SIS Selects LiveTouch Replay And Highlights Solution From Grass Valley

Sports Information Services (SIS) has chosen the LiveTouch replay and highlights solution from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, to provide an upgraded automated workflow for its horse and greyhound racing production services.

The investment enables SIS to deliver fast, effortless slow-motion and instant replays, supporting the creation, editing, metadata entry and playback from multiple venues by just two operators. LiveTouch integrates seamlessly with the rest of SIS’s newly automated production workflow, which includes two Grass Valley Kahuna 9600 live production switchers.

The new SIS workflow includes a LiveTouch Max 2 server, in a 6 in/4 out configuration, along with two LiveTouch panels. Also included is Grass Valley’s FileFlow engine for transwrapping or transcoding camera and file formats. This setup enables the SIS production team to quickly create replay clips from a range of input sources, storing them for later use or playing them out to a relevant racing channel. Using the Live Touch Controller’s T-Bar, live replay clips can also be slowed down to give viewers more detailed images.

Chris Thornton, Head of Engineering and Distribution at SIS commented: "Live racing production requires fast, agile and robust workflows that leave no room for error. We were endeavoring to automate our workflow and required a system that allowed us to manually select the best clips for replay – and to do this with as few operators as possible. We have a longstanding working relationship with the Grass Valley team; they have a deep understanding of how the live production environment works, understand our requirements and deliver the best. LiveTouch provides all the capability we need and packs in a lot of extra features that make the manual sections of our workflow hugely efficient."

LiveTouch enables each replay clip to be saved to either internal or external storage, which is made available as a network directory to all users on the SIS network. Operators can access every clip without copying or storing locally to deliver replays or montage packages quickly and efficiently.

"With its 24/7 Live Betting Channels, which include horse racing and greyhound racing, SIS handles a large number of sources from multiple race venues, a set up that would usually require more operators to support clip creation and live replays. With LiveTouch, the SIS team can easily manage this with just two operators – and zero compromise on quality or performance. LiveTouch is both highly scalable and future ready, giving SIS long-term protection for its investment and we are very proud to be part of the evolution of its operations," said Tim Banks, vice president of sales, EMEA, at Grass Valley.

www.grassvalley.com