
The CW Benefits From NASCAR's New XR and Volumetric Studio at North Carolina Production Facility Disguise tech, ARRI cameras enable talent to be deployed onsite or remotely By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2025 NASCAR season ushered in a new era for rightsholders, and one of the big beneficiaries has been the CW Network, which is broadcasting all 33 Xfinity races this season. Prior to April 5, the CW/NASCAR production crew cut the races remotely from the NASCAR Production Facility in Concord, NC, and announce and studio teams were onsite at the track. That all changed on April 5, though: NASCAR's XR and volumetric studio opened for business, giving the CW talent team the flexibility to be either onsite or remote.
The role of extended reality and volumetric capture within a studio environment continues to accelerate, and the new NASCAR XR studio deploys Disguise technology and ARRI cameras as well as Famous Group templates, which have helped the team get on-air much more quickly.
The XR and volumetric studio at NASCAR Production facility in Concord, NC
We're one of the few facilities on the East Coast with volume walls of this size, says Mike Zylak, senior director, engineering, NASCAR Productions. The Famous Group templates have given us something to start with, and we've hired staff to learn how to use the system and incorporate our graphics and XR. We have already utilized Studio 43 for things like car unveils.
The hardest part of making the move to XR is that the preproduction planning has to be more buttoned-up. You need to look at every camera angle, he notes, and there are more steps to the facsimile process. With the ARRI Alexa camera being used, we need to color-match to all the other studio cameras. The video operators are able to shade the iris and set the blacks, but they can't adjust the camera color after calibration because it has to match the wall.
All 33 Xfinity races on the CW Network are cut at NASCAR Production Facility
The CW production philosophy is adjusted to each track's location, timing, and other factors. For example, the studio producers and announce teams were recently in Talladega. Before the studios were ready, that's how they did the other races as well, Zylak explains, but now it just depends on what the CW wants to do. In May, they will be [in the studio], but, in June, they will be back on the road.
Whether the show is on the road or in Concord, one thing remains the same: the crew. Everybody's the same, he points out. We can adapt pretty quickly as it's just routing changes and making sure the right personnel are in the right places. The only people who travel are the talent and the personnel who go alone with them, like the coordinators and producers that have to be at the infield.
Production Control Room 1 at NASCAR Production facility
The studios have two different types of LED panels from ROE Visual. Disguise's Meptik division was technical creator for the studio, and Raleigh, NC-based Provo Studios was primary vendor for design and integration. NASCAR handled integration for the ARRI camera systems for both studios. Studio 43 has three ARRI RED Alexa 35 cameras with Stype camera tracking tech, which is unusual in live sports production. NASCAR's team relies on ARRI for field shooting every week, and the new form factor enables a matching look on the studio side.
It's a beautiful camera, says Zylak. It's basically a fiber-backed camera that can work in the studio. We've been working with ARRI on tweaking some of the features as we have a camera department that has a bunch of ARRI products and know how to make the images look pretty. We can flip the cameras to 23.98 fps and do a 4K film and shoot without any issues.
Many professionals are only now beginning to implement XR and volumetric-capture systems, and Zylak says it's important to know what kind of content will be produced before figuring out how large and how tall the studio walls need to be. You can't really understand the concept until it's in front of you and you're in the studio. Lighting is another consideration and one of the hardest parts. We had Eastern Lighting Design come in and do the lighting for Studio 43, and they did a phenomenal job.
Studio 3 under construction at NASCAR Production facility
He also recommends making everything user-friendly so that flipping the XR wall (as well as lighting) from one set to the next can be done as quickly and simply as possible. Both Disguise and Eastern Lighting did a great job of giving us the ability to hit a button and be versatile, he adds. They allowed us to run things on the fly rather than have to worry about relighting everything and recalibrating everything.
There is also adjustment required by the talent, who need to understand how to look into a large 75-in. monitor in front of them so that they can reference a virtual element that may pop up next to them out of the virtual floor. They were wowed by it at first, Zylak notes. Now it's more fun than anything. They've enjoyed being able to stand next to a giant virtual leaderboard. We spend a lot of time in rehearsal, which is really helpful.
NASCAR's OTT platform handles small, local events.
The new studio is the latest in a string of technology and production developments at the NASCAR Production facility. Later this year, Zylak says, NASCAR will open a new control room that has about 50% of the firepower of the larger control rooms but will be perfect for smaller-scale shows. That control room will have two areas: the main room with the front bench and production switcher and a flex room for things like EVS and graphics.
We're getting a lot of small, local
More from Sports Video Group
23/06/2025
Adventures in Live Cloud Production: Stories From the Trenches with MLB, NHL, NB...
23/06/2025
Finding the edge: How Badger & Combes produces live-streamed coverage of county ...
23/06/2025
Masters of Madness: New football format shakes up the rules of sportainment By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 11:38
Print This Story
The ball i...
23/06/2025
New State-of-the-Art Mountain Media Center Launches in Former Starz Encore Build...
23/06/2025
ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production F...
20/06/2025
Feeling Unlimited, Part 1: Athletes Unlimited Softball League Deploys Remote Pro...
20/06/2025
A True Test? Cricket's Growth on the Global Stage and the Role Broadcast Can...
20/06/2025
Sky Sports goes large for the British & Irish Lions Tour with AR graphics, UHD a...
20/06/2025
ESPN's Men's College World Series Finals Coverage Combines Innovation, L...
19/06/2025
SVG Rewind: PGA Tour Introduces Drone AR Smart Tracing, Reflects on Winning Geor...
18/06/2025
Technology focus: Fan expectations drive advances in the in-stadium experience By Jo Ruddock
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 08:36
Print This Story
For years, att...
18/06/2025
Making connections: How stadiums are meeting the ever-growing demand for data an...
18/06/2025
SVG Venues & Teams Summit Keynote: RWS Global Powers the Stadium Environment at ...
18/06/2025
SVG Rewind: Behind the Scenes of Producing Tottenham Hotspur's Europa League...
17/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mercury Intermedia's Tom Richardson, Mike Ligon o...
17/06/2025
Total Sports Performance from Relo Metrics, VideoAmp, Offers Next-Level Media, B...
17/06/2025
From Stage to Stream: Producing Live Esports Events in 2025 Leaders from ESL FACEIT Group, Riot Games, and more break down the latest trends By Jason Dachman, ...
17/06/2025
Inside FIFA 2025 Club World Cup Operations With FIFA's Oscar Sanchez, HBS...
17/06/2025
Production ambitions: Over Exposed on making the National League Promotion Final...
17/06/2025
DAZN Brings Global Ambition to U.S. Soil With Production of 2025 FIFA Club World...
17/06/2025
Diversified's Christine Williamson on How UT's New State-of-the-Art Prod...
16/06/2025
Grass Valley 4K Cameras Head to Greece for View Master Events' New Productio...
16/06/2025
Behind The Broadcast Booth, Ep. 3: Golf. My Future. My Game. Founder and CEO Cra...
16/06/2025
The REMI Revolution Is Here: How Remote Production Technology in Esports Pioneer...
16/06/2025
From Super Bowl to Indy 500, New Orleans Artist Frenchy' Captures Energy of...
16/06/2025
NFL Films Enhances Post Studio With Dolby Atmos Audio Forty-three channels of audio enable the facility to migrate to immersive By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Mo...
16/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Storj's David Colantuoni on Expanding Cloud-Based...
16/06/2025
Grass Valley 4K Cameras Head to Greece for View Master Events' New OB Truck By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 2:33 pm
Pri...
13/06/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Backblaze's Gleb Budman Talks Products, Partnerships, and the ...
13/06/2025
SVG Sit-Down: DAZN's Walker Jacobs Calls Streaming the FIFA Club World Cup ...
13/06/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Vecima Networks' Paul Strickland on How Improving QoE...
13/06/2025
Pitch Perspective: Where's Next for Specialty Cameras in Soccer? Leaders from Sky Austria and ACS discuss the possibilities of camera placement pitchside B...
13/06/2025
Premiership Rugby Final 2025: Vintage clash between Bath and Leicester gets full...
13/06/2025
Premiership Rugby Final 2025: TNT Sports gears up for Bath vs Leicester battle w...
13/06/2025
NCAA Men's College World Series: ESPN Adds Two-Point SupraCam, Invests in Ne...
12/06/2025
The 125th U.S. Open: Golf Tournament Stimulates Innovation in Sound Drones are a growing part of the action By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, June 12, 202...
12/06/2025
Virginia Tech's Evan Ellis on the Continued Growth of the Award-Winning Hoki...
12/06/2025
Bouncing around Wembley: DAZN on its editorial thrust for the National League Pr...
12/06/2025
Intense journey: Bringing the production of the National League Promotion final ...
12/06/2025
The 125th U.S. Open: The Tourney Returns to a Totally Revamped Course as USGA Fo...
12/06/2025
The 125th U.S. Open: NBC Sports Rolls Out Massive Production-Tech Arsenal To Cov...
12/06/2025
The 125th U.S. Open: NBC Sports' Tommy Roy Talks Oakmont Eccentricities, Dro...
11/06/2025
SVG Cloud Production Forum 2025: All Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Learn about success stories of production in the cloud, the latest in public vs...
10/06/2025
HBS's Tim Stott on a Host Broadcaster's Role in the Digital Media World By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - 9:32 am
Prin...
10/06/2025
Piracy poses biggest threat to sports media industry's finances By George Bevir
Friday, June 6, 2025 - 08:01
Print This Story
Illicit streaming is t...
10/06/2025
InfoComm Show 2025: Audio Is Main Attraction at Show Typically All About Install...
10/06/2025
Behind the Creative: How TMRW Sports Took TGL From Concept to One-of-Kind Golf P...
10/06/2025
North Carolina's Ken Cleary on GoHeels Productions Producing Its 1,000th Liv...
10/06/2025
ESPN's Tim Corrigan Reflects on 18 Years at the NBA Finals Front Bench By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - 1:21 pm
Prin...