By - Press Release
Category - Content Management Websites
Posted By - Imagination Print
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| Content Management Websites |
University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide Productions Elevates Championship Brand with High Level Productions Like The Nick Saban ShowAt the hub of one of the busiest and most illustrious college athletic
departments in the country is the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide Productions (CTP).
Home to BCS championship Crimson Tide football team, CTP is
responsible for producing the live video production and highlight videos
for 15 different athletic programs including football, basketball,
gymnastic, tennis, golf, volleyball, soccer, swimming, diving and more.
CTP plays a crucial role in
preserving and promoting the Crimson Tide brand. In addition to video
content, CTP is tasked with creation of the athletic department’s
graphical elements, web content for its website, RollTide.com and live
streaming for their subscription web service, TideTV.
When CTP was looking to simplify their archiving system to manage an
ever-growing high volume of footage, CatDV media asset management tool
delivered the solution they needed.
CatDV was built into CTP’s
production infrastructure with the “The Nick Saban Show” in mind. The
30-minute highlight show with championship Alabama football
coach Nick Saban, is ready to air live on TideTV the day after each
game. The game footage is cut that night, closed captions are done in
the morning and its off to air. The short turnaround time and need for a
quick process on ingest required a custom asset management application able to handle the high demands of this highly popular show.
“We went down the path of a folder structure, and had a rigid
system,” explained CTP Broadcast Engineer, Brennen Carlson. “But we’ve
simply outgrown that structure. It was fine with certain productions but
with a live broadcast event such as the National Signing Day, The Nick
Saban Show, or many other shows, we may need to bring specific footage
of a player during the season or broadcast up right away. We needed a
solution that would integrate easily into our existing system and allow
us to tag everyone in our database. CatDV was the best choice for us.”
CTP’s production studio is an all digital workflow, no tape. They
made the transition from tape to digital approximately two years ago. 25
workstations are connected to a SAN server hosting over 100 TB of
storage. Bringing CatDV into their pipeline was essential. CatDV
provides for a searchable archive of previously used clips; converting
CTP’s vast library of existing assets into an efficient database ready
to handle the demands of Alabama’s hectic athletic department schedule.
CTP’s production team is made up of eight full-time staff members and
30-50 student interns throughout the year assisting in post-production
as well as live shoots. Currently, CTP’s studio uses only two
workstations for ingest. As more and more files are added to the
systems, maintaining consistent workflow practices among multiple team
members is a challenge. CatDV allows files to be retrieved quickly,
creating a gateway for everyone to access the footage. Additionally,
CatDV provides a quick and easy archiving method freeing up storage for
their new projects.
“CatDV integrates seamlessly with our existing applications” stated
Carlson. “It’s made the transition so much easier. We’re able to
catalogue old footage (we’ve catalogued approx. 10TB of footage so far),
yet not disrupt our existing system. It’s a great solution.”
Another significant benefit of CatDV for CTP has been the ability to
set permissions. This enables CTP to control access to sensitive footage
using CatDV to customize to their specific security requirements.
An integral part of the
transition process was the customization and installation support,
implemented by JB&A, CatDV master distributor for North America.
JB&A’s team evaluated CTP’s current and future workflow needs, then
designed a training program to help the CTP team learn how to customize
CatDV, not only for the initial install, but for future needs as the production workflow and volume of content continues to grow.
Crimson Tide Productions is an example of the high standard of excellence the University of Alabama
athletic department has displayed throughout its long, prestigious
history. Choosing the right solutions to enhance the production workflow
for an already successful brand is not taken lightly. “CTP bet on CatDV
as the asset management application to help us improve our efficiency,”
remarked Carlson. “It’s proving to be a winning choice.”
