Australia’s V8 Supercar Television Relies on EVS

The Bathurst 1000 50th Anniversary Race

EVS, a leading provider of broadcast and media production systems for sports, news and TV entertainment, has announced that V8 Supercar Television relied on EVS systems for the Bathurst 1000 50th anniversary race which took place on Sunday 7 October. Known as ‘The Great Race’, the annual 1000km endurance race at Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Australian motorsport.

As part of the International V8 Supercars Championship, production company V8 Supercar Television produced live coverage and highlights of the race with help from Global Television, a leading provider of outsourced television production services. The race was broadcast in 117 countries, with Seven Network holding the rights for live TV coverage in Australia.

V8 Supercar Television deployed 16 EVS XT series HD servers in three OB vans for multi-cam recording, live and slow-motion replays, and highlights. According to Dan Flett, broadcast engineer, Global Television: “Large-scale productions such as the Bathurst 1000 are simply a large version of our smaller events. EVS systems scale very well with our production requirements so we don't have to learn new software or workflows when we ‘go large’. We add more devices and it just works. In the live production realm there’s an expectation these days that any signal or recording can be transferred to anywhere in the facility, almost instantly. EVS makes this a reality.”

advertisment

The video replay operators used EVS Multicam LSM controllers to control the XT series servers. “The latest version of Multicam LSM is a godsend, enabling us to adjust a lot more parameters live so the server doesn’t need to be rebooted as often,” said Flett. “All job-related settings are saved in separate files, so there's a lot less reconfiguring of servers between jobs - you just pull up the file for the job and load it. The ability to transfer configuration files between servers and choose which parts of those files you want to transfer saves a lot of time. And with more central management of EVS servers, a lot of the setup can be done without even having to leave your chair.”

advertisment

The editors received footage from events as they happened, enabling them to quickly produce polished highlights packages and show closers with up-to-the-second footage. To speed up the time to air, the editors simply pushed their highlights packages back to the on-air replay operators to be played to air via EVS servers.

V8 Supercars also used three EVS IPDirector suites of video production management applications to manage and exchange media with Avid Media Composer editing workstations, and for backing up content to EVS XF2 removable archives. At a large racetrack like Bathurst, IPDirector also played an important role in giving operators an overview of all the footage on a single console, helping them make sense of the incoming material.

advertisment

With EVS’ new XFly portable SATA-based storage case, the production team was able to immediately stream live feeds to the portable storage platform. The footage was then edited offline overnight using Avid Media Composer on a laptop plugged into the XFly case. The EVS live production servers and workflow were configured in Avid DNxHD codec at 100Mbps for a fast, seamless workflow between production and post without the need for transcoding.

“The level of support we received from EVS was outstanding,” added Flett. “Even with more intricate setups and integrations the EVS guys stayed with us until we were satisfied, no matter how long it took. They also visited us at the OB to see how we're using the system and gave us helpful ideas on new ways of doing things and how to get the most out of new features. At one point they even stepped in and replaced an operator when we were short of replay crew!”

advertisment

About EVS
EVS designs leading broadcast and media production systems for sports, news and TV entertainment. Its innovative Live Slow Motion system revolutionised live broadcasting and its reliable and integrative tapeless solutions are now widely used for non-linear editing and 3D HD productions across the globe.The company's dedicated systems offer a complete production platform: live slow motion (LSM), super and ultra slow motion, clips creation, fast turnaround editing, production and archive asset management, time delay, multi-camera and multi-feed recording, logging, live graphic analysis, digital transmission, multi-format ingest and play-back, second screen delivery. Main software applications like the IPDirector® or MulticamLSM® are designed to control the industry's most robust and flexible production platform, the XT series server. The world's leading broadcasters, such as NBC, BSkyB, FOX, RTBF, RTL, NHK, CANAL+, ABC, ESPN, TF1, CCTV, PBS, CBS, BBC, ZDF, Channel One, Channel7, RAI, TVE, NEP, MEDIAPRO, EUROMEDIA, BEXEL, TopVision and many others use EVS' solutions.The company is headquartered in Belgium and has offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. Approximately 400 EVS professionals from 20 offices are selling its branded products in over 100 countries, and provide customer support globally.