Edmonton Oilers Rely on Evertz DreamCatcher To Fire Up Fans at Rogers Place

Clips are quickly marked, tagged, played back via two replay servers, DC Logger

After reaching the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in over a decade, the Edmonton Oilers embark on their second year at Rogers Place with high hopes. And, in its sophomore season with the team, Evertz DreamCatcher will play a pivotal role in the video-control room, delivering all the replays that Oilers fans crave on game day.

Prior to the 2016-17 NHL season, the Oilers opened Rogers Place, a state-of-the-art arena with the then-largest center-hung videoboard in the league (the videoboard at the Detroit Red Wings’ recently opened Little Caesars Arena is slightly larger). To create content for the massive displays, the team installed two six-input/two-output DreamCatcher 428 replay servers and one DC Logger station.

Evertz DreamCatcher delivers replays to center-hung videoboard at Rogers Place.

According to Keith Hough, manager of A/V production for Rogers Place, the Evertz combo allows smooth, efficient, and fast replay production and export to editorial. Using DreamCatcher’s intuitive control panel and page/bank/slot layout, the production team can mark, identify, tag, and playback clips on the center-hung videoboard.

“The replay operators are able to share clips between servers, thanks to the 10 GbE network connection,” says Hough. “Playing clips stored on one server with the output hardware of another means that operators can be creative while not being limited by the technology. All operators are able to transcode and export clips from the system to editing quickly for in-game craft editing, which dramatically increases the production level of the presentation.”

Additionally, with 12 angles of every available clip on the DC Logger, the Oilers can quickly assemble playlists of the most exciting plays or packages of specific types of plays: hits, shots, saves, goals, and more. A clip-logging menu allows the team to archive replays and packages for openings, bumpers, and interviews and can easily transfer over to an Avid system for future use.

According to DreamCatcher operator Andy Davidson, the touchscreen controller makes manipulating clips easy, and the variable speed of the wheel dial facilitates search and marking the in and out points for clip building and playback. The team has also started to experiment with the mosaic tool.

“We’ve found [mosaics] to be a very useful tool for creating a scene,” says Andy. “[For example, we can show] a play from one end of the [ice] to the other using multiple angles of that player, looking like it was cut by the switcher. Other mosaics allow us to take more than one angle of a situation and give you multiple camera positions. There is also a mosaic that allows you to see three angles at the same time. We also found that, when one operator is building the replay, the other can give one angle of their view to allow time for the other to build this creation and then get a log of the clip for archive.”

In addition, the Oilers have found that the team behind the DreamCatcher is always available to provide technical support, resolve issues, and replace hardware.

“The mix of our intuitive touch interface, advanced editing capabilities, and live logging have made DreamCatcher a perfect choice for the Edmonton Oilers and Rogers Place,” says Nima Malekmanesh, product marketing manager/senior engineer, DreamCatcher, Evertz. “The production team at the Oilers have been great to work with; their feedback and suggestions have continually helped make our product better.”