Today, sports associations, teams and leagues, with one e-mail or phone call, can depend on the Sports Marketing Group to work with every department within Sony to quickly address their needs, even if it entails all of Sony’s product offerings. Many
sports organizations, for example, need digital asset management technology so they can create and distribute content, such as streaming media, on their web sites. And the variety of equipment they require is broad.

“Many types of organizations have a wide range of telecasting goals,” says Theresa Alesso, senior national manager of the Sports Marketing Group. “Our sports group assesses their needs and provides provides personalized applications. We get the right people in the right place—and add all of Sony’s breadth and experience to the applications.”

THE WOLVERINES' DIGITAL ADVANTAGE One organization that has benefited from the Sports Marketing Group’s expertise is the University of Michigan’s football team. To hone their edge on the gridiron, the Wolverines will gladly invest time and money in new, promising talent; new, promising training facilities; and the newest professional digital video camcorders and editing equipment. Since the 2000 season, Michigan has used Sony DNW-9WS Betacam SX® camcorders and BCT-SXA series tape to shoot its practices and games. The Wolverines video department distributes tapes internally to coaches and players for training, and shares them with fellow Big Ten schools, as mandated by conference rules. The Wolverines also use Sony’s versatile DNW-A75 Betacam SX studio editing recorders. The units can play back Betacam SP® half-inch analog cassettes, protecting the athletic department’s legacy investments and providing compatibility with other college’s equipment.

The Betacam SX recorders capture broadcast-quality digital pictures on Sony’s Betacam SX videocassettes, which were designed together for maximum performance. The system uses MPEG 4:2:2 digital compression to produce excellent images. And the analog-compatible Betacam SX machines are unique in that they can play back any Betacam® and Betacam SP cassettes.

With the Betacam SX format, we can maintain an all-digital workflow that enables us to quickly and easily create practice and game edits,” says Phil Bromley, senior media designer for Michigan’s athletic department. “At the same time, it provides backward compatibility, protecting our in-house analog assets so that we can play tapes from our conference peers.”

Michigan’s use of digital video cameras and videotape recorders underscores a growing trend among the nation’s collegiate and professional sports teams for professional AV content creation anddistribution solutions. “The number of teams that have grown up with the ruggedness of Betacam® products are finding a backwards-compatible and forward-looking digital solution with Betacam SX format,” says Alesso. The Wolverines’ football video department uses two camera crews to shoot all practices and games. In a typical week, it creates up to 50 offensive, 50 defensive, and 10 special teams edits. The digital footage

is fed into a Pinnacle Systems nonlinear editor designed specifically for sports applications. The edited footage of the team’s practices and games is then recorded back to the Betacam SX studio editing recorders for archival purposes.

By maintaining the digital nature of the footage throughout the postproduction environment, the athletic department minimizes generation losses typically associated with analog-to-analog or analog-to-digital production environments. And the coaches have benefited, says Bromley, in that the digital medium’s excellent images enables the coaches to better critique the performances of their players.

The Wolverines football video department chose the Betacam SX format after deciding to upgrade from analog to digital cameras. The video department evaluated several manufacturers’ formats, and Sony’s equipment stood out amongst the competition.

“The quality of the image and the flexibility of the format were the main factors we were looking for in a camera,” says Bromley, who led the football department’s digital transition. “We also wanted to make sure we were going to have something that was
going to last.”

In split-screen tests, Bromley says the Betacam SX cameras and tape offered a sharper picture and truer color reproduction than other manufacturers’ equipment. The Betacam SX images were so clear that Bromley says he was “able to see the numbers on jerseys at farther distances” during tests of the format.

Moreover, Bromley says the Betacam SX tape offered particularly unique durability. “We needed a tape that was going to stand up to the rugged environment of a football field and different weather conditions,” says Bromley. “Sony Betacam SX cassettes endured, offering quality and durability unmatched by competitive offerings.”

SMALL BUDGET, BIG CAMERAS Down south, the Appalachian State University Mountaineers, which compete in the Southern Conference, also wanted to upgrade its image acquisition and display systems. Problem was, the small college didn’t have the budget of the big college teams. Jerry Moore, head coach of the Division I-AA football team, wanted the best electronic media available with a relatively small budget. However, Sony was able to upgrade the university’s coverage and display technology at a cost of just $25,000. Moore bought three lightweight, shoulder-mounted Sony DSR-250 DVCAM® digital camcorders that record to standard-sized DVCAM tape, the fastest-growing digital formats, or any size DV cassette.

The DSR-250 camera boasts a tough titanium construction, which is perfect for the many hours it must put in, filming the Mountaineers’ nine-hour practice days. Three standard-sized DVCAM tapes, which each hold 184 minutes, can easily cover that number of hours. “We collect about two hours of footage of the offense, another two hours for the defense, plus 30 minutes of the special teams for each practice session —and sometimes we go twice a day,” says Moore.

The DSR-250’s three-chip camcorder is perfect for the professional video environment. The DSR-250 camcorder has interlace scan for moving objects, and progressive scan for still images or shooting a moving subject and exporting a frame of the image as a still picture to a PC. To view the image being recorded, or to check playback on location, the DSR-250 sports a high-resolution 1.5-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) color LCD monitor.

To catalog with a date and time stamp, titles can also be set and recorded using the cassette memory function. This information is displayed during the first five seconds of recording and during playback. The camcorder also employs Super SteadyShot®, a prism system located in the front of the lens, which adjusts and optically compensates for any videographer- induced unsteadiness, while maintaining high-image quality. Moore begins his day at 5:30 a.m., viewing the prior day’s practice on Sony’s VPL-CS10 projector for big-screen projection. The threepanel LCD projector allows Moore to review tapes of practice sessions, and focus on individual plays, players and positions. All the action is screened on a jumbo nine-feet wide by six-feet-high-screen with Sony’s ultra-bright VPL-CS10 projector, which outputs 1200 ANSI lumens (ANSI lumen is a measuring method of the American National Standards Institute) of brightness.

The projector is mounted to the ceiling at the far end of the conference table with a viewable area measured diagonally up to 300 inches. The unit can also rest on tabletop and features a height adjuster. It weighs just eight pounds and can be carried from place to place.

“What caught my eye almost immediately was the brightness of the projector image,” says Moore. “I didn’t have to turn down the lights, so I can actually see the notes I am taking. And the clarity of the image was superb. Now, I can actually make out the numbers on the back of the players’ jerseys.”

Whisper-quiet, the portable Sony projector replaces a massive non-Sony system that cost the university a hefty $125,000, and was installed in 1989. Now the team has relegated the big, noisy projector to the bench. Next year Moore hopes to digitize the entire football program’s contents via computer. And he’s one step closer to digital production with Sony’s DVCAM® camcorders. By adding digital connectivity through an i.LINK® cable (i.LINK connection may vary depending on the software applications, operating system and

compatible i.LINK devices), which transmits input and output signals, the Sony DSR-250 camcorder will serve as an edit player or recorder. With the i.LINK connection, the DSR-250 can control a connected, compatible VCR for synchronized recording, with record, record and pause, and stop buttons.

“I was impressed with the efficiency of the Sony portable projector and the digital camcorder,” adds Moore. “I would give Sony a game ball for the performance of their equipment.”