Case Study: International Teams Select Matrox Monarch EDGE, SBG Sports Software

Football is the most-watched sport in the world, with global viewership for the 2018 World Cup final having reached a record-breaking 1.12 billion people, according to FIFA.com. For football fans, the sport is in their blood, and tuning in for match day is as essential as oxygen.

What fans are not always aware of is exactly what goes into their favorite teams’ preparation. Few might guess that sports video technologies play a key role in training regimens. One powerful combination, Matrox Monarch EDGE, and SBG Focus, provides video quality and highly-interactive performance.

Monarch EDGE’s multi-HD encoding capabilities paired with Focus’ instant replay and live-clipping software allows analysts, coaches, physiologists, and doctors to access and engage with pristine video streams from the sidelines of any match, and from multiple angles. Once the video has reached the team staff, any number of operations can take place. Coaches can check instant replays and tag moments in the match, review the tactics and pinpoint the weaknesses of the other team, make adjustments within their own team, and go on to perform better throughout the rest of the game. If an incident occurs during the match that results in injury, doctors or physiologists can see which body parts have been affected, and they can come up with treatment plans based on what they have analyzed.

With the ability to use a variety of streaming protocols, Monarch EDGE can deliver four independent RTSP live feeds at 1080p50 to Focus servers while keeping data rates extremely low. Even 1080i25 SDI feeds can be upscaled to 1080p50 to provide the most temporal information possible for review by team video analysts. For team staff using Focus, it is easy to create a unique streaming channel for each event, where resolutions and bitrates can be mixed and matched. Replay operations give users full control over searching for relevant actions within the catalog of video, and tagging capabilities allow users to expertly mark these actions to analyze later.

Many leagues and competitions provide multiple SDI feeds from the broadcast provider to the coaching technical areas. These can be combined with analysts’ fixed cameras, all of which are fed to Monarch EDGE’s SDI inputs. All angles are then streamed to SBG Focus’ server where they are recorded, displayed and made available for instant replay and clipping.

The winning lineup of Monarch EDGE and Focus has set a new, game-changing standard in terms of capability and form factor. Having been rigorously tested in a live environment, side-by-side with alternative products, the combination is clearly the preferred solution for those who want the best of the best. Of the encoders that were trialed by these teams, Monarch EDGE was the only one that could deliver multi-channel synchronized video feeds to Focus at the low latencies that team staff required for analyzing tactics, reviewing injuries, and delivering productive half-time team talks.

“Our customers are always looking for ways to improve their workflows, reduce turn-around times and increase the quality of their deliverables,” said Simon Cuff, commercial director, SBG Sports Software. “Matrox Monarch EDGE addresses all three aspects. The quality of the picture, even at low bit rates, is the best we’ve seen, and the unit is so easy to setup and configure that it takes all the stress out of matchday setup.”