Serving up the Portland Trail Blazers

Blazers Broadcasting handles a full NBA sports television schedule,which keeps this inhouse video production department of the PortlandTrail Blazers busy. We produce all of the teams' shows and even theplayback on the Rose Garden arena's huge Panasonic Astrovision screen.For broadcast and cablecast, this includes the live game that airs onKGW-TV (the local NBC broadcast TV station), as well as two otherOregon stations and the Trail Blazers cable format show on SportsNet,the Fox Sports show.

We must be flexible. It's a completely separate production, forexample, to fill the Astrovision screen. Throughout the game, thedisplay fills up continuously with fan motivational pieces, playerstats, and corporate sponsored segments.

Grass Valley’s M-Series iVDR allows Blazers Broadcasting toproduce segments faster while providing plenty of storage.

The Blazers Broadcasting facility, located inside the Rose Garden,includes an analog and a digital control room. The analog compositecontrol room, with its older switcher, works only with the Astrovisionscreen. The serial digital (ITU-R601) control room, and severalcomplete nonlinear edit systems, handles our over-the-air and cable TVbroadcasts.

During any given sports broadcast we use live and pre-produced videoand audio clips along with dozens of stills. We use a Grass Valley 4000digital production switcher for this, with a Grass Valley Series 7000routing switcher signal to distribute everything throughout thefacility.

Blazers Broadcasting makes a continuing effort to stay ahead of thetechnology curve. In an effort to migrate away from videotape, we'vetried a variety of video servers. We know what the technology iscapable of and how we want it to work for us.

Currently, we own a Grass Valley PDR 300 Series Profile server forcommercial playback that has served us well for the past few years. Inaddition, when we built the Action Sports Cable Network (ASCN), we usedfour Grass Valley PVS 1000 (SD) and two PVS 2000 (HD) Series Profile XPMedia Platform systems.

Due to the reliability and flexibility of the equipment, we'recomfortable with Thomson Grass Valley's server expertise. Facingcontinuing production demands, we wanted to get our hands on the newM-Series Intelligent Video Digital Recorder (iVDR). The device buildson the valuable features of the Profile server, including stability andrealtime processing technology, while adding newer PC technology. Oneappreciated advantage: a highly intuitive touchscreen interface thatmimics VTR controls.

There's a price/performance consideration too in our decision to usethe new M-Series iVDR. With some 15 older but serviceable tape machinesin several different video formats (such as DVCPRO, D-5, D-2, DigitalBetacam and even Betacam SP), we reached the point where it didn't makesense to invest any more money in such tape technology. With theM-Series iVDR, we get four channels — two record and two playback— for less than the price of replacing a single professional VTR;it also supports both DV and MPEG-2 files in the same chassis.

Moving to an all-inclusive postproduction device such as theM-Series iVDR brings a number of benefits. With no tape heads ormechanical parts that need attention and repair, the iVDR will save usmoney in equipment repair. Meanwhile, it provides the benefits of ahard drive, with the ability to record, play, and organize video andaudio clips in a random access, highly immediate way. Since it takesadvantage of highly scalable media networking, such as 10/100 Base TEthernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Fibre Channel, we'll be able to rapidlytransfer files anywhere in the building on our secure network.

As we integrate more M-Series iVDRs, the DDR changes how we work. Wecan produce segments faster, for example. Once material is stored onthe iVDR's drive, the clips are available to anyone on the network,even as they are ingested into the system. That's pretty coolstuff.

Today's PC-based technology solves our storage needs too. The basicM-Series configuration uses three 36GB drives (eight hours of DV 25storage), but it can be expanded up to six 146GB drives (for 64 hoursof storage). Thomson also offers a Disk Expansion Chamber. This setupholds 12 drives for an astounding 130 hours of video and audio storagecapacity.

In addition, the M-Series iVDR's removable media drives will reallycome in handy as we do more work from DVD data disks. Essentially anydrive in the 5in. computer bay form factor with industry standard I/Ocan be plugged into the M-Series. The iVDR also has an option for aDVD-R format optical drive, making it compatible with our nonlinearedit system.

Right now we have an older four-channel EVS Broadcast system thathandles our live replays, but it will not support a network. However,the multi-channel Grass Valley M-Series iVDR can handle both our slowmotion and replay elements. It's easy to implement too, since the iVDRtalks to our existing DNF Controls machine controllers. We don't haveto retrain an operator to use it, which has saved time and money andmade management very happy.

Although we consider video servers and the iVDR to be the future ofproduction, Blazers Broadcasting will always use tape to some extentbecause we produce a lot of long-form (two to three hours) programmingthat needs to be archived forever. It's very important for the historyof our franchise as well as for the future repurposing of thatarchive.

When it comes to in-game production, we're still using a lot of tapefor slo-mo replay and element playback. But that will change. A serverrather than a tape machine can better handle these kinds ofapplications and others. Especially if the server has a familiarVTR-type interface, can create sub-clips and playlists, and has easilyremovable media and networking capabilities that the M-Series offersright out of the box.

The Grass Valley M-Series iVDR enables us to create something in ournonlinear edit suite and send it over the network. No more“sneaker netting” a tape cassette. That means segments canget to air more efficiently and with better quality than we had withtraditional analog VTRs.

Our success in the highly competitive world of sports televisionrelies on our ability to streamline production and provideup-to-the-minute stats and images for the enjoyment of the fans.Luckily, Thomson continues to give us the tools to make it happen.

Mike Janes is director of engineering at Portland, Ore.-basedBlazers Broadcasting. Blazers Broadcasting recently won top prizes atthe 2003 IDEA Golden Matrix awards for its in-game video presentations.For more information, visit www.blazers.com.