Case Study: Fighting Irish Revamp Their Digital Video Workflow

All streaming encoding starts on an ad hoc basis, 预设的组合, 程序, and file transfer practices cobbled together to get the job done. This workflow remains in place until someone looks at the big picture and concludes that you could do more -- much more -- if you had the proper tools in place. 然后，他们去购物.

 

This is the story about how one enterprise -- the University of Notre Dame -- acquired new technology, 包括Telestream, 公司.Vantage Transcode Pro工作流解决方案, 这使他们能够制作更多的片段, 从更多的来源, and make them available to their fans faster than ever before. 值得注意的是, the system was installed in the midst of an undefeated football season that culminated with a shot at the national championship.

 

 

Notre Dame has one of the largest and most avid groups of alumni and other fans in the country. While all football games and many other sporting events are televised, the university also aggressively posts highlight clips and other content to the Notre Dame Athletics YouTube channel (go2sm.com/notredame), which currently has more than 10,000 subscribers and 8 million video views. Notre Dame also posts additional clips to a Notre Dame channel on Comcast.

 

斯科特·莱因哈特说, the lead technologist for Fighting Irish Digital Media, efforts such as the YouTube channel are about more than sharing highlights -- they’re promoting the Notre Dame brand through the lens of athletics, as envisioned by athletic director Jack Swarbrick. 然而, 在2012年莱因哈特到来之前, Notre Dame didn’t have the facilities or workflows in place to accomplish that effectively and efficiently.

 

The 程序 used to produce highlight clips at football games were a perfect example. Notre Dame excerpts these highlights from the network broadcast and via their own shooters, 配备了四台松下P2相机, 策略性地放在更衣室里, 在场外, and in the stands; the idea is to capture the game-day ambience and provide a feel for what it’s like to be on the ground in South Bend, 印第安纳州.，在比赛日. 在部署Telestream之前, Notre Dame captured the network feeds from the broadcast truck onto P2 cards.

 

中场休息时, the cards containing the first-half broadcast and those from the independent Notre Dame shooters were biked to four editors working in disparate locations using MacBook Pro notebooks. 然后, 在摄入到Final Cut Pro 7中, P2镜头被转换成ProRes格式, 一个计算密集且耗时的过程. 后摄取, 编辑们制作了最精彩的片段, 被渲染成ProRes文件吗, 在压缩器中编码上传, and uploaded to YouTube or Comcast from the notebook. As a result, clips didn’t start appearing on YouTube until well into the third quarter, or later.

 

According to Rinehart, speed wasn’t the only problem, or even the most serious problem. 他解释道, “没有标准化的命名约定, 共享存储, 档案计划, 或者备份计划. 简而言之, there was no plan to preserve and archive the footage so that we could efficiently use it down the road.”

 

 

莱因哈特也提到了这一点, in addition to helping promote the Notre Dame brand, the athletic department serves as a laboratory for the rest of the university, where many departments were also attempting to come to grips with how to manage their burgeoning libraries of digital media. 幸运的是, athletic director Swarbrick recognized that the athletic department needed to improve how it produced and managed its digital media and lobbied for a budget to get that accomplished. Part of the budget was for a new centralized studio and production facility; part of it was allocated for media management and workflow.

 

后一种功能, 加强媒体管理, was one of Rinehart’s most significant charges when he came to Notre Dame. With a total of 22 years spent in digital media and library operations with NASCAR and the PGA, 莱因哈特完全胜任了这项任务. 特别是, Rinehart had worked with Telestream Pipeline at NASCAR, helping to create the Replay system that enabled NASCAR officials to view 18 cameras in sync for their version of instant replay. 在回顾了圣母大学比赛日的工作流程之后, he saw an immediate opportunity to harness that same technology to speed the university’s game-day edits. He also knew that Telestream offered workflow products that could streamline the production workflow for Notre Dame editors.

 

 

所以他联系了他在Telestream的联系人, who proposed a system that combined multiple Pipeline HD units along with the Vantage workflow system. 签订合同, and the system was installed in the new Notre Dame production facility in September 2012, 在足球赛季开始时. Telestream lead application engineer Brian Mollet, an experienced professional with more than 50 installs under his belt, 是谁负责安装的.