Highlight Plays

[Robert Bass]

Here’s a question for all you sports b-casting gurus.

The NCE I work for does high school sports broadcasts. For the football games, we capture highlight plays for the post game show. The present system involves rolling cassette tape on the game, and dumping the highlights from tape into our automation system. Prior to this method, we simply played the highlights directly from the cassette machine in the studio. Long story short, we aren’t able to use that method. Anymore

What I am finding, as the studio producer, is that the present system works pretty well, so long as highlights occur early in the broadcast. But when we get down to the last 3 or so minutes of the game ending, there’s not much time to spare for possible last minute highlights.

So I come to this board to inquire about some other possibilities that could save time and allow for having the last minute highlights ready to go on short notice. We do have some limitations, with regard to budget and equipment space. I’m wondering if there’s an inexpensive, portable like device that could be used in this situation. Ideally it could be something that is not permanently installed in the studio, and can be patched in through the bay into the console.

One thought I had, was to use our Marantz flash card media unit, but there is a problem. The unit’s playback is on the “A” side of the same fader used for our remote Codec equipment. This fader is also not a part of the mix-minus audio returned to the remote site.

Before I suggest a complete studio reconfiguration to resolve these problems, I thought I’d explore a portable system as noted above.

Please hit me with some suggestions and ideas.

Thanks,

R

 

[Sgeirk]

In a perfect world: a laptop recording the whole shebang...would give you the ability to use drop markers so you could easily go back and have the game's highlights "marked."

The more computers you have the more power you have.

 

[Info-warrior]

minidisc works great for this. When you come to a hilight, you simply hit the record button and it drops a track marker on the disc that allows for easier recuing. You could probably cut out dubbing into the system and just play them right off the disc.

With a quality MD unit, using LP2 or 4, I forget, you can record the whole game. There are plenty of portable MD units around, the discs are relatively cheap and reusable many times.

 

[DarkStarPDX]

I agree with the Minidisc idea. I worked at a radio station and that's what we used for all our timeshifting. I also used it to record highlights of the live local sports events, just like Info-warrior described...

 

[317C50KW]

Robert, I've used MiniDisc on the Highland Park broadcasts for years. I hit a cue mark at the start of each play and write down that number if something of note happens. As long as I can read my handwriting, it works well for halftime and post game highlights. We do it in the booth. The only problem is that Sony is pretty much out of the mini disc biz so the choice of units is slim compared to 5-6 years ago, pre I-pod.

 

[awsherrill]

I realize you said that you wanted to avoid studio re-configuration, but would it really be impossible to move the Marantz flash recorder to another input? Unless you absolutely don't have anywhere else to move it, that would seem to be the simple solution.

If it needs to stay on that particular input for some reason, you could always parallel it on another fader input that you could use during the game.

 

[boiseengineer]

Any software out there that lets you open a file with an editor even when that files still being recorded?
One that will is KLZ's NewsRoom 4.4.

 

[TimesTulsa]

Thanks for the on the KLZ program, I need such a pgm.

Running prophet at one station, every day, we would record a 2 hour program with prophet cfs, the cues would be captured by the the net record machine (opens, closes, etc).

However, as the net record machine was still recording the singular audio file, we would begin playback an hour into it through the station's audio server. . So, in theory, the same file was recording in one machine AND playing back on another.

I believe it was all on a Novell network, with good old windows 3.11 prophet cfs....the other BSOD. ;-)

At first it struck me as complete black magic, was it using Novell that made the trick possible?!?

 

[Info-warrior]

I think that's just the way Prophet works, regardless of whether Novel is the network client or not. We used to do this with Paul Harvey. Once there was a minute or so worth of audio recorded, we could begin playback while continuing to record with no drop out or glitches. I guess it works kind of like the anti-skip buffer on MD and CD players in that sense.

A better analogy might be those DVRs that allow you to pause and rewind 'live' TV.

 

[deejay993]

Here is how I grab the highlights during our broadcasts. Reed to Reel and Cool Edit!!! The secret is keep yourself organized. You can use whatever you want to grab the game. At least with the station I work at broadcasts after every TD or score we take a break. Now this is your time to dump the highlight into the system. After you do this a few times you will be smooth and able to handle getting in the highlight into the system as the game is going on. Whatever you do if its football do not forget to get your recording going before you go back to the game because there has been times I missed a run back for a TD.

 

[Robert Bass]

Hmmmm... Why not dump 'em from reel to tape carts? ;D

Appreciate all the replies, thanks.

This week I experimented with capturing the plays on the Marantz flash media recorder. When I had a play, I'd change out the flash media card, then open the file I needed with Adobe. After the usual editing, I was able to quickly save the file onto our automation system, for playback.

Normally this process could take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to complete, if I had to manually dump an audiotape recording into the ssystem. With the flash card method, I bettered my time for full processing to just under 3 minutes. Thanks to this method, I was able to prepare a very big highlight that occured with just over 2 1/2 minutes left in the game. That would not have been possible for me, if I had used the analog tape system.

So far I think this new method works better, but another week of experimenting is probably still in order.

R

 

[CTnewsjunkie]

First, I know ENCO has play while record capabilities-- but that's certainly not your solution if you're looking for an inexpensive way to do it.

I know of one operation that simply uses Adobe Audition to roll on the whole game and then during breaks the announcers tell the producer back in the studio what plays they wanted from the last segment for highlights. It works well-- but previous posters are right: you must have a producer that's on top of things.

I also think Goldwave, which is relatively inexpensive, has the ability to "save selection as" while the entire wave file is still recording-- and even play while still recording.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Got a Computer?

If you have a computer available, and can feed it the live audio, Audacity allows you to record the live play-by-play. Whenever there's a highlight that you want to keep, simply hit the "Stop" button, then hit the "Record" button again. The next segment will start recording in on a new track.

When you have a break, you can stop recording, select the end portion of the track where the highlight is, then "Save the selection as..." a .wav file in any location on your network. Do that for each track, and you've got a quick set of highlight files, that you've named in a way that makes sense to you.

 

[Robert Bass]

I have used Audiograbber in a similar fashion. It will split the files every time you hit stop and then record. That actually worked for me last year, that is until everyone started saving everything they were doing, to the same hard drive. It's a 73 GB drive, and no matter how much I try to convince them the server can be cheaply and easily expanded, the GM won't do it. Maybe some more episodes of the drive getting full thereby crashing the system, will convince him. ;D

R