Sportsnet Radio,
Sportsnet Magazine and its premium
international sports channel, Sportsnet
World. In May 2013, parent company
Rogers Media also acquired Score
Media, owner of The Score Television
Network, further extending its reach in
the sports broadcasting market. For the
last five years, Sportsnet has been relying
on a SAM Enterprise sQ system for all its
production needs. Over this period, the
system has not only handled Sportsnet’s
full workload, but also accommodated
a doubling of operational requirements.
Scoring with Hockey
Ice Hockey – regarded by many as
Canada’s national sport – is at the
heart of Sportsnet’s offering. For those
who haven’t seen ice hockey, it is one
of the most physically demanding of
sports, with players frequently taking
a pounding on a level with what a
heavyweight boxer might expect
It’s an exciting, all action game that
commands a huge TV audience for
Sportsnet. Sportsnet also covers baseball,
basketball, American Football and
soccer. Sportsnet also took a share in
2012 London Olympics coverage and will
be a partner in the 2014 Winter Olympics
coverage at Sochi in Russia.
VP Operations and Engineering,
Virginia Gibberd, explains Sportsnet’s
approach: “Hockey is the business driver
for Sportsnet. We go head to head with
CBC (Canada’s state broadcaster) and
often beat them on multiple games
nights. “A big part of our philosophy is
that if you get all the content – digital,
magazine, radio – then the audience
can all benefit to the maximum. Our
business model is national and regional
– CRTC (the Canadian broadcasting
regulatory body) regulates that we
support regional as well as national
events.”
Sportsnet
Enterprise
sQ
Planning pays
Sportsnet shared premises with CTV
in Toronto until 2008. Three years of
research and planning culminated
in Sportsnet’s move into its spacious,
purpose-designed premises at The
Rogers Building - One Mount Pleasant - in
downtown Toronto in April 2008. Director
of Technical Operations, Andrew
Thomas, remembers it well – he led the
Operations team that made all the
workflow decisions.
“The team that designed One Mount
Pleasant – known to everyone here as
OMP – started research in 2005, and
the first thing we chose was the edit
system that would be at the heart of the
workflow. We wanted a central ingest,
edit, production and playout solution –
all in HD,” Thomas recalls. “As part of the
selection process, we looked at several
manufacturers’ systems in use with other
customers. Included in this process were
visits to the SAM installations at ESPN in
Bristol, CT and Fox in LA – to see how they
supported highlights packages and high
end productions in a single solution. SAM
was the only system that could do what
we wanted.”
There’s a wonderful
simplicity to sQ Edit...
it caters for a range of
very different editing
styles.
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Case study
Frank Bruno Rogers VP of TV Engineering
states the Enterprise SQ system is the
heart of Sportsnet.
“A critical design element was the
integration of this system to multiple
third party systems. SAM’s R&D team
worked closely with Vizrt, Autocue, Dixon
Sports, Harris Automation and Rogers
Corporate IT to ensure all these systems
communicated with each other reliably.
This was a fundamental requirement
towards new and efficient Operational
workflows,” Bruno says.
Starting over
“What was great about starting from
scratch at OMP was that we were able
to throw out old workflows and start
afresh. Sometimes it’s easier to change
people’s lives completely rather than
piecemeal,” Thomas continues.
The scale of the Sportsnet operation is
mind-boggling – as are the production
demands that it supports.
At the heart of the system is 2000 hours
of 1080i HD storage on sQ servers,
which are split into two zones to provide
operational redundancy. The system
includes 84 sQ View desktop shot
selection and review applications, 11 sQ
Edit advanced editors and six sQ Edit
Plus HD craft editors. Between 150 and
250 hours of new footage are recorded
into the system daily, across a total of
40 ports on the Enterprise sQ system
under the control of Vizrt DART. ENG
crews send their edited material back
to Sportsnet via ftp, which is transcoded
using Rhozet and then transferred into
the sQ server. Similarly, edited material in
Enterprise sQ is exported via ftp to Rhozet
for transcoding for Sportsnet’s websites
Running on full
The system typically runs between 70
and 90% full on a daily basis. Media
management is all handled in the Ingest
Area. This critical part of the operation
is run by Media Asset Coordinator Paul
Peterson, who as well as checking
automatic deletions and archiving, also
keeps an eye on naming conventions –
evidently some staff will try anything to
keep their clips on the system forever –
but Peterson knows all the tricks!
We wanted a central ingest,
edit, production and playout
solution – all in HD. SAM was
the only system that could do
what we wanted..
Long term media asset management is
now via Viz Ardome, which was installed
in 2010. It has 2500 hours of intermediate
(nearline) storage populated mainly
with lo-res media, linked to an LTO5 archive robot for storage of hi-res
media. Current capacity is 200,000
hours. The Viz Ardome has an umbrella
view of material stored on both
SAM and Ardome. Users are able to
search material and captured closed
captioning, and initiate transfers for edit
or playout or to Rhozet for transcoding
for web use. “The result is that everything
that is produced and aired can be
seen by everyone,” says Lisa Bowditch,
Director of Media Operations. Sportsnet
is now well advanced in its program to
transfer 120,000 hours of media that is still
on tape into the Ardome archive. This
all happens in the quieter surroundings
of the 3rd floor media operations area,
where footage that was not logged live
is also logged so that relevant clips can
be easily found via the MAM system.
High octane
action in the
Logging area
when the sports
action begins.
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Case study
Capturing the highlights
There are three main studios at
Sportsnet, each with its own control
room. Studio One – aka ‘The Stage’ looks out through its glass walls over the
logging, editing and news room. Games
are logged live using sQ View within
the Dixon Logger - each sport has its
own customized template, optimizing
productivity. The logger uses Sportsnet’s
Autocue newsroom system to create
script notes for the highlights packages
– ‘clip 34 – great goal’ etc. On a busy
night all 15 logging stations will be in
operation under the watchful eye of
the Highlights Supervisor. Up to eight
editors sit opposite the loggers compiling
the highlights packages on sQ Edit
applications with the producers close
by. The assignment desks are alongside,
scheduling crews all over the country to
get up to the minute interviews into the
programs.
Studio 2 has been deliberately designed
with a more generic look so that quick
changes in lighting and what’s on the
big monitors can instantly reconfigure
it for soccer, skiing or any other sport.
Its control room is technically identical
to Control Room 1, providing 100%
redundancy if required. Finally Studio
3 is largely reserved for hockey and its
control room mirrors 1 and 2. All three
control rooms have three playout
channels of the Enterprise sQ system
available so they can go straight to air
via sQ Play if required.
For any sports programming, graphics
play an important role in helping
viewers’ understanding, and Sportsnet
puts a lot of effort into producing high
quality animations and over-theshoulders to explain and inform, using a
combination of After Effects, Photoshop
and 3DS Max. When graphics are
completed they are uploaded to the sQ
system using a SAM I/O station that lives
in the graphics area.
Wonderful simplicity
Editor Chris Moskavec left college four
years ago, having learned to edit on
Final Cut, Avid and Adobe. He was
taught to edit on SAM at Sportsnet in
two days of training – “I was editing for
real within a week. It’s all on the server
in pieces – loggers do a loose script
for a one and a half minute highlights
package. There’s a wonderful simplicity
to sQ Edit – I couldn’t imagine going
back to another system – it caters for a
range of very different editing styles.”
Speed counts
The six sQ Edit Plus craft editors handle
all the feature jobs, promotions, show
packaging and effects work.
Editor Vince Monteleone took a little
while to re-orient to SAM after spending
seven years editing on Avid, but with
the arrival a few years ago of V4.2 with
its multilayer timeline, he is now a SAM
convert and really looking forward to the
forthcoming V5 upgrade.
“I’m an editor – not a sports fan! SAM
is by far the fastest turnaround system I
have ever seen, and the color corrector
is also by far the best I have seen - I got
frustrated trying to do color on Avid.
“I now use effects a lot more. It’s a
solid system. I also like that even after
flattening finished pieces for playout, I still
have the kit of parts on the server or the
Ardome archive for older jobs which is
great for re-edits or working into different
stories.”
Studio 1 – aka ‘The
Stage’ takes to the air.
Staff in the Logging
and editing seats get
agrandstand view of
the program through
the glass studio wall
that overlooks their
workspace.
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Last summer we had staff
coming back from the London
Olympics having watched
other people’s workflows,
and they reported that their
SAM system was better than
anything else there.
Complete programming playout
As you would expect, all studio
production playout comes from the
sQ system, but Sportsnet is also making
full use of its Enterprise sQ system for
program content too. Under the control
of automation, the sQ system provides
reliable, redundant playout to air of
programming content for all six Sportsnet
channels, with plenty of room for future
expansion.
Connected with QTube
QTube also plays a major role in helping
Sportsnet share media across the
country. “I don’t know how I did my job
without it,” reflects Virginia Gibberd.
“It means we can make content
available to all our stations and City
operations, helping to make their
sportscasts richer.
Nimble and creative
“SAM has been a very good product
for us – it allows us to have universal
desktop access to media, through high
end editing and producing content for
master control – ubiquitous usage of that
content is what allows us to be as nimble
and creative as we are,” Gibberd
explains. “Last summer we had staff
coming back from the London Olympics
having watched other people’s
workflows, and they reported that their
SAM system was better than anything
else there – from the associate producer,
producer and journalist perspective. It
reminded us that we have a technology
solution that we’re happy with – and
that’s four years on from installing it. And
we’ve doubled live event content since
then, added two channels and SAM
technology has sustained it – all we’ve
done is added more storage,” Gibberd
concludes.
www.s-a-m.com
Case study
At a glance
•Sportsnet installed a SAM Enterprise sQ
HD production system in 2008 following
an intensive three year research and
evaluation program.
•The system handles thousands of edits
a day across 250 hours of new material
recorded daily.
•O
ver the years Sportsnet has doubled
its demands on the system, which has
coped without problem; every day the
system runs up to 90% full.
SAM has been a very
good product for us – it
gives us the ubiquitous
usage of content that
allows us to be as nimble
and creative as we are.
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