EVS Technology Powers Tapeless Playback For The 2009 Academy Awards

EVS has announced a revolutionary advance in tapeless workflow with the successful design, implementation and execution of a completely tapeless playback solution for the 2009 Academy Awards
The production design for the 81st Oscars telecast, always an ambitious undertaking, was particularly challenging this year.
More than 2,500 individual playback and graphic elements were produced for the large number of on set displays.
Playback Innovations ( www.playbackinnovations.com) an industry leader in the design and implementation of tapeless workflows pro-actively instituted an end-to-end solution that allowed content to move as files from creation all the way through to live playout on EVS XT(2) production and playout servers.
Tad Scripter, Engineer in Charge of the Academy Awards telecast, said: "Going in to this year's show, we knew that the sheer volume of content would be a challenge for the playback operation. A completely tapeless solution was the only way that this volume of material could be created, ingested and played back quickly enough for the demands of the Academy Awards production."
Location Connect, in partnership with NthAir ( www.nthair.com) and Loea Corporation ( www.loeacom.com) installed two Loea LM1000 Gigabit radios to create a secure high-speed (1 Gb/s wireless network. Through the use of these radios, the Avid Symphony Nitris DX's at Chainsaw were linked to the Pi playback controllers and the EVS XT(2) playback servers at the venue. This gave the editors all of the benefits of being on-site, without compromising their ability to make full use of the complete post-production environment at Chainsaw.
When the Chainsaw editors wanted to deliver to the Kodak, they would simply right-click and send their finished High-Definition sequences from the Avid directly to the XT(2)'s at the Kodak Theatre - faster than real time, with no loss of quality. No longer did they need to output to videotape, have a courier run the tape through traffic to the theatre or re-digitise into the playback server before the content was available for use. They could even send their video sequences late at night, when there were no operators available at the Kodak Theatre, in order for the content to be available first thing in the morning for rehearsals. Although the wireless network was originally conceived as a one way delivery system, it functioned so well that the production team ended up transferring some pre-recorded elements back to Chainsaw, again faster than real-time, without having to interrupt the post process, or shuttle video tapes across town.
Mike Polito of Chainsaw said: "The ability to send from any of our edit suites directly to the EVS production and playout servers at the Kodak Theatre more than a mile away was an incredible time saver for us. It enabled us to focus on doing our best work while not being concerned about the logistics of delivery."
Playback innovations deployed twelve six-channel EVS XT(2)'s on site at the Kodak Theatre to handle all of the playback requirements of the broadcast. The EVS XT(2)'s have the ability to record and playback native Avid DNxHD files, which eliminated the need for any transcoding of the finished Avid sequences. The XT(2)'s were controlled by the Pi Controller, enabling simultaneous and frame accurate control of up to 48 channels by a single operator.
Further information is available at: www.evs.tv.
(KMcA/BmcC)