US Open 2013 – edit outs story

Sky Sports commenced a new 3 year contract in 2013 for the US Open tennis, an event they have shown for over 15 years. 4 years ago, it was decided for the first time to have a presence on site, and for the last 3 years, this has also included a studio, production scanner and edit trailer, as well as a pair of ENG cameramen getting Sky their own view of the action.

Since the first on-site event, Edit Out have supplied the edit requirements, but this year we were able to provided a much ‘smarter’ and still cost effective solution with a pair of edits, shared storage, and a comprehensive media management solution.

One of the biggest challenges was the amount of ENG footage shot – and the choice this year to shoot the vast majority on high-speed capable FS700 footage. In addition, we needed to integrate the existing EVS systems on site, for sending material (and match streams) to shared edit storage, and to allow tapeless transfer of completed edits back to the EVS XT3′s for playback.

Utilising FCP7 (probably for the last time) for editing, we also made use of our brand new 24Tb Small-Tree Titanium-Z video server, as well as Adobe Prelude for importing, transferring and compiling FS700 footage (and converting it to the on-site DVCProHD codec Sky needed). In addition, we tested for the first time the use of CatDV as an asset management tool. This allowed the production team to create ‘edit comps’ of best shots before editing, as well as allowing our media manager to to compile items like ‘best serves’ and ‘great celebrations’ for future use, or even direct playout.

In addition, we were able to bring a ‘best of’ collection of media from the previous 3 events – especially useful when a player was doing well, and may not up to that point have been on a show court.

The system also held match edits made on EVS, as well as every match point made on a TV court for future ‘routes to’ edits and player stories.

Enjoy the ‘story of the tournament’ closer created for the event, on site. We are especially proud that 95% of it was material shot on site by David Caine, and Oli Hallowes, our two brilliant ENG cameramen exclusively for Sky (don’t tell them I said that!).