It had been kicked around for a while, the huge job of moving the snooker production from tape to non linear. Although the TWI/IMG produced output for the BBC had always been recognised as having some of the highest production values in TV outside broadcasts, it was time to move on. The debate started last year when a group of producers & editors met up to discuss the requirements needed to make the operation work. TWI is a completely Avid house, in fact they are now ranked within the top 3 of the largest facilities within the UK.

There were a few things on the side of FCP though. The price for one! There was no way that a six edit client Avid system with 2 records was going to be within budget. The two producers had already seen FCP working well on the snooker here and indeed had come to visit the very similar operation at Molinare on the Tour de France. Last and probably the most important was the great enthusiasm of BBC Outside Broadcasts, they had been dabbling with FCP and saw this as a great opportunity to have a 'keystone client' for a new mobile Xsan solution.

After many emails, meetings and phone calls, the brand spanking new horsebox arrived in Aberdeen for the first BBC covered snooker event of the season, The 2007 Grand Prix. This was a huge leap in a very short space of time, the production crew arrived on Thursday & Friday & the first programme was broadcast on the Saturday. The BBC's Dave Packham had been busy in the weeks before converting the horsebox, installing power, racks and organising the two rather large aircon units.
Meanwhile, back at BBC OB's base, John Morley pictured here on the left had been building the 47 terabyte Xsan and loading all the software onto the editing clients. There are two MacPros in 'edit one' - one for editing and one for graphics so that renders don't hold up the operation. There is also a MacPro in edit two that mainly concentrates on "Snooker Extra' and the World Highlights. Alston Elliott have their own machine hooked up to the system and there is a MacPro in Unit 11 which is used to layoff finished inserts to tape & EVS. The final but very important MacPro is in the tape library and is used for digitising and producer editing. John can be seen in front of an Xserve machine that is running Picture Ready. Two of these recorded both tables so we could have instant access to all the matches without having to break recordings anywhere. Having all matches online made not only cutdowns possible as the match progressed, but sped up the editing of review pieces too.



Well, the big question I suppose is 'How did it all go?' Pretty well, actually the word excellent was used quite a bit over that week. This is a fantastic journey down a one way street, we will never go back. It started with a rough system diagram I presented outside of a closed pub one grey weekday and ended with a fully functioning, multi user editing system that should last us right into snooker in HD.

Can you tell the difference on screen? Take a look at the opener I made for the final session of snooker on the Sunday night!

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