Fox Sports teams up with EVS for an eye-catching HDR coverage of Super Bowl LIV posted: 20/03/2020
Customer profile Boasting an extensive portfolio of world-class sporting events, FOX Sports is one of the leading broadcast networks in the US. The Los Angeles-headquartered network is home for MLB, NASCAR, USGA and NFL coverage as well as one of the three main broadcast television rightsholders of the nations' highest-rated annual TV spectacle, the NFL Super Bowl. On February 2, 2020, the 54th edition of the NFL World Championship - known as Super Bowl LIV - marked FOX Sports' ninth broadcast of the big game, which was delivered to an audience of millions, live from the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
The challenge For Super Bowl LIV, FOX's mission was to take all the action of the game and excitement of the show to air with the most visually stunning results. To begin with, FOX Sports announced that the entire event would be broadcast in High Dynamic Range (HDR), a first in Super Bowl history. The game, the halftime show and the pre and post-game studio programming would all be natively produced in 1080p 60fps HDR. While this decision to switch to the next-generation format meant that viewers would benefit from a higher picture quality all throughout the show, it also meant the production would require up to two times more bandwidth than the 1080i SDR productions of previous seasons.
Moreover, this new production setup needed to be able to handle the unprecedented number of live feeds. With over 100 cameras deployed on site, FOX Sports had every angle covered, enhancing their storytelling capabilities, but also increasing the overall complexity of the operation.
More than ever, FOX Sports needed peace of mind in knowing they could rely on a solid production infrastructure to successfully undertake this ambitious project. They set out to build a full HDR-capable infrastructure that could easily accommodate the increased bandwidth requirements, and which integrated the latest technological innovations for a greater visual storytelling of the 54th Super Bowl championship.
The solution FOX Sports partnered with facilities' provider Game Creek for the pre-game, game and post-game programming. A total of 39 EVS servers were spread over multiple mobile production units, ingesting content from the 100+ cameras onsite and used to create replays and highlight packages. The live feeds included those from over 20 pylon cameras surrounding the endzones and around 20 super motion cameras capturing the HDR content at 3x, 6x or 8x the standard frame rates.
The actual game production was covered by 26 XT-VIA live production servers split between the FATS (Feed All Trucks Signals) room and the Game Creek Encore production unit, and a dozen additional EVS servers were deployed in Game Creek's Cleatus and Bravo units for the studio and show productions. To provide the critical underlying connectivity, the XT-VIA servers were running on the XNet-VIA ethernet media sharing network and interconnected through three redundant XHub-VIA switches for highly secured operations.
EVS' IPDirector Live PAM software suite, accessible through 12 workstations, allowed the production crew to control and manage all the HDR content from the game as well as the pre and post shows available on the EVS platform.
The broadcaster deployed just over 1 Petabytes of shared storage across six XStore chassis combined into a single system. As a result, operators benefitted from a reliable storage system, which was optimized for bandwidth and offered a single point of access to all content, including archives and post-production edits created on Adobe Premier Pro.
Mike Davies of FOX Sports
Also part of the workflow, were EVS' Xsquare orchestration software and XTAccess transfer engines, used to facilitate archive and restore processes between the live recorded content on the XNet-VIA network and post-production content.
Back at their premises over 2000 miles away in Los Angeles, FOX Sports deployed two additional XT-VIA servers that were connected to Viz Libero systems in order to add 3D virtual graphics to the EVS streams to assist in play analysis. The feeds were sent from Miami through MediaKind encoders/decoders and routed to the two XT-VIAs connected by XNet-VIA.
To deliver crystal-clear replays of the action and help tell a better story, more than 22 Super Motion cameras were used for the game. However, while the pylons around the endzones offer a good view of the most critical action, their constrained size means the use of high frame rate cameras is not feasible for those positions. To overcome this challenge, the broadcaster used EVS' AI Super Slow Motion system, an innovative proof of concept (POC), which leverages the power of artificial intelligence to enable the creation of super slow motion replays from the regular frame rate cameras embedded in the pylons. Thanks to this system, operators could process any clip from the XT-VIA network to triple the number of frames. Pylon cam clips went from 60fps to 180fps, while super slow motion cameras went from 360fps to 1080fps.
Halftime Show with Jenniffer Lopez and Shakira
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
14/07/2025
The Royal Moroccan Air Force hosted a C-130 award ceremony with L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert a...
14/07/2025
UK launch set for September, following on from recent US and Germany releases
London - UK, July 14, 2025 - Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, da...
14/07/2025
SHENZHEN, China Telycam has added control options for its portfolio of pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras with a new plug-in for Elgato's Stream Deck family of con...
14/07/2025
The awards are open to IBC2025 show exhibitors and offer a valuable platform for companies to raise awareness for the new products and solutions they will be la...
14/07/2025
Clear-Com is excited to announce a significant expansion of the award-winning Arcadia Central Station with new software updates. Together, these releases dram...
14/07/2025
Grass Valley and Daktronics today announced a strategic technology partnership that unites Grass Valley's live production expertise with Daktronics' lea...
14/07/2025
Cloud playout solutions provider, Veset, and swXtch.io, provider of cloud-based multicast and reliable networking solutions, are partnering to deliver multicast...
14/07/2025
Tintri , a DDN subsidiary and leader in AI-powered data management solutions, today announces a game-changing and award-winning refresh to its global Partner P...
14/07/2025
HighField AI, the broadcast industry's first agentic and multimodal AI platform for automating graphics production, is now commercially available. Developed...
14/07/2025
Encompass Digital Media has today announced that it has been delivering a complex global services project for DAZN, the world s leading sports entertainment pla...
14/07/2025
MASV (massive.io), the fastest, most reliable large file transfer platform trusted by over 10,000 global organizations, announced today it will showcase its nex...
14/07/2025
Calrec is introducing a series of usability, customisation and system enhancements across the entire range of Argo consoles at IBC 2025, on Stand 8.C47. Look ou...
14/07/2025
Fincons Group, IT business consultancy and systems integrator company with more than 40 years of experience in the market, is proud to announce a new engagement...
14/07/2025
Stand 5.F45, IBC2025, Amsterdam, 12 15 September 2025 Intinor returns to IBC to present the latest updates to its Direkt series. A key development on show is ...
14/07/2025
Sony's New Coach's Headset Was Designed in Collaboration With the NFL Featuring a custom dynamic boom mic, the headset will debut in the fall By Dan Da...
14/07/2025
Live From MLB All-Star 2025: MLB Network's Marc Caiafa and Tom Guidice on th...
14/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix ISP Speed Index for June 2025
Product
14 July 2025
Global
Link copied to clipboard
One percent of Internet Service Providers (ISP...
14/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Begins Filming The Map of Longing With Al cia Falc , P...
14/07/2025
This July marks 100 days since I officially stepped into the role of CEO at Grass Valley, a milestone not of abrupt change, but of confident continuity.
Unlike...
14/07/2025
Enhancing Public Service Broadcasting with
Innovation, Accuracy & Sustainability
New regional detail and local towns featured...
13/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Expands B&B Universe' with Yu Jae Seok's B&B ...
13/07/2025
Live From MLB All-Star 2025: MLB Network Marks Five Straight Years of Onsite MLB...
12/07/2025
Ryan Coogler accepting the 2013 Vanguard Award. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez.
Editor's Note: In honor of Fruitvale Station s 12th anniversary, we're d...
12/07/2025
Key Code Education, the professional training division of Key Code Media, proudly announces a major update to its Adobe Premiere Pro Engineering and Advanced Op...
12/07/2025
Key Code Education, a leader in instructor-led post production training for over...
12/07/2025
As the death toll continues to mount, with at least 120 killed and more than 170 people still missing on July 10 from devastating Texas floods, a number of broa...
12/07/2025
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., and MIAMI -DirecTV and TelevisaUnivision have signed a deal that will make the ad-supported premium subscription tier of ViX, ViX Premium wi...
11/07/2025
PARK CITY, UTAH, July 11, 2025 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 11 producers chosen for its annual Producers Labs, returning to Ucross Fou...
11/07/2025
If you've ever wondered what might be playing in Clark Kent's headphones...
11/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert and General Manager of L3Harris Waco facility Sean Ling held a ce...
11/07/2025
ARLINGTON, Va. WETA, the flagship public media station in the national capital area, has launched WETA+, a new streaming service tailored for the local Washingt...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission has emerged as one of the central players in the broadcast TV landscape in 2025, with its deregulatory policies sparking h...
11/07/2025
Calrec will introduce usability, customization and system enhancements across its entire range of Argo consoles during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterda...
11/07/2025
LONDON Encompass Digital Media said it will support live and on-demand viewing of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup across multiple global regions for sports enterta...
11/07/2025
Two-thirds of broadcast engineers reaped the benefits of a pay raise within the last year....
11/07/2025
CARY, N.C. SmallHD has launched the Quantum 27, a new 26.5-inch Quantum-Dot OLED monitor designed to deliver postproduction image quality in a compact, set-frie...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau and Tegna have entered into a consent decree that will settle an investigation into the accidenta...
11/07/2025
WASHINGTON Following news in early July that Paramount had settled President Donald Trump's lawsuit, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ben Ray Luj n (D-N...
11/07/2025
Model/Actriz Performs Lead Single Cinderella on The Late Show with Stephen Colbe...
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Too Hot to Handle: Italy Is Coming on July 18 Only on Netflix
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalItaly
Link copied to clipboard
July 11, 20...
Fox Sports teams up with EVS for an eye-catching HDR coverage of Super Bowl LIV posted: 20/03/2020 
