Apple, EVS Power Masters Snooker Tourney Coverage For TWI

By Kevin Hilton

The Masters snooker tournament is heading towards its climax on Sunday,
with the final at Wembley Arena. Coverage by production company TWI,
part of the IMG group, is using BBC Outside Broadcasts’ X-Trailer to
provide non-linear editing and transmission facilities. First
used at the Snooker Grand Prix in Aberdeen last October the X-Trailer
was built to meet TWI’s requirements for tapeless HD operation. The
vehicle features Apple Final Cut Studio for preparation of material,
with nine edit workstations, and a XSan network storage system, working
in conjunction with EVS XT2 disc-based production servers.

The
47TB Xraid store is theoretically able to record continuously in
standard definition for 11 weeks and is fed by two Live Stream ingest
devices, which handle SD or HD video with AES digital, analogue or
embedded audio. As BBC OBs’ new trucks are also equipped with Final Cut
Pro workstations and EVS servers they can connect seamlessly with the X
Trailer.

The X-Trailer has been used predominately for snooker,
having also worked on the UK Championship in December. The Masters
moves into the semi-final stage tomorrow (Saturday), with, at this
stage, Mark Selby and Ken Doherty already through. Stephen Lee and
Peter Ebdon and Marco Fu and Ding Junhui are contesting the final two
places.