The athletic department at Louisiana State University has converted its video operations to HD production equipment from Sony. The equipment is now being used to capture and produce video for playback during games on LED screens and HD displays.
Working closely with system integrator Crescent Communications, LSU has built a new Sony-equipped HD control room that connects via fiber to the school’s football, basketball and baseball venues and creates a centralized editing and video production facility.
The need for an upgrade became clear when the athletic department purchased new HD LED video scoreboards for each venue, including the newly built baseball stadium that features a full complement of luxury suites.
A new HD control room, which supports three sports venues on campus, features Sony HDC-1450 studio cameras, an MFS-2000 production switcher and LUMA video monitors. Additionally, LSU is using XDCAM HD PDW-700 optical camcorders and the XDCAM EX PMW-EX3 compact camcorder as “live cameras” for home games, recording crowd shots, player and coach interviews and other footage for in-game playback, pregame ceremonies and halftime events.
The PDW-700 and PMW-EX3 cameras also travel with the teams to road games, where significant time is saved while capturing and editing footage due to their file-based architecture.
The video production team in LSU’s athletics department also handles the production of content for the school’s Web site and fulfils requests from local and national media for game footage. In addition, the department produces 42 weekly coaches’ shows throughout the year for the football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball programs.
Using the XDCAM HD systems has resulted in increased image quality and a more efficient tapeless workflow, saving the team a significant amount of time when shooting content, editing and distributing footage, and allowing them to handle their workload more efficiently.
Weekly shows are distributed over the LSU Web site, through a statewide TV network and a regional network that covers Louisiana and parts of Texas. The team is also responsible for archiving the school’s sports footage, recording all games to create an HD archive for future use.
