Sony has announced new details about how the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is using Sony’s Ci Media Cloud platform to streamline its workflows and speed up their production processes. 

Sony and NHRA reported that the NHRA's content teams regularly ingest hours of weekly race footage, securely share and remotely edit files with teams nationwide and then deliver final assets to multiple platforms, partners, and networks – all under tight deadline pressures, the companies explained. 

To handle the high volume of content, the NHRA chose Ci for its on-site and cloud-based workflows.

“We want everyone to have the right tools to do their jobs efficiently and get our content out as quickly as possible,” said Rob Hedrick, technical operations manager and senior director of production for the National Hot Rod Association. “Sony Ci is the uniting space where everybody can go to store, edit and share assets, securely and quickly.”

The NHRA team handles all production and distribution for its regular weekly TV programming, including 20 national events as part of the “Mission Foods Drag Racing Series” that airs on Fox Sports, plus an average of eight broadcasts on the FOX broadcast network, as well as shoulder programming, divisional and regional events. The team serves its NHRA TV OTT subscribers, multiple content delivery platforms and social media channels.

Their workload also includes managing content for in-venue experiences, post-production shows like “NHRA in 30” and the “Lucas Oil Sportsmen series” and “Pro Mod” series, as well as ongoing marketing, promotional and archival content and a robust FAST channel where fans can watch content from the inception of the sport in 1951, the NHRA explained. 

The team manages at least three simultaneous productions during every racing event. That translates to about four terabytes of content at each event, with anywhere between eight to 12 hours of video from as many as 50 cameras connected via fiber, wireless or directly to the cloud, and the cameras shooting content exclusively for social media.

Annually, the amount of content created by the NHRA production teams ranges between 600 to 900 hours – and every bit of that content funnels through Ci.

“We’re dealing with multiple days’ worth of multiple hours of event footage,” said Megan Sewell, director of post-production for NHRA. “Ci lets us break it all down and organize it by the different runs, special events or scenics [a track or surrounding area]. We have to produce multiple cut-down versions within 24 hours of an event, and we are able to put those together almost immediately. It's work that we couldn't do without Sony Ci.”

Sewell recalled multiple examples of Ci saving the production team valuable time at high-profile moments. For example, following each year’s final event, NHRA champions are announced and then recognized at an awards ceremony the next day with each champion celebrated with a one- to two-minute video highlight reel.

“Using Ci, we're able to upload Sunday’s files immediately, turn them around to create those videos overnight and have them ready for Monday,” she said.

With audiences on all platforms now accustomed to on-demand content, the Ci platform’s MediaLog app also saved the NHRA social media team at least 90 minutes of work following each event, the companies explained. 

“Timeliness is everything since we're constantly pushing content and updates out to our fans,” said Nykki Schele, senior social media manager at NHRA. “Before Ci, I would have to go to the TV truck with a hard drive to get clips at the end of the night. Now, whether I am in the media room, in the pits, or at the top end of the racetrack, I can access content and get it out to our social channels immediately.”

In addition, Ci makes clipping longer-form pieces into shorter social-friendly files easy and fast, and also helps remote teams and different departments share files seamlessly, the companies reported. 

“We're often creating pieces on the social side that the TV or in-venue teams would like to use,” Schele said. “We can dump everything into Ci, push it out to multiple departments at once, and everyone has access to the same videos, which is super helpful.”

The NHRA also reported that using a cloud-based platform like Ci eliminates the need for NHRA to maintain large on-premises storage pools in its offices, especially with most people working remotely or out of multiple offices. Editors, directors, announcers, and producers are all located in different cities, but everyone is able to view everything, assemble a show, check the timing, make approvals, and then send it to its final destination. 

With such a distributed team, the flexibility in how NHRA can set up separate spaces for different teams in Ci is a significant benefit. The ability to create and assign different Workspaces for various workflows and the ability to quickly share access to footage with remote team members enhances productivity.

“I can easily communicate with my producer in California or a track in Saint Louis asking for video,” Sewell said. “Ci’s cloud-based transferring and storage makes our communication so much better.”

NHRA started using Ci in 2017 and has since continually expanded its use of the platform’s capabilities: uploading, storing, feeding in live streams, logging timecodes of key moments, and delivering; automating its ingest and upload processes; storing a 75-year library of archival footage, sharing between departments; and fully taking advantage of field-to-cloud workflow.

“We quickly realized how important and efficient it is to have a digital asset solution that can be used in a quick and high-functioning capacity,” said Stephen Reintjes, vice president of broadcasting for the NHRA. “We spent the first few years exploring its features and potential, and now there's no turning back for us. It's an ongoing process and to even suggest that we’ve scratched the surface of what Ci can do is an understatement.”

Sony and NHRA's tech teams also reported that when NHRA first started using Ci, the potential storage, time, and cost savings were immediately clear. They evaluated other on-premises storage options that wouldn't have been able to contain half of the content currently stored in Ci -- and would have cost millions more over the long term.

Reintjes noted that Ci’s automated storage management policies allows NHRA to create policies that push content into archive storage and then further down into S3 Glacier-based archive storage based on a pre-determined number of days, months or years.

NHRA’s annual race schedule typically has the same events occurring at the same times of year. The association established a rule that at 400 days races are pushed into archive storage and then at 800 days pushed further into deep archive storage, allowing NHRA to effectively manage its storage costs without having to keep as much content in active storage, the companies said. 

“In every way, Ci is really the heartbeat for the back end of our entire production workflow,” said Hedrick. “Having it as part of our entire process to automate our full production workflow helps us to work more efficiently, deliver content quickly and be better storytellers.”

GLENDORA, Calif.—The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is the sanctioning body for the largest motorsports organization in the world and our goal is to provide a safe environment for drag racing.  On the television production side, where I work, we aim to deliver engaging racing action to our fans and viewers on Fox, in-venue, through our OTT platform and on our multiple content delivery platforms and take this content through post production.

I make sure everyone on our content team has the tools to do their job efficiently and effectively, to get the content out as quickly as possible.  One of the key pieces of our process is Sony’s Ci Media Cloud, a cloud-based solution, which allows for collection, backup, review and streamlining of media workflows.

The NHRA has a vast library of archival content, and each race generates between 4 and 5 terabytes of content that result in upwards of 600 to 800 hours of programming annually.  Because of this, we knew we were going to need a large asset management system to store all of our content and deliver it effectively.  We also sought a system that could be accessed from on-site in our edit workflow and our cloud-based workflow.

A ‘Swiss Army Knife' for the Cloud
We ultimately chose Ci because it allowed all of our assets to be managed in the cloud and we didn’t have to keep on prem storage.  We also quickly found that the cost savings associated with Ci were tremendous. Furthermore, in unison with Amazon Web Services storage, Ci allows us to create storage management policies that push content into the S3 Glacier and then down into Deep Archive at regular intervals.

The NHRA is responsible for producing between 20 and 24 events a year, and we have upwards of 30 cameras on site. Each camera is connected via fiber, wireless or directly to the cloud and we get that data back to our users quickly and efficiently.  The camera-to-cloud workflow in Ci means we can rapidly get assets from our multiple cameras back to Ci and ready to be used by our content team.

We also use Ci to automate ingest and upload. Camera feeds are recorded in EVS and files are exported by the Xfile and then sent to a NAS location that is set up as a watch folder in Ci Relay, which uses transfer acceleration and bandwidth management to automatically upload files to the right locations in Ci, giving us instant access when we need them.  Making our content available to our editors with speed and ease allows us to deliver the experience that our fans expect, whether it’s televised or on our social platform.

Live Streaming With Ci
In addition, we’re live streaming 10–12 hours a day to our fans.  Every bit of that funnels through Ci, making it easily available for our social team, marketing team and sales team to go in and look at anything that’s been on our OTT or on television.  They can grab it for a proof of performance, send it to a marketer to show what we’ve done for them on-air or get it to our cloud-based editing team so they can turn it around and create new assets that are ready for the next show nearly instantaneously.

Ci really is the heartbeat for the backend of our entire production workflow, whether it’s providing the storylines in the television show, an item on social media, a regular post or something that marketing can use to sell tickets.  

More information is available at www.cimediacloud.com.

PHOENIX, Ariz.—With a network and digital broadcast schedule that includes over 50 events annually, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) has come to rely on the CV344 Compact POV Camera from Marshall Electronics, reports Emmy Award-winning content specialist and tech manager, Rob Hedrick who serves as the director of production for the NHRA and manages its live video solutions for broadcast and digital OTT delivery. 

Founded in 1951 by Wally Parks, the NHRA is a drag racing organization that sets rules in drag racing and hosts events all over the United States and Canada. With over 80,000 drivers in its roster, the NHRA claims to be the largest motorsports sanctioning body in the world. Popular NHRA events include its professional Camping World Racing Series and its non-professional sportsman divisions of the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series. 

The NHRA team use the Marshall CV344’s primarily to capture the beginning of the race and the system’s light bulb indicators. On the reverse side, the CV344’s is also able to get the shot of the cars leaving the starting line. 

“The Marshall CV344 delivers unbelievable picture quality,” said Hedrick. “I have used them in the past and they are just excellent cameras. The CV344’s auto-iris feature is great because we don’t have to shade the camera every time something changes. It is also excellent at night.”

Hedrick and his team have found that drag racing fans are incredibly loyal to the sport regardless of what level of racing it is. “Drag racing fans love content and love to watch racing,” added Hedrick. “In an effort to deliver more content, we started doing more non-professional sportsman races that are not typically covered at a national event. The sportsman side is broken into seven divisions with lots of racing across the country. We came up with the idea of Divisional Streaming Kits and are providing a streaming fly pack for each one of those divisional race groups so that that content can be streamed to our OTT channels. Each one of those kits will have three CV344’s in it and it will move from event to event with the divisional director. This initiative will bring us up to doing about 60 events across the association.”

For an application requiring easy transport, Hedrick finds the CV344 to be a perfect option. According to Hedrick, the set up includes the following gear. “The CV344 is situated on the tripod mount of a Tilta V-mount plate, which has a D tap on it,” Hedrick said. “I have an adapter that brings the D tap into the Marshall. The output of that also has another power connector that powers a fiber optic transceiver. So, the camera and the fiber are all powered off that one IDX DUO-C198 191Wh high-load battery, which gives us 22 hours of runtime. You don't have to run any additional power to it, and you can have a thousand feet of fiber. The really nice thing is that with the Marshall on the plate with a battery, the whole thing fits in two or three Pelican cases. That's really efficient.”

Built around a next generation 2.5-Megapixelhigh performance HD sensor, the CV344 delivers ultra-crisp, clear progressive video up to 1920x1080p at 60/59/50fps and interlaced 1920x1080i at 60/59/50fps as well as 720p. The CV344 utilizes a full-sized BNC (3GSDI) output on rear panel and locking I/O connection for power, control, and stereo audio input (embedded on 3GSDI output). The CV344's CS lens mount offers a wide range of prime and varifocal lens options from ultra-wide to telephoto.

“The CV344 is awesome,” added Hedrick. “It’s size, picture quality, cost and durability are all fantastic. It is a great camera and I'm really thrilled that it’s fitting our needs. I really like how compact this whole thing is, and the fact that it can run on a battery and you do not have to run a million miles of extension cords. I think that is such an advantage to us because our finish line is literally 1,320 feet away from the starting line, and then that's another thousand feet up to the booth.”

VAN NUYS, Calif.—Alongside the race cars revving their engines at a recent NHRA event at the Atlanta Dragway, PSSI Global Services had a single transmission vehicle that served as a center for event coverage. Via satellite, the truck provided high-speed internet, AWS/Sony web streaming and broadcast transmission services. To do so, PSSI used one of its large-aperture C-band trucks to transfer and receive across two transponders of Eutelsat 113.

Throughout the four days of the event, and without an available fiber infrastructure, PSSI provided video backhaul services via satellite for the broadcast on Fox Sports 1.

The high-speed internet needed for the event came through PSSI International Teleport (PIT) in collaboration with Eutelsat to create a two-way IP over satellite system. The internet provided NHRA with the desired bandwidth and customized upload and download speeds.

Encoders at PIT helped provide AWS/Sony web streaming, taking in the feed from the event and distributing it to the appropriate streaming platforms. The encoders were able to accommodate all video formats and protocols, received feeds from any delivery mechanism and push content to any CDN or streaming site.

This was part of a continued relationship between NHRA, as PSSI also works with AT&T Global Video Services for other races where there is fiber infrastructure.