The oldest and most prestigious major championship in tennis, which has a worldwide audience of nearly two billion viewers across 200 countries.
Since 2007 Timeline has provided a large host broadcaster IP Director solution for the Wimbledon tournament. Over 50 IP Director terminals give the major broadcasters onsite at SW19 access to logged footage from current and past tournaments.
At the heart of the system 16 EVS XT3 Servers record all the televised courts, EVS melt reels, Interviews and ENG material. As the footage is ingested it is logged through a combination of live statistical information from IBM’s on-court scoring system and a team of producers, in a dedicated logging room, adding editorial and subjective information.
The media and rich metadata is available “live” in IP Director as the action unfolds.Further supplementing the current years action and enhancing the available content is an extensive archive of matches, comps, ENG and Official Films dating back to 2007, all logged and online in the IP Director Nearline, readily available for searching and browsing. The Nearline consists of a Harmonic MediaGrid providing over 350TB of fast data access.
A redundant XSquare cluster manages a pool of 18 XTAccess servers for streaming up to 40 live feeds and generating a Low-Res browsing proxy. Also configured within XSquare are the transfers by XTAccess of media to broadcast partners chosen edit platform or transmission servers.
Among these clients, IMG use the system to produce the world feed nightly highlights programme. The BBC also use the system to enhance the continuous live coverage across their two major networks and compile the Today at Wimbledon highlights offer.
New for 2015 Timeline supplied an Adobe Premiere Pro edit platform for IMG’s editing requirements. Editors on site used EVS IPLink to quickly search for media using the logging and metadata information entered in IPDirector, and then edited in place with the media on the Nearline.
Staff, producing material for the web, were based offsite at IMG London headquarters and edited using Adobe Anywhere. Editors had access to all the material on site from remote IPBrowse stations and edited from on-the-fly proxies. No Hi Res media left site and completed edits were encoded on site and uploaded directly to the AELTC and sponsors websites.
Working with IMG and AELTC Timeline trialed Wimbledon Player. Built on Reach Engine from Levels Beyond technology matches, comps and ENG were available on a Wimbledon themed website. Users could browse, view and download the clips for offline viewing.
In 2015 Timeline Television also provided the Outside Broadcast and technology facilities for BBC International’s French Client beIN Sports. Timeline TV provide full installation, training, on-site editing and support throughout the tournament and set the standard for tapeless workflows on major sporting events.
