Niles Media Augments Graphics with Bannister Lake

Banister Lake graphics in use in a recent Niles Media Group production. Photo credit:Keith King

KANSAS CITY, MO. Niles Media Group devotes itself to sports and live event production. With five mobile production trucks, we believe in bringing the same professional quality to high school and college productions as we bring to professional-level sports broadcasts. This is driven by the fact that traditional remote production methods struggle to deliver the right price point for smaller events. We're working to change this culture by integrating smart technologies into our workflow with a goal of reducing labor costs and improving operational efficiency.

GREAT GRAPHICS PRODUCED COST-EFFECTIVELY

Bannister Lake, specializing in automating graphics, is central to this strategy. The company's applications deliver cost-efficient software programs that enhance the quality and detail of our on-air graphics production while improving speed and ease of use.

The BL Score Bug application for real-time scoring is especially useful in enhancing sports graphics. It offers quick setup and a fast learning curve for powering SD and HD graphics with up-to-the-minute game data.

The BL Score Bug application lives inside our Ross XPression graphics systems with operators using hot keys to update layouts and game data within graphic templates. It's easy to create and assign tags for specific players, stats and teams, and inject that data into on-air graphics from a single button.

We've used other systems which require the operator remember a template number, recall it, apply data, add a logo and present it to air. This is laborious and impractical in a time-sensitive production.

BL Score Bug allows us to click a button to present the layout (from lower-thirds to full-screen messages). Updated game data as well as logos and other branding elements automatically populate within the graphic. This is helpful for sponsored elements of a broadcast, such as player of the game segments, which are especially important for professional events.

Television viewers of high school events basically expect to see the event and not much else. Bannister Lake is allowing us to bring more to the experience, enriching broadcasts with player/team names and stats, logos, game stats and more.

REMOTE CONTROL SAVES EFFORT

BL Score Bug supports remote operations over TCP/IP, enabling operator control on an independent layer of XPression. Two operators can use XPression through a common interface, potentially freeing one from the confines of the truck. This person can then drive score bugs from a laptop computer.

The BL Score Bug user interface design is instrumental to maintaining a smooth workflow as events change. The user interface recognizes and follows the flow of a sport, ensuring that the operator always experiences a one-button push to trigger graphics.

We're looking at future upgrades which will include integration to StatCrew software, with Bannister Lake automatically pullin stats and additional data into ScoreBug for richer graphics with faster updates.

John Denison is a principal partner of the Niles Media Group. He may be contacted at jdenison@nilesmediagroup.com.

For additional information, contact Bannister Lake at 519-624-9231 or visit www.bannisterlake.com.

LINK:	http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0110/niles-media-augments-graphics-wi...
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