LONDON,
July 6 -- Accom (OTC Bulletin Board: ACMM), a leader in broadcast and
professional video products, announced that Turner Sports, Inc. is on-air
with its inaugural coverage of the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships
at Wimbledon, using Accom's Abekas 6000 MultiFlex DTV Server in a pivotal
role. Making it a double debut, Turner Sports' presence at the world's
most prestigious tennis event also marks the Abekas 6000's first use
live-to-air at a major European sporting event.
Lenny Daniels, Vice-President of Turner Sports, Inc. and Production
Director at Wimbledon, declared: "After our very positive experiences
with the Abekas 6000 earlier this year at the Goodwill Games, we've
based more of our operation around it here for our first time at Wimbledon,
including running live graphics to air direct from the server. As the
director, it's given me the ultimate flexibility I need, and we're all
thoroughly impressed."
Turner Sports based its Wimbledon operation around the Abekas 6000,
using the system simultaneously to serve on-air graphics to Turner's
live Wimbledon studio, provide instant feed of the tennis action to
the edit suite while recording, and supply material to the graphics
artists. With eight concurrent channels, and dedicated control panels
for each operator, the Abekas 6000 provides a multifunctional resource
at the heart of Turner's operation.
Tom Sahara, Turner Sports Senior Technical Manager praised the
Abekas 6000 for the streamlining effect it has on an operation like
the Wimbledon broadcast. "It's simplified things by an order of magnitude:
we can create complex on-air transitions without shot boxes and intermediate
equipment, have instant access to material without shuttling tapes,
and we're saving a huge amount of time. It's a road-friendly system,
and it's performed at one hundred percent for us."
For the duration of the tournament, Turner Sports' Wimbledon studio
broadcast live to Turner's TNT network between 5 p.m. and midnight GMT
every day. Commentary, analysis, and interviews with the players were
supplemented with graphics played live to air over two Abekas 6000 channels.
Nancy
McGeever, Senior Graphics Coordinator for Turner Studios, operated
the Abekas 6000 for the live broadcasts from a dedicated Abekas 6000
control panel in the gallery. McGeever played intros and outros, transitions
between cameras, over-the-shoulder boxes, moving backgrounds and the
show's opening sequence direct to air from the server. "While I'm
working live, the edit suite is using another set of channels, and we
still have six available for things like rolling bugs and for the graphics
people to work with."
McGeever recalls selections instantly from a library of over fifty clips,
each incorporating moving video and key and assigns a unique clip ID.
In addition, McGeever is able to assemble late-breaking items while
on-air, recording items from the Production Graphics Room via the router
to the Abekas 6000 and then playing video and key to air. Entering a
two-digit ID via her dedicated control panel to recall each clip, McGeever
finds the VTR-like interface of the Abekas 6000 easy to learn, reassuring
and familiar in a pressurized live situation. "This setup with the
Abekas 6000 is so much more versatile for us. In the past, with a conventional
operation, we've had to work out a way around many limitations, but
now the limitations are gone, and my job is so much easier!"
While play progresses on the courts outside, in the edit suite, editors
Rob Blake and Richard Snape use two Abekas 6000 channels for instant
access to recorded match footage, graphics and transitions to assemble
the highlight packages for the evening's broadcasts.
"The Abekas 6000 has worked flawlessly," said Peter Fredlund,
Technical Director for Turner Sports. "It's always been there when
we needed it, and it's always a pleasure to use. It's a tremendous help
to our editors to have instant access to material as we're recording
it, with no more than a 10-frame delay."
With two Abekas Dveous systems providing world-class effects capabilities
in the edit suite and control room, Turner Sports' close working relationship
with Accom continues to develop. Wimbledon 2000 is the first of a three-year
deal for Turner at Wimbledon, and for next year Daniels is planning
to use up to four Abekas 6000s to make the entire operation tape-free.
Turner Studios is also exploring the possibility of equipping its Atlanta
control room with another two Abekas 6000 systems.
About Abekas 6000
The Abekas 6000 MultiFlex DTV Server is one of Accom's latest digital
disk recording systems, designed for mission-critical on-air broadcast
operations. The Abekas 6000 represents a new generation of broadcast
television servers and is designed for multiple applications. It features
DVCPRO compression with user-selectable bit rates of either 25Mb/s or
50Mb/s, can be configured with 2, 4, 6, or 8 digital video I/O channels
and Fibre-Channel networking and offers 127+ hours of local RAID-3 disk
storage in a single server. (Up to 32 stand-alone Abekas 6000s can be
networked into a single enterprise server system.)
Unique to the Abekas 6000 is a standard VTR-style hardware control panel
for full system operation -- no PC/NO MOUSE! In addition, each I/O channel
can be independently controlled by station automation (using Louth or
Odetics protocol). A future-proof, modular architecture separates video
and networking I/O from the ultra-high bandwidth disk recording system,
providing unlimited custom combinations of storage, I/O, and control
from a few standard system components.
The Abekas 6000 Server also features many "ready to go" built-in applications,
such as List Play, Time Delay and VTR ingest -- all controlled from
the user friendly and easy to understand control panel. Accom's "clip-based"
recording format greatly simplifies manual recall-to-air, makes it easy
to exchange material between networked systems, and allows I/O channels
to be simply "paired" for Video+Key recording and playout.
About Accom
Accom, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, designs, manufactures,
sells, and supports a complete line of digital video production, disk
recording, and editing tools for the professional worldwide television
production, post production, broadcasting, and computer video marketplaces.
For more information, visit the Accom web site at http://www.accom.com.
