Live From Daytona 500: Fox Sports Makes 2022 NASCAR Season Debut With 1080p Broadcast, Massive Onsite Presence

Live From Daytona 500: Fox Sports Makes 2022 NASCAR Season Debut With 1080p Broadcast, Massive Onsite Presence Facilities in Los Angeles, Charlotte, Pittsburgh are handling remote workflows By Kristian Hern ndez, Associate Editor

Sunday, February 20, 2022 - 8:00 am

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

The Daytona 500 is a NASCAR event that is shrouded in tradition and soaked with history. With a 63-year-long lineage, many achievements have been set and broken, but on the broadcast front, Fox Sports will be embarking on a brand-new course. In their first full season at 1080p HDR, the network is deploying technologies like two aerial drones, an 80-ft. Strada Crane, an abundant amount of in-car POVs, a Megalodon in Pit Road, and more for the season premiere.

MORE FROM DAYTONA 500:

TD John Howard Pulls Double Duty at Super Bowl LVI, Super Bowl of Racing

Fox Sports Studio Team Parks in Old Victory Lane for Stunning Backdrop

Beverly Hills Aerials Takes to the Sky With FPV Racing, Heavy Lift Drones

SMT Amplifies Fox Sports' New Graphics Package With Heart Rate Telemetry, Real-Time Position Tracking

BSI Adapts to Next-Gen Cars With New Front, Rear Bumper Cams

Fox Sports Will Still Crank It Up' for the Iconic Race

Game Creek Video Readies Encore Mobile Unit for NASCAR on Fox Season Opener

Broadcasting in 1080p HDR: Network Runs With Game Creek Video's Encore Mobile Unit Despite this being the first official race of the 2022 NASCAR campaign, the fun began closer to Fox Sports' headquarters in Los Angeles. During the Busch Light Clash at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the network was able to test and experiment with the new set of workflows that will be put through its paces this year. The exhibition race was also taking place in a new venue, so there were a ton of different aspects to get used to. The crew's main mobile unit for the season, Game Creek Video's Cleatus, was undergoing a handful of upgrades prior to the race. In addition, NEP's new SRT3 mobile unit was brought online for its NASCAR debut as well.

Our trucks are ready to go for the rest of the season, but the Clash was as big of a build as we're doing this weekend, says Matt Battaglia, director, remote engineering, Fox Sports. Everything that we were doing was new to us and NASCAR.

Fox Sports will debut new animations behind their two-box graphics.

With the season continuing on the West Coast next weekend, Fox Sports left their flagship truck in California and work out of Encore down in Daytona. The mobile unit is battle tested - the vehicle handled their production of the NFC Championship Game between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium a week before the Clash - and this decision was able to give the crew coming from Los Angeles some breathing room.

The biggest worry was moving a lot of the equipment that was in Los Angeles to Daytona, continues Battaglia. We pretty much put everything in Robo 1 and made sure it got here after a three-day drive across the country. Having Encore in Daytona with a different engineering group also gave us some fresh eyes.

A Full Tech Toolbox: Cameras Include Drones, 80-Ft. Strada Crane, Megalodon Fox Sports will be meeting the biggest production of the NASCAR schedule with a bevy of technology. A total of 45 cameras will be scattered throughout Daytona International Speedway as well as within the cars on the track. There is a quartet of devices that headline this large tech arsenal. In the air, Beverly Hills Aerials will be flying its heavy lift drone with a RED KOMODO camera and Angenieux zoom lens) and its FPV racing drone with a GoPro HERO 10. Closer to the ground, an 80-ft. Strada Crane will be positioned outside of the track limits near the start/finish line. Lastly, the network's Megalodon (a cinematic Sony A7iii) will be roaming the pit road and garage areas.

Other notable devices are included in this complement, including 16 Sony HDC-4300s,16 Sony HDC-P50s, two Sony HDC-4800s at 16x speed, and two Sony HDC-5500s at 6x speed. Another three Sony HDC-5500s will be used as handhelds in the pits.

The 80-ft. Strada Crane will be near the start/finish line.

For POVs, Broadcast Sports International (BSI) will be controlling a flurry of in-car cameras. The newest of the bunch includes front and rear bumper cams that have aligned with NASCAR's Next-Gen cars. While all of these cameras will capture the attention of viewers watching from home, it all comes back to these feeds being distributed in a new format.

About 90% of the cameras that are out here are 1080p HDR native, says Battaglia. We'll be acquiring that signal from the beginning [of our NASCSAR productions] to the end.

In the compound, Game Creek Video is supplying the A, B, and C units of Encore, Robo 1, and Edit 4 for Fox's onsite team of nearly 200 staffers. As for NEP's SRT3 truck, the mobile unit is facilitating the shared resources of NASCAR.

The collaboration of NEP's Systems Integration, Engineering and Remote Operations teams has evolved with much success, says Glen Levine, president, NEP U.S. Broadcast Services. This project brings new innovations to the broadcast compound, and everyone is proud of what's been accomplished.

NEP Fletcher will also play a role on this production as well. The company is providing five Sony HDC-P31/HDC-P50 POV systems and seven panning Sony HDC-P31/ HDC-P50 robotic systems around the track, one high-frame-rate Phantom camera system at the start/ finish line, three Sony HDC-P31 announcer booths systems, one Sony HDC-P31 beauty cam robotic system with an Abekus wide angle lens, one Gizmo robotic with a 95x lens for coverage of potential lighting strikes in the area, one Atom One POV system for race control and officiating.

Residing Offsite: Los Angeles, Charlotte, Other

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/02/20/live-from-daytona-500-fox-sport...
	See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines