Avid Unveils MediaCentral Solutions for Sports to Power Ultra-Fast UHD Workflows

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID), a leading global media technology provider for the creation, distribution, and monetization of media assets for global media organizations, enterprise users, and individual creative professionals, today introduced new MediaCentral® solutions for sports. Integrating the next-generation MediaCentral production suite, new Avid FastServe™ family of video servers, and the expanded Maestro graphics suite, these MediaCentral solutions arm sports broadcasters and venues with tools to streamline delivery of content in UHD—with 2D and 3D graphics—on TV and the broad range of devices sports fans now use to follow their teams.

“Live sports audiences are rapidly growing on all consumer platforms, and on mobile in particular, which means its game-on for capturing viewer attention and loyalty,” said Dana Ruzicka, Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Avid. “MediaCentral for Sports enables broadcasters to create compelling and differentiated fan experiences for mobile, web, and TV viewing, with end-to-end UHD workflows and rich immersive graphics—all powered by our new FastServe video server family, Maestro graphics suite, and MediaCentral production suite. And because it’s all integrated on the open and extensible MediaCentral platform, broadcasters can work faster and more efficiently, leveraging Avid and other best-of-breed sports tools.”

Sports broadcasters can now ingest, edit, and play back more channels at UHD resolutions, with SDI or IP I/O deployment options, using the FastServe family of video servers. FastServe | Ingest transfers content directly to Avid NEXIS® storage, making content immediately available via MediaCentral, the industry’s most open, tightly integrated, and efficient platform designed for media, and Media Composer®, which allows anyone in an organization to use MediaCentral’s powerful search and retrieval capabilities to quickly add content to their Media Composer projects and bins.

Whether in the studio, in an OB truck, or at the venue, sports broadcasts can feature real-time, data-driven, on-field 3D graphics with Maestro | AR and, from a virtual studio with the new Maestro | Virtual Set. Productions can also be enhanced with uniquely sized video walls through Maestro | TD Control. All Maestro family solutions are powered by Maestro | Designer for creation of graphics templates. Highlights of the MediaCentral solutions for sports include:

• Maestro | Sports
  Engage audiences with stats-driven on-field graphics
  The new all-in-one broadcast graphics and video control system for live sports production, Maestro | Sports combines action-based, data-driven graphics, tracked-to-field graphics, and video playout capabilities in a single, simple-to-operate hardware/software solution that supports HD and UHD resolutions.
• FastServe | Live Edit
  Lightning speed turnaround of incoming feeds
  Providing sports broadcasters with a turnkey solution for ultra-fast turnaround of incoming feeds, FastServe | Live Edit incorporates ingest, editing, and playout within the same 3U chassis, making it the most robust fast-turnaround tool for live environments.
• Avid NEXIS storage
  Introducing new Avid NEXIS | PRO and Avid NEXIS | E2 hardware options 
  Avid NEXIS | PRO can now be scaled to twice the previous size, from 80 TB to 160 TB, offering small post facilities the same ease of use, security, and performance advantages enjoyed by larger Avid NEXIS customers. Additionally, Avid NEXIS | E2 now supports SSD drives to deliver the extreme performance required when working with multiple streams of high-resolution media in real time.
• MediaCentral | Asset Management
  Access, edit, and share content anywhere, on any device
  Find sports assets fast, streamline delivery of content across any platform, and enable new revenue opportunities with the fully customizable MediaCentral | Asset Management workflow module. Part of the next-generation MediaCentral production suite, MediaCentral | Asset Management provides advanced asset management for sports production teams of any size and manages the entire content lifecycle, with easy asset browsing and retrieval across multiple tiers of storage for reuse or repurposing.

To learn more about MediaCentral for Sports, please visit http://www.avid.com/solutions/sports-production.