Mobile Editing Delivers Up-to-the-Minute Coverage for Tour de France
Since 1999, cyclist Lance Armstrong has made the yellow jersey his own, dominating the Tour de France with sensational victories after a remarkable comeback from a serious illness. In July 2005 his cycling rivals - and the rest of the world - waited in anticipation to see whether he had the drive, and the legs, to win an unprecedented seventh consecutive title. To ensure that German viewers would not miss a second of this fast-moving sporting event, Saarländische Rundfunk - a division of state-run German broadcaster ARD - used a mobile editing unit specifically designed to create programming directly from the Tour route.
The contract to produce the Tour de France coverage was awarded to German production company DIGI TV. The company worked closely with 25p Digital Media Solutions, a specialist in digital media technology, to turn one of DIGI TV's outside broadcast trucks into a mobile editing unit in less than four weeks. The installation included an Avid Xpress Pro system and two Avid Media Composer Adrenaline systems connected to an Avid Unity LANshare EX shared-media solution with 4 TB of storage.
"We had total faith in the Avid equipment. Everything stood up very well to the challenges of life on the road."
- Wolfgang Braun, President, DIGI TV GmbH
Editing in Tandem
As soon as the Tour de France began and throughout the intense three-week race period, DIGI TV digitized and processed approximately six hours of live material per day. This content was used to produce daily live broadcasts and packages for some of Germany 's top news and sports programs: Tagesschau, Sportschau , and Tagesthemen.
The editors were able to meet the non-stop demand for content by using Avid's nonlinear editing solutions in combination with the Avid Unity LANshare EX shared-storage system. The Avid Xpress Pro system was used for basic offline editing and administrative tasks, while the two Media Composer Adrenaline systems handled the bulk of the creative editing and finishing work. This seamless, collaborative workflow provided simultaneous access to projects and media, so multiple editors could access footage at the same time while selecting clips, editing packages, and even inserting content directly into live programming as required.
"We had total faith in the Avid equipment. Everything stood up very well to the challenges of life on the road," says Wolfgang Braun, president of DIGI TV GmbH. " We liked the fact that the [Avid] Unity LANshare EX could be expanded at any time to adapt to our needs. It was the perfect choice for use in a mobile editing unit because it was preconfigured, compact, and easy to install and maintain."
Thomas Braml, a journalist who reported on the Tour de France for Saarländischer Rundfunk, shares Braun's enthusiasm for the Avid workflow. "Without the Avid Media Composer Adrenaline and Avid Unity LANshare there would have been no trailers and no teasers during the Tour de France," he says. "When the excitement is building and the clock is ticking, you need fast access to large amounts of data from a variety of sources. Effects have to be available and captions must be inserted quickly. The journalists and editors were under an enormous amount of pressure to produce content around the clock, and the Avid systems performed flawlessly under these conditions."
" Throughout the trips, the Media Composer Adrenaline system and the [Avid] Unity LANshare collaborative environment really proved their worth - we wouldn't want to be without them ."
- Manfred Edel, Editor, Tour de France coverage
Fast, Efficient Teamwork
Two editors - Manfred Edel and Lars Werner - worked throughout the 2005 Tour de France, covering more than 6,800 kilometers (approximately 4,225 miles) with the Avid mobile editing unit. Teasers, countdowns, trailers, tour reports, news items, evening roundups, and other packages were produced by the duo on a daily basis. Instead of using VTRs to provide reports for broadcast, final packages with fully mixed soundtracks were output directly from the Media Composer Adrenaline system to a satellite feed each day for the fastest, most streamlined workflow.
The rich Media Composer Adrenaline toolset was particularly useful for capturing unexpected moments that are inherent in live events. For example, a camera team spotted Jan Ullrich (Lance Armstrong's closest rival) with his new partner, but only had time to make a short recording of the couple. Using the Avid FluidMotion Timewarp tool, the editors were able to stretch the sequence without creating the kind of shutter effect that normally appears when using the slow-motion function on a VTR . The images they eventually produced looked as if they had been shot using a high-speed camera and aired with excellent quality.
With its comprehensive range of features, the Avid Unity LANshare EX shared-storage system offered a number of advantages as well, including real-time collaboration using the MultiWrite feature, dynamic storage-space allocation using the FlexDrive capability, and dependable security using Avid UnityRAID media protection. In addition, this networked setup supported seamless collaboration among members of the editing team, helping them cover the fast-paced world of professional cycling while meeting tight deadlines for a demanding broadcast schedule. They delivered as many as eight different packages, totalling approximately 30 minutes each day.
These resources were especially crucial when new programming requests were made at the last minute. Edel explains, "Sometimes you'll get a new order from above saying, 'You have exactly six minutes for a three-minute summary.' With all of the material already available within the Avid Unity LANshare, even this type of editing request goes quickly. It can be transmitted straight from the Avid [system], sometimes even with live commentary."
Moving Forward
The success of the mobile editing unit during the Tour de France led directly to a follow-up contract for DIGI TV using the same configuration to cover the 2005 Deutschland Tour race, a well-known cycling race through Germany . Uli Fritz, a director for Südwestrundfunk, an ARD broadcast division, worked on both races and came to value the performance of the Media Composer Adrenaline system. "Its impressive bandwidth and speedy delivery of video effects convinced me of its use as a daily solution," he says. "Never before has it been so easy or so fast to call up images and sequences and then work on them. The equipment's ability to process our output into material ready for broadcast is unbeatable."
Editors Edel and Werner returned safely home from their journey in the mobile editing unit, and both agree that it was a great experience. " Throughout the trips, the Media Composer Adrenaline system and the [Avid] Unity LANshare collaborative environment really proved their worth - we wouldn't want to be without them ," says Edel. "Afterwards, we found ourselves asking just how we had ever managed to do all these things previously, using only linear editing workstations."
*CREDIT: Courtesy of Manfred Edel - Edelschmitt.de/DIGI TV GmbH