Sports

Comcast SportsNet Captures Philadelphia Phillies' World Series Title with Sony XDCAM HD System
Optical Disc Technology Used for Pre- and Post Game Coverage for Each Series Game and During Victory Parade

When the Philadelphia Phillies captured their first World Series title in 28 years, Sony's XDCAM® HD Professional Disc™ system was there to capture live content both during the Series and during the victory parade that followed through the streets of Philadelphia.

Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, which uses the XDCAM HD system throughout the year for its coverage of local sports teams, found that the optical cameras were a big benefit for supporting Series coverage of both the home games and those at Tropicana Field, according to Scott Faccenda, vice president of operations for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

The regional network covers home and road games for the Philadelphia 76ers and Philadelphia Flyers, in addition to the Phillies.

"We use these cameras year-round as our primary ENG cameras," said Faccenda. "We have five sets that we go out with to shoot, and then we bring back the content, edit it and put it to air. These cameras make it easy."

He added that the team is not currently using the XDCAM camcorders to air live HD footage; "we're generally outputting 16:9, SD mode since we don't have encoders in place at this point to transmit HD back from the camera."

That also held true for the World Series, however, "anything we were shooting for archive or for later re-packaging was being recorded to disc and brought back to our systems so we'd have it in HD," he said.

During the games, Comcast SportsNet did pre- and post-game shows from each ballpark. "In many cases we were actually on the field and in those scenarios we had a camera per location usually on the field and that would go to the building cable interconnect room and then to a fiber inter-connect and back to our facility so we were able to do live shots," Faccenda said.

The workflow was slightly different for the road games in Tampa, Fla. "We weren't in our own backyard," he said. "In terms of shooting and gathering, it was very similar. However, we didn't edit on the road, so a lot of the content was fed back and edited here. It was sent back as baseband video, fed directly out of the satellite truck. For example, if a crew captured 10 sound bites, they'd feed those 10 back along with 15 minutes of b-roll. We would assemble and edit here and then turn around a finished segment for our pre- or post-game shows. Working with the digitized, file-based clips made everything go much smoother."

After the Phillies won the title, the network used the XDCAM camcorders for the victory parade, positioning several along the route for live feeds.

Overall, for both the championship games and for use as its primary field format during the year, Faccenda said Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia are more than pleased with its choice of the XDCAM HD system.

"When it comes to feeding content from a remote location, it is infinitely easier to be able to skip to a certain clip number or clip ID and be able to feed that clip," he said. "You don't have to shuttle tape 15 or 20 minutes. When you go into a mode on the camera that shows you the thumbnails, and you can visually select what you want, it makes it much easier to feed back content. It's very easy for operators to use."