Case Study: Fighting Irish Revamp Their Digital Video Workflow

Describing the installation, Mollet commented, “I was at Notre Dame for three days to install four Pipeline HD units for ‘edit while ingest’ to their Final Cut Pro systems. The Vantage portion took about two days, with a little more than half of the first day working with Scott [Rinehart] to define how his Vantage workflows needed to function. Then I configured Vantage into the required workflows and trained Scott on the system.”

 

From the other side of the table, Rinehart defined the installation process as follows: “I had a long discussion with Brian, and we made sure of what we wanted to accomplish before he lifted a finger on the programming side. He then set things up and came back around to show me how he did it so I could know what to do in the future. Vantage is pretty intuitive, but you really have to stay focused and think through all the steps involved to get the desired result.”

 

 

Apparently, their collaborative efforts nailed the installation, as the new system has dramatically transformed all aspects of game-day production. Rather than collect the broadcast feeds on P2 cards at halftime, eight network outputs were sent to the Pipeline ingest units via fiber, where they were converted to ProRes in real time, named according to predefined conventions, and stored off to the new storage area network (SAN). From there, editors could immediately start editing the footage, as facilitated by Pipeline’s “edit while ingest” feature.

 

Briefly, edit while ingest allows an editor to drag a file into the timeline and edit while it’s being ingested. If the editor reaches the end of the captured footage, a gray frame appears, which is replaced by additional footage as it’s stored to disk. Within the Notre Dame installation, the editors could consolidate all eight inputs into a multicam sequence and start cutting highlights as they occur.

 

The video shot by Notre Dame’s own video crew was delivered via P2 card to the new studio, where the cards were inserted into a P2 card reader attached to a Vantage workstation. The workstation automatically sensed the card in the reader, converted the footage to ProRes, and delivered it to the SAN. From there, editors could access the footage from their own workstations and start editing.

 

Whatever the source, when the edits are completed, the editor saves a ProRes file in a designated folder, one for YouTube and one for Comcast. From there, the Vantage workflow system grabs the file, encodes it to the appropriate format, and uploads it as required. This takes the time-consuming and CPU-intensive tasks of ingest and encoding off the editing workstations, allowing the editors to edit faster and produce more clips.

 

According to Rinehart, beyond these production efficiencies, the biggest benefit of the new system is consistency. “The one thing I have to have is input consistency; with Vantage, I don’t have to worry about an editor messing up the format, aspect ratio, or other file attributes. Ingest training is as simple as ‘put the P2 card into the reader and when the green light goes on, you’re good to go.’” In addition, from a media management perspective, all files are automatically named, logged, converted, and saved for future use.

 

 

Rinehart sees the accomplishments of 2012 as just the beginning, with big plans for further production efficiencies from Vantage down the road. “You can’t do it all at once,” he reflected. “Our goals for 2012 were to get the facility up and running and get our arms around the bigger media management problem, and with Pipeline and Vantage, we’ve done that.”

 

Rinehart reports that he’s already created an additional workflow to produce a format required for a digital display system used at an awards ceremony, and he feels comfortable that he can expand Vantage’s operations with minimal assistance going forward. When asked how his staff likes the system, he laughed and explained, “We returned to our pre-Telestream workflow for the National Championship game in Florida. Everyone complained that it took forever to ingest the footage and transcode for upload. We’ll be looking to see how we can take the Vantage system on the road, say for the Women’s Basketball Final Four this spring.”