Live From Super Bowl LIV: CMSI Powers a Robust Postproduction Workflow Experimenting In HDR Monitoring

Live From Super Bowl LIV: CMSI Powers a Robust Postproduction Workflow Experimenting In HDR Monitoring With more file formats flooding a busy compound, the vendor has made sense of it all for Fox Sports' edit team By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Saturday, February 1, 2020 - 6:42 pm

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File-based video formats is high-dynmaic range, standard dynamic range. Video resolutions ranging from 1080p to 4K and even 8K. Production trucks built on SDI and IP infrstarctures. There's the full gamut of video workflows floating around the very busy production compound at Hard Rock Stadium for Super Bowl 54 and Fox Sports has entrusted the team at Creative Mobile Solutions Inc. (CMSI) to make sense of it all.

Fox Sports postproduction producers and editors, stations in the production compound at Hard Rock Stadium, are supported by a technological infrastructure implemented and overseen by Creative Mobile Solutions Inc.

CMSI, a longtime partner of Fox, is out in force, establishing workflows to ensure that the postproduction edit teams covering Super Bowl LIV have all the tools and support they need to churn out the necessary wealth of content that this game will demand.

We're looking to build as many file-based efficiencies for [Fox Sports] as possible, says Noah Gusdorff, founder and CEO of CMSI. There's the whole facilities and equipment aspect of what we do but there's also the design of understanding what their goals are and helping them build a system that meets those goals while leaving it flexible enough for expansion and change once you get into the project and different or expanding demands. We can accommodate that without a massive reconfiguration and do it as quickly as possible.

Six CMSI staffers have been on-site (in some capacity) since January 22 putting the entire infrastructure in place. CMSI has provided Fox Sports with nine edit bays, two DaVinci color correction bays, and 16 producer stations for content creators to work in. Those stations all integrate the various file-based video formats on site and utilizes Fox's cloud-based workflow with IBM Aspera and AWS while also weaving in media processing with Telestream Vantage. Editors are using the Adobe Creative Suite to build content.

Since this year's Super Bowl is the first to be produced in 1080p and high-dynamic range (HDR), CMSI's biggest challenge has been setting a way for editors to most effectively work at their edit bays with HDR files flowing through the systems. All edit bars are HDR capable but not all of them are necessarily being used that way.

We've really been working with the colorists to determine what really is going to be most productive way for an editor to work and monitor what they are seeing, says Gusdorff, who noted that the two color correct bays house Sony HDR monitors. That's been a fun challenge.

CMSI is also utilizing AJA FS-HDR HDR/WCG Converters/Frame Synchronizers to sort out monitoring for the editors to make it to their liking and to ensure the correct color balance when content is fed back into the primary broadcast.

CMSI is also doing some heavy lifting on asset management and ingest for Fox. They are overseeing the full game archive and the full game melt.

The company is also rotating staff to ensure that Fox has support available 24-hours a day during this entire production schedule.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2020/02/01/live-from-super-bowl-liv-cmsi-p...
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