World Cup updates to millions
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/06/22/worldcup/index.php
Chances are if you’re watching highlights from the FIFA World Cup matches on television, you are seeing technology hard at work every time you switch on. Highlights from the world’s most popular sport are being prepared using technologies that you or I, in fact any reasonably competent video camera owner could use. Nice thought.
The biggest of the television networks use Apple technologies. Host Broadcast Service (HBS), which is a collection of production groups brought together specifically for the 2006 World Cup has a master control center and dozens of cameras at each match. The production team is responsible for everything from managing the feeds coming back to the Munich headquarters to quickly delivering highlights to mobile phones within minutes of the action happening on the field. They need to be 100% sure everything gets captured and delivered, and they choose the very best technologies to ensure that.
The HBS delivers its highlight clips to 50 networks around the world as the games are happening. To accomplish this the group is using just four Apple Power Mac G5s, PictureReady software and AJA Kona cards to DVCPRO HD 1080i50. The feeds from the games are recorded into a 20TB Apple Xsan server which then delivers the multiple mass media stream across the world. The wonderful thing about this is - it all 'just works'.
A total of three Final Cut Pro systems (the big dady of iMovie that comes FREE on every Mac) monitor the games currently being played and recorded—if the production team sees something highlight worthy, a 15-second clip is immediately edited and exported through QuickTime. These clips are then made available to its network subscribers.
The Japanese television station NHK is also using Apple technology to produce ALL of its HD World Cup coverage.
Using the same setup it used to broadcast the Torino Olympics, NHK is using five Power Mac G5s and PictureReady. The five feeds are recorded at at DVCProHD 1080i50 directly to a 36TB Apple Xsan server system (That's 5 desktop computers and a very powerful one to send them out..... for those without a technical desire to be bored to death).
One Power Mac is being used with Final Cut Pro to create broadcast pieces and a second machine packages the content ready for broadcast.
Finally, the second largest Mexican broadcaster, TV Azteca has adopted a slightly different approach using five MacBook Pros with Matrox MXOs and HDV footage to deliver packages from venues around Germany. (To the uninitiated that is 5 powerful laptops costing possibly £1500 each). Staggering stuff, and a huge cost saving over anything else available.
Editors for TV Azteca shoot on location, edit the content in Final Cut Pro and then connect the Matrox MXO to an SDI or HDSDI satellite link that will send their final edit from the field to the TV Azteca operations center.
The final step is when the operators output their HD sequence to their local VTR for archival and future HD broadcasting.
There is something of a revolution happening in the TV world at the moment, and one Apple rules - lock stock and smoking barrels. The BBC has made a massive investment in Apple technologies sweeping the Windows media out of the fun side of TV. No one can do media delivery as effectively, at efficiently, with the least overheads and to any platform (and we mean any - the list Quicktime delivers to is the one that is setting the standards for mp4 etc).
Goal!!!!!!!
based on an article by Jim Dalrymple