TV Hilites is a suite of software modules created in order to satisfy the present demands of TV broadcasters to produce and play-to-air the highlights as quickly as possible.

The most common context in which it is used is sport (in general during “live” events), but it can also be used for different purposes: reality shows, music festivals, talk-shows, important ceremonies, prize awards, and so on – that is to say all those situations in which, during a live broadcast or more commonly at the end of it, it is necessary to rebroadcast in real time the most interesting parts (“highlights”), having at one’s disposal a flexible and powerful system of logging, research and almost immediate going to air.

The product, then, is aimed at logging a series of events (e.g. in football – the most common usage scene – to identify goals, kicks, faults, expulsions, etc.), managing at the same time the marking (in and out) of the outstanding scenes on video, so as to make it possible to edit the highlights to be played to air very quickly, as well as to print the time sequence of relevant actions, and so on.

The software avails itself of the same SQL database and of the video technology developed for TV-Station, the sophisticated system of TV automation deleveloped by  Gruppo TNT, integrated by additional modules specialized for the creation and the quick broadcast of video sequences made up of moments of great interest or relative to the results of sports events.

Hilite Manager – the module to set up the system
Hilite Scheduled Recorder – the module for the time recording of events
Hilite Workstation – the module to mark highlights
Hilite Reporter – the module to print highlights
Hilite Espresso – the editor to create and to play to air the playlists of highlights
Samples of usage of TV Hilites

Hilite Manager

This module makes it possible to setup the essential tasks of all the system. 
Among them:

• Types(Typologies): the kind of highlights that are required: e.g. “Football”, “Basketball”, “Formula 1”, “News Agencies”, “Film Festivals”, etc.
• Groups: a set of related events; e.g. “Italian Football Championship Serie A – 2005-2006”.
• Subgroups: a logical set of events; e.g. the first round of the first half of the championship. 
• Events: the single event; e.g., in football, the match “Milan-Inter” on the fifth day of the championship. It, therefore, will be classified in the typology “Football”, in the group “First division championship – 2005-2006”, in the subgroup “Fifth day of the first half of the championship”.
• Categories: the different actions to mark. They are logically linked to the typology, and, therefore, can be applied to all its events, independently from groups and subgroups. The categories mentioned in sport generally correspond to a defined action of the game, but on television they can refer also to a certain shot and/or content. As far as football is concerned, e.g., we might define the categories as “Goal”, “Fault”, “Penalty”, “Corner”, but also “Stadium”, “Supporters”, “Close-up”, etc.
  
  In our example these categories can be used in the same way in the football championship of men or of women, in the Italian or English championship, and so on, since all these groups belong to the same typology (“Football”). Categories, too, are linked with their subcategories (with a hierarchical structure), which make it possible to describe the action with more precision.

The icon below represents a category used to classify the highlights of a motorcycle event (in fact from a practical point of view it is a button in the GUI. – fully configurable by the system administrator according to criteria of definition of the category – size, text, font, color, function key). 

These buttons are arranged by the system administrator according to a list of criteria, in order to set them in different quantity and order depending on the groups and the single event they are used for.

The events are the core of the entire system, since, to produce “highlights”, it is necessary to identify and schedule the TV event they are applied to: in our example we may quote a certain football match.  

The single event is identified through description fields and classification categories linked to the group typology the event belongs to; besides it has a date, a time reference for its beginning and a certain duration (e.g. a football match might be scheduled at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, March 25th, for three hours).

This datum enables the system to record the event by means of the supported hardware (many Thomson/Grass Valley video servers are present in the systems we have installed).

A sophisticated scheduling system makes it possible to program both single events and those recurring regularly (e.g. news agencies).

The video devices used to record (and, later, to broadcast) are linked to an A/V router that manages all the signals set up through the TV Station module of Device Manager.


Hilite Scheduled Recorder

All the events prepared in the module Hilite Manager can, therefore, be recorded in digital format. The recorded file is conventionally named according to the name, the date and the time of the event itself, but each single TV broadcaster can define different criteria (e.g. in order to use the same files in other systems of automation).

With each single event it is possible, to the last moment, to redefine the source to use (typically the incoming signal on video/satellite feed) and the destinations (main and, optionally, backup) associated to the recording device.

At the established date and time the program starts recording in a totally automatic way and stops after the pre-arranged period of time.

Hilites Workstation

By “marking” we mean a step in the process where some specialized operators watch a sports event on a TV monitor to identify its most important phases and, if necessary, to classify all the typologies of action in a very detailed way (to collect statistical data or to analyze the game).

This usually happens “live”, but with the software the same operations are possible also on previous recordings.

Through Hilite Workstation the operators can easily catalogue all the pre-determined actions connected with the event they have been assigned to.  

A mouse click on the button related to the action in progress is enough to create a new logical “highlight”: at the same time the system saves also the original time code. If suitable, the operator completes the definition of the action by filling in some descriptive notes, or, more frequently, uses a path that – through a sophisticated kind of logic – leads him hierarchically in a series of progressive choices in order to classify the highlight with great precision. In the case of team sports this mechanism makes it possible also to choose the names of players and to make automatic operations on scores through the Hilite Manager.

By a criterion of qualitative classification it is also possible to distinguish all that is considered important for immediate playout (as happens with goals, penalties, particularly relevant actions, etc.) from what can be more useful later with other specialized programs (such as slow or fast motion, etc.). 

  

The markings of events are then stored in the database of TV Hilites; they are the historical memory of the event and are immediately available for all the other modules of the suite to collect statistical data and for the video production of real “highlight” programs to be put on air.



Hilite Reporter

The Reporter is useful to print the highlights of sports events on paper or on the web page in chronological order. 

Journalists often need to have the sequence of the most important events in front of them to prepare a text to comment the shots of the match.

Like all the other modules of TVS Hilites, this module can be installed on any PC in a Windows environment and is connected to the centralized database SQL. Therefore it can be very useful also in the editing rooms on VTR, particularly in the big TV networks, where, in addition to the digital system, traditional linear systems are also used (in particular for the programs of comment and news after “live” events).

HiliteEspresso

Hilite Espresso This module is used to edit the files recorded with Hilite Scheduled Recorder and to produce various rough cut editing sequences very quickly.

To speed up the production phase (which usually happens in TV programs where to be well-timed is absolutely relevant), Hilite Espresso uses what is marked by the operators, who classify highlights during the event through Hilite Workstation.

The highlights, which – if necessary – have been filtered through quality criteria, appear in the “bin” of Hilite Espresso as single clips with a pre-defined duration according to their marking category and with the marking point resulting from the marking time.

Hilite Espresso can also create new clips (also from several files of the event, such as ...opening titles?...,jingles, bars, etc.) and/or duplicate some clips to have versions of them with different trimmings and can re-define the criteria of classification.

All the clips can be edited (trimmings, slow –fast motions), so that the editor can better re-define mark in and mark out and then set them on one or more playlists (the trimming operations can also be specific for the single clip set on a playlist).

All the control functions are associated to shortcut keys that enable the operators to use them even more quickly. Above all they make it possible to use the program together with external controllers, cheap but very useful, such as the Shuttle Pro of Contour Design, which makes precise jog and shuttle operations possible.

On the “bin” it is possible to operate with criteria of textual filter (on all the data defined in Hilite Manager and introduced into Hilite Workstation) in order to show only the clips answering certain criteria (e.g. the actions of a certain player). Dedicated functions make it possible to take all the filtered contents of the “bin” and to put them automatically into a playlist for the next playout session with a speed impossible with the NLE editing systems.

There are 100 playlists, and each of them can be identified with a name the editor can define. The aim of this is to make it possible to assemble various “aspects” of the sports event: e.g. the first playlist could include the most dangerous actions of team A, the second one those of team B, the third one could be dedicated to all the faults of the match, the fourth one to the decisions of the referee, the fifth one to the summary of the match, and so on.

The playlists can be reproduced one at a time, or more playlists can be linked in a pre-defined sequence (also in loop), which can be modified while it is on air.

There is also the possibility to broadcast the single clips directly from the “bin”, linking them in real time: in this way a new sequence is created according to what is said by commentators/ directors.

It is clear that this flexibility of HilitEspresso enables the journalistic editorial staffs to “highlight” all the different aspects of any event and perfectly answers the needs of a live TV broadcast, where it is not always possible to foresee the schedules to put on air with precision, and where journalists often ask the direction to support them with images and audio-video clips in real time in order to cover the lack of links or other technical problems.

Samples of usage

We have been managing the hilites of all the football matches SERIE And SERIE B of SKY Italia with this system for more than three years; besides it has been employed also for other sports, as ski, basket-ball and American sports.

In the satellite broadcaster, besides, the news and the sports agencies coming from other broadcasters and news providers are recorded at definite times. They are logged to make it possible to find them easily and to use them again during different daily programs.

The system makes it possible to produce and put on air the highlights in real time; they are used and played out in SKY live programs between the first and second half of the matches and immediately at their end.

The different ways of broadcasting (dynamic playlists, pre-defined sequences and playout of the single clips on real time) allow an immediate reaction in situations where timeliness is the key of success of the sports program itself.

The perfect integration of TV Hilites with the AV routers and all the software modules used by directors and producers enable the whole SKY sports production to keep the process end to end constantly under control. The setting up used by the satellite broadcaster has been implemented mostly by EmmeVi, a service society that is our technological partner. It uses and keeps under remote control eight stand-alone Profile PDR 100/200 Tektronix unities (with local storage) and also two new video servers GrassValley XP 1100 connected in SAN; the video signals are sorted out by a Utah 64x64 AV router. In this case the digital system is linked to a list of VTR Sony Betacam SP, where the sequences of produced highlights are recorded through an additional module; the tapes are delivered to journalists on request to be later used in traditional linear suites. When requested, the digital highlights can be transferred after a consolidation process via FC.

All the video devices are linked to about thirty PC laptops in Windows XP environment. They are used according to the daily demands or as logging stations of sports events or for the remote control of video devices. Highlights are edited very quickly and put on air through the program Hilite Espresso. An advanced option makes it possible to export the created playlists to use them again in News Edit Thomson/Thomson News Edit.

A similar system has been used by Mediaset for over a year through the same service society; in this case all the servers they use belong to the latest generation of XP profile. During the system evaluation a particular version of the video control modules was deployed, that controlled a number of Omneon Video Networks video servers.


This installation is similar to the one above and is made up by about twenty PC clients for fast logging/editing, including some client workstations for “super users” responsible for the synthesis of several events (in this SAN configuration all the editors are allowed to access every media in real time, without the need to transfer files between different workstations).

For further information about technical specifications, available configuration, quotations or a demo, please contact a commercial representative in the office nearest you:

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