Another Winning Match at Wimbledon for Abekas 6000 and Turner Sports
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 6, 2001 Susan Simon
Accom, Inc.
Marketing Communications Manager
Tel: 650-328-3818 Ext.231
LONDON, England — Accom® (OTCBB: ACMM), a leader in broadcast and professional video products, announced that Turner Sports, Inc. is on-air at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, once again using the Abekas® 6000® MultiFlex DTV Production Server as a crucial part of their coverage. Coverage continues now through July 8th on Turner Network Television (TNT) and CNN/SI.
After last year's success using the Abekas 6000, Turner Studios, the all-digital production facility for the Turner Broadcasting entertainment networks, decided to make it an integral part of their mobile production offerings. Turner Studios purchased their first unit in April to ensure its use on this year's Wimbledon broadcast.
With Wimbledon well underway, the Abekas 6000 MultiFlex DTV Production Server is proving again to be a true champion. The Abekas 6000 provides Turner Studios complete flexibility and instantaneous access to a multitude of Video+Audio+Key clips, which are currently being seen throughout TNT's live coverage of the 2001 Wimbledon Championships. The Abekas 6000 allows multiple users, whether graphics operators, editors, as well as technical directors to instantaneously cue and play the same clips, all at the same time. With the superior video image quality of the DVCPRO 50Mb/s compression available on the Abekas 6000, the operators are able to obtain the same level of heavily detailed graphic images, as they would get from a Digital Betacam. "The ability to have a video and key signal married together avoids the potential of a key signal slipping," said Peter Fredlund, Turner Studios Technical Director. "We use a very heavy amount of moving clips with key, they need to be frame accurate every time. With the 6000 you don't even have to give it a second thought. The ability to use either direct machine control or a third party controller to connect to the switcher is very convenient."
Turner Studios were the first users of the Abekas 6000 in a remote sports environment with their coverage of the 2000 Winter Goodwill Games in Lake Placid, NY. Turner Studios continued to develop the integration of the Abekas 6000 into their operation with the coverage later in the year of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and the NBA Playoffs studio coverage in Atlanta, GA. For the 2001 Wimbledon Championships, Turner Studios has added fully automated control, via a production switcher, of two Abekas 6000 video channels, paired in a video and key mode. Four other Abekas 6000 video channels are being operated with the Abekas 6000's custom operating panel and two channels are under the control of linear editors in the edit bay. All operators have simultaneous access to all the material on the server.
The Abekas 6000 has allowed Turner Sports to raise the level of graphical content within live event telecasts, making heavy use of Video+Audio+Key clips. With the instant access to recorded material for production, Turner Studios operators have also been able to design a faster, more flexible workflow, integrating the 6000 into an increasingly pivotal role. "The Abekas 6000 has provided us the flexibility to use graphics and animations in ways that was previously very difficult. With the 6000, we are able to run multiple animations or graphics with key from numerous sources and from numerous locations. Furthermore, throughout this event, the 6000 showed us how robust it is by never failing. We have not missed a beat throughout this entire tournament," commented Lenny Daniels, Vice President/Senior Director of Turner Sports.
"With every successful production our confidence in the reliability and versatility of the Abekas 6000 grows," said Tom Sahara, Director of Technical Operations for Turner Sports. "It's made a fundamental difference to the way we operate, and with each new production we are finding more ways of exploiting its power. We will once again rely on the Abekas 6000's magic at the 2001 Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia next month."
About Accom
Accom is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Accom designs, manufactures, sells, and supports a complete line of digital video production, disk recording, and editing tools for use in the worldwide professional television marketplace – encompassing the production, post production, broadcasting, and computer video markets.
International press, please contact:
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MCA Communications
PR and Marcom
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