Fox Sports once again turned to AJA Video Systems and Apple to power the production of a major U.S. sporting event, this time Super Bowl XXXIX held last weekend in Jacksonville, Fla. Fox Sports has relied on similar technology from the same companies for production of the World Series broadcasts last year.
“After the success with the Apple G5 and AJA’s KONA 2 for the World Series, we found this solution very appealing,” said Jeff Court, vice president Remote Operations, Fox Sports. “No network has exclusively gone to HD, but we’re close. This is the beginning of the transition from video-based to computer-based content. You can imagine how serious people are about reliability and how careful we are about introducing new resources.”
According to the companies, Fox Sports used two Power Mac G5 systems with Final Cut Pro and AJA’s KONA 2 in production trucks on-site. The G5s were used all week to edit footage and highlight packages and video from several sources were put into the G5s through the KONA 2 cards.