CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—JVC is going to Harvard, or at least a few of its camcorders are. JVC’s GY-HC500 SPC Connected Cam and GY-HM890 camcorders are part of Harvard University’s athletic department to help produce and stream its sporting events.

Harvard has 42 sports teams, including football, basketball, hockey, swimming, skiing and rowing. The university broadcasts 300 live and recorded events each year, many of which now stream on ESPN+, as well as its own social media channels.

The JVC GY-HC500 SPC and GY-HM890 camcorders are equipped with production-over-IP workflows to provide streaming and advanced graphics for the production of these sporting events.

In addition to the Connected Cams, Harvard is using JVC’s KY-PZ100 Robotic PTZ cameras and RM-LP 100 PTZ controllers, mounted at various fields and arenas. Other JVC cameras on-hand include the GY-HM250, GY-HM790 and GY-HM600.

Imry Halevi, assistant director of Athletics at Harvard, brought JVC to the campus when he arrived eight years ago, citing the look of the cameras and their ease of use for students.

When looking for a camera similar to the GY-HM890 that could also deliver advanced graphics, Halevi said he was directed to the GY-HC500 SPC. The camera has proved useful in many different circumstances, according to Halevi, even in -20-degree weather to capture a recent Harvard skiing competition.

“I expect them [the JVC cameras] to work at normal conditions, but when I throw unexpected conditions at them and they continue to work, we know we have a camera brand for life,” Halevi said.

For more information, visit pro.jvc.com. 

GRASS VALLEY, Calif.—Harvard alumni who still want to cheer on their beloved Crimson teams can do so across the country through a number of different streaming services, including ESPN+, regional outfit NESN and the Ivy League’s international streaming platform. To handle these multiple avenues of streaming, Harvard’s Athletics Department’s multimedia and production teams utilizes AJA technology to produce and broadcast home games in H.264.

In an effort to boost its production capabilities, the Harvard production team added new cameras, graphics, audio equipment and other gear, including AJA’s HELO, U-TAP and Ki Pro Ultra systems.

One example of Harvard putting its AJA gear to use is for coverage of its tennis and squash teams. Six AJA HELO recording, streaming and encoding devices are included in a rack that receives audio and video signals. SDI outputs are fed to each of the six HELOs, one per court, and streaming to ESPN+ in H.264 via RTMP, as well as recorded for archiving.

Two HELO systems are also deployed in the control rooms for basketball and hockey/football for streaming needs outside traditional live production, including being connected to DirecTV receivers to capture H.264 footage from away games. In total, the production team says it has 14 HELO units for all of its productions.

AJA’s Ki Pro Ultra 4K/UHD/2K/HD recorder/player is another system put to use in the hockey control room to meet requests for uncompressed ProRes and/or DNx footage. In addition, the U-TAP SDI USB 3.0-powered SDI capture devices from AJA double the number of feeds that the Harvard production team can capture when live streaming with Wirecast on MacBook Pros.

Harvard uses this technology to help it produce 300 broadcast-quality streams a yer, per Imry Halevi, assistant director of athletics, multimedia and production for Harvard.

Harvard University consistently ranks among U.S. News and World Reports Best Colleges not only for its academic stature but also for its top-notch collegiate athletics program. The institution is home to 42 NCAA Division 1 teams spanning basketball, hockey, football, squash, tennis and many other sports. To keep its students, alumni and Crimson fans up to speed on their favorite teams, the Athletics Departments’ multimedia and production arm produces and broadcasts home games in high quality H.264 to ESPN+, regional outfit NESN and the Ivy League’s international streaming platform, and also creates ancillary content, all using a host of gear from AJA Video Systems.

In preparation for streaming to multiple CDNs, the department ramped up its production workflow over a year ago – adding more cameras, graphics and audio equipment and other tools to its arsenal, including the AJA HELO, U-TAP and Ki Pro Ultra. “Streaming to ESPN+ has taken college athletics production to a new level, with standards that are higher than ever before. To keep pace, we needed equipment that’s reliable, affordable and easy to learn and use,” shared Imry Halevi, Assistant Director of Athletics, multimedia and production, Harvard. “If you do the math, we’re churning out more than 300 broadcast-quality streams a year. Having tools like HELO, Ki Pro Ultra and U-TAP that tick all these boxes gives me confidence that we’ll be able to consistently meet the production standards expected of us without ever missing a beat.”

While workflows slightly vary depending upon the sport, the tennis and squash workflows are quite similar. Each squash or tennis court features mounted POV cameras with HD-SDI outputs and a mic output. The audio and video signals go into a rack holding a switcher, video unit and six AJA HELO H.264 recording, streaming and encoding devices. The switcher, with an Intel compute stick that captures scoreboard data, outputs the camera and mic feeds for each court via HDMI to a video unit for Harvard’s international stream while the SDI outputs are fed to each of the six HELOs, one per court, and streamed to ESPN+ in H.264 via RTMP, as well as recorded for archival.

“Most anyone who is streaming is using RTMP because it gives you the highest quality stream at the most affordable price point. We could use a satellite truck, fiber or managed IP transmission to get our signals from point a to point b, but none of these would be as practical or cost effective as RTMP,” Halevi shared. “This is in part why we have 14 HELOs and are eager to add more; they make it easy to change RTMP information, which is crucial when we’re getting new RTMP stream information for every tennis and squash match. We can easily log into each HELO via the web UI, and create a new RTMP URL and ID, which is unique to HELO.”

All footage that the team captures is archived and has been since the 1920s, partially as a means of preserving Harvard’s history, but also to aid in content creation. “We want people to know what makes Harvard Athletics special and to do that we need to create great content, which often means we lean on archived footage. We never know what footage we’ll need, when we’ll need it and how we’ll use it. By giving us the ability to stream and record at the same time, HELO gives us a peace of mind in that we know we’ll have a high-quality file accessible as you can set different compression levels for each stream.”

Halevi and team also deploy two HELO units across their basketball and hockey/football control rooms for streaming needs outside traditional live production. Connected to DirecTV receivers, the devices come into play when the team needs to capture footage from away games in H.264. “We love having HELOs in our control room,” he added. “It’s great to be able to schedule recordings with HELO’s built in calendar support, stream and record at the same time, preview videos and be able to see the video signal coming in.”

To meet requests for uncompressed ProRes and/or DNx footage should melts be needed, the team also keeps a Ki Pro Ultra 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD recorder/player in its hockey control room. Additionally, Halevi recently added AJA U-TAP SDI USB 3.0-powered SDI capture devices to his collection of gear to double the number of feeds that his team could capture when live streaming with Wirecast on MacBook Pros. “Most capture solutions available today come with Thunderbolt ports, which is partially what made U-TAP so appealing. It allows you to take advantage of the MacBook Pro’s USB 3.0 ports to double the amount of inputs and outputs you can tap into,” Halevi explained. “The units were super easy to get up and running on, and we didn’t need to adjust or install anything; they just worked out of the box.”

When the department needs new technology, Halevi often looks to AJA first because of his experience with the gear and the company’s reputation for building reliable products. He concluded, “I love that AJA engineers are listening to the industry and building tools that really meet our needs and always work – and that they’re open to and accepting of customer feedback. You speak up about what you’d like to see and often it pops up in a firmware update down the line.”

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface technologies, converters, digital video recording solutions and professional cameras, bringing high-quality, cost-effective products to the professional broadcast, video and post production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com. 

TORRANCE, CALIF.—The studious minds of Harvard fans may have noticed some new angles during recent sports broadcasts of their beloved Crimson. These new angles came courtesy of Marshall Electronics’ POV cameras and are being used for broadcasts of Ivy League Network games for ice hockey, basketball, water polo, swimming and diving.

For its hockey games, Harvard’s production staff is using Marshall’s third generation CV343-CSB/CS camera. The camera features a 1/3-inch, high-speed sensor packing 2.5 megapixels of video through 3G/HD-SDI outputs. Proprietary pixel technology provides low noise ratio and can capture color images in low-light conditions, as low as 0.05 lux, per Marshall. Harvard uses the cameras to film commentators in the booth, the penalty box and behind-the-net shots.

For its underwater sports, Harvard utilizes Marshall’s CV502-WPMB/WPM. The camera is encased in a waterproof IP67-rated housing unit to provide live, underwater view of the action. Custom, adjustable mounts are placed on the cameras to allow for placement on any section of the pool.

The CV502-M camera from Marshall is Harvard’s choice for basketball broadcasts, providing behind-the-backboard angles and wide-angle locked-down shots.

Imry Halevi, director of multimedia & production for Harvard Athletics, praised the implementation of the Marshall cameras, saying in the press release: “we can use these small and very easy to set up cameras, and not have to worry about training our crew in using new gear. It really helps set broadcasts apart when viewers can see angles they don’t expect.”