Capturing Split-Second Action with Graphic Impact for the Ultimate Fighting Championship Series
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the world's leading mixed martial arts sports association. Wildly popular among 18- to 34-year-old men, UFC produces up to 20 live, mixed martial arts pay-per-view and cable TV events a year, which are distributed worldwide and watched by millions via cable and satellite. These exhilarating events, which combine fighting techniques from jiu-jitsu, judo, muay thai, karate, boxing, and wrestling, pit proven mixed martial arts athletes against each other in unscripted matches where the outcome is anyone's guess.
"UFC's appeal to reality is a huge factor in our popularity," says UFC director of production Tim O'Toole. "That's why our goal is to deliver on-screen images that are so vivid, they make our pay-per-view and cable TV fans feel like they can touch the action."
Capturing the intensity and raw drama of this fast-paced contact sport drove the company's decision to shoot and broadcast in HD - and to use only the best in nonlinear production and real-time graphics systems. This comes in the form of a complete Avid nonlinear solution that maximizes the efficiency of working in HD, while boosting broadcast quality. The setup includes a 32 TB Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage system; two Macintosh-based Media Composer Adrenaline editing systems; six Media Composer software applications; two Avid Mojo SDI hardware accelerators; and an Avid Deko 3000 Hybrid on-air graphics system.
"While our viewers may see pre-recorded video and hear pre-recorded audio, with our Avid gear, we make it look and sound like it's happening live."
- Curtis Edge, Editing Director, UFC
Round One: Preparing for a Fight
Replicating the split-second action of a live mixed martial arts event for television viewing is a skillfully orchestrated effort. A wide variety of activities are involved, including pre-producing taped video and audio elements; creating high-impact graphics and effects to support multiple video standards; rigging cables and hanging lights; shooting live footage; and storing media for re-use on the Web and other shows.
Curtis Edge is editing director at Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of the UFC, which debuted in 1993. (Zuffa acquired the UFC from its original owners in 2001). Edge pre-produces all taped elements of a UFC show including sponsor shots, promo reels, and athlete highlights. An industry veteran, he is also the liaison between the Zuffa pre-production and broadcast groups.
For Edge, a standard three-hour UFC pay-per-view program starts in his Las Vegas-based editing suites long before a Saturday competition. The first round involves preparing pre-taped elements, such as fighter highlight reels, historic event footage, and pre-scripted features to fill in show templates. The prep work is done on the Media Composer Adrenaline systems used by Edge in the primary editing suite, or on one of two workstations equipped with Media Composer software and Avid Mojo SDI hardware in a secondary editing suite used by an assistant editor and a freelance editor.
Show templates are then stored on the Avid Unity MediaNetwork system, where Edge and his team can quickly access them to build in additional, pre-taped elements at any time, such as video shoots of fighters recorded just days before each match. Material stored on the Avid Unity system can also be easily reused in other programming: in teasers, on venue projection screens, or on the UFC Web site.
Meanwhile, graphic artists design multi-layered Adobe Photoshop files for the design elements on which informational text is placed and generated during each live match using the Avid Deko system. About two days prior to each show, graphic designer Howard Zryb loads these complex Photoshop files into the Deko system and then integrates them with text he designs in advance to create background video clips, fighter statistics, fighter bios, and other elements that comprise a complete graphics package.
Zryb finds the easy interoperability of the Deko 3000 Hybrid system with third-party products to be especially valuable for streamlining the production process. "One of the great things about the Deko [system] is that it reads Photoshop files natively, including highly-layered files, and makes them very easy to work with," says Zryb. "The Deko system can also read information from cells in Microsoft Excel, which I use to store and automate dynamically generated data such as fighter names, weights, and ages."
"The Deko [3000 system] is as important to the live broadcast as the camera."
- Curtis Edge, Editing Director, UFC
Round Two: Capturing the Live Action, Blow by Blow
Once pre-assembly is complete, Edge exports the media to a Digidesign Pro Tools system to add sound effects to the template, and mix music and voiceovers.
All of this is layered back to tape and loaded into an EVS system, from where it is play-listed for live broadcast. A copy of all show packages is then transferred to the Media Composer software-based workstations for last-minute editing on the day of the match. These workstations are moved to the live broadcast editing facility, along with the two Media Composer Adrenaline systems. Depending on the show, Edge will rent as many as five additional Media Composer Adrenaline systems to handle the on-site workload.
The seamless interoperability between the Media Composer Adrenaline systems and portable Media Composer software stations gives Edge great flexibility in terms of where and how he edits. He explains, "Our Adrenaline [systems] integrate with our Avid Media Composer software setups, which we use in our secondary editing suite and in our on-site edit trailers, as well as in our new media department where our Web site is managed. So everyone can edit in HD, no matter where they're working."
This integrated setup gives the show's producers an enormous amount of broadcast flexibility when playing to air. Edge explains, "At any point during a live match, a producer can call for any of these files to be broadcast [from the EVS playout server] via pay-per-view. So while our viewers may see pre-recorded video and hear pre-recorded audio, with our Avid gear, we make it look and sound like it's happening live."
The action then shifts to the fight. To capture a UFC match live, directors switch between as many as eleven Sony or Ikegami high-definition (HD) cameras, eight of which are recording at any time.
Since June 2003, Zuffa has been producing UFC events in HD. In February of this year, the company also started broadcasting in HD to deliver the quality and clarity that fans demand. The Avid DNxHD 145 codec and Avid Media Composer Adrenaline systems get primary credit for enabling Edge to work efficiently in HD and provide the ultimate in broadcast quality. At the same time, Edge appreciates the valuable, storage-saving advantages of using the Avid DNxHD encoding format.
"The Avid DNxHD 145 codec compresses HD video to deliver the clarity of HD without the storage or bandwidth requirements," he says. "The high HD image quality also ensures that our SD images are as sharp as they can be," Edge adds. Time is another big advantage. "With our Avid Media Composer Adrenaline [systems], we can input and output in both HD and SD formats, simultaneously. And I don't have to create it twice," says Edge.
Leveraging the Action with High-Impact Graphics
A big part of a pay-per-view UFC experience is the commentary and animated graphics that bring the event to life for television fans in both SD and HD. During an event, Zryb operates the Deko 3000 Hybrid system from a television production truck to provide up-to-the-minute, fact-based scrolls and lower-thirds packaged with dynamic, eye-catching graphics. This setup also enables him to enter new text as needed to capture the live results in real time.
Zryb favors the Deko system's Motion effects features for conveying the excitement of a live match. "Almost everything in our graphics packages is animated with a lot of movement and sound effects," says Zryb. "With the Deko, I can add visual impact to text describing the strengths of two opposing fighters by animating it with graphics such as flares, flashes, and lightning bolts."
Edge agrees that the Deko system and its sophisticated, real-time graphics are essential to the show's vitality and overall appeal. "The Deko [system] is as important to the live broadcast as the camera," he says. "When the cameras start rolling, Howard uses the Deko [system] to generate animated graphics created during preproduction to deliver information critical to the match - such as the names of the announcers, referees, and commissioners. The Deko [system] keeps working until the end credits. Deko files are then stored in the Avid Unity system for use on future shows."
Because UFC events are broadcast in both SD and HD, it is critical that the Deko system can read files created at one resolution and then play them back in both SD and HD. "The Deko system's handling of files created in both a 4x3 SD window and 16x9 HD canvas is flawless," says Zryb. "For example, if I have a motion video clip created for SD with Adobe AfterEffects, I can use it just as easily for an HD broadcast. I simply tell the Deko [system] we're doing the program in HD."
Sharing Assets Across the UFC
To fully optimize media assets, UFC shares its multi-layered, pay-per-view footage across departments and television shows using the Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage setup. Says Edge, "We repurpose media for a variety of shows on SPIKE TV, including Unleashed. We also reuse footage from our pay-per-view programming on Countdown and All Access. And we're about to launch a new syndicated show called Wired."
Edge continues, "With the Avid Unity system, I'm able to store hours and hours of HD preproduction footage and graphics online. If I need a shot of a specific fighter executing a specific technique, I need to know where to find it - instantly. The [Avid] Unity [system] makes it very easy."
Edge's preproduction team also shares footage with Zuffa's new media department. This group uses four workstations loaded with Media Composer software, plus one Avid Mojo SDI hardware accelerator to input media for conversion to Web formats with a high degree of portability. Says Edge, "Avid Mojo [hardware] works as well on a laptop with Avid Xpress Pro [software] as on a desktop with Media Composer [software]. With the SDI inputs and the right decks, we can ingest almost any format."
The Only Way to Support Growth
The tremendous growth of Zuffa's Avid setup is testament to Avid's premier standing in the field. Edge explains, "When I started two years ago, we had one Avid Adrenaline [system] and Avid Xpress Pro [software] on a laptop. As our popularity has risen, we've become increasingly protective of our brand. That's why we expanded our Avid solution to a full-blown setup in early 2006 to give us the total creative control we need."
Edge says that the next move for Zuffa could be equipping the Avid Unity MediaNetwork with Avid Unity TransferManager software. This will enable Edge to streamline production even further by transferring pre-produced media directly to the EVS system, rather than laying it back to tape. The EVS system natively supports a full range of SD and HD file formats, including the Avid DNxHD codec, to enhance the collaborative workflow.
"Avid [systems] stand alone," says Edge. "They are incredibly valuable tools. And we'll purchase Avid products as we continue to grow."
* CREDIT: Images courtesy of Zuffa, LLC.