Extreme Graphics for extreme Sports
Rayd and EIM Solutions supply TTR-events with Ventuz graphics.
The German agency Rayd is a worldwide operating supplier of 3D realtime graphics, large scale presentations and games development. Rayd was founded in the year 2005 by Johannes Klaer and Oliver Grimm, two experts in the field of broadcast graphics with extensive experience in realtime applications and virtual studio.
“We started our business with the intention to make Ventuz our number one software tool,” says Oliver. “Naturally we will use the software that is best for the job at hand, but whenever it is possible to use Ventuz, we will do that, because it allows us to work a lot faster.”
In 2007 Rayd was approached by EIM Solutions, a German provider of data services for action sports events, who was in need of a new graphics solution. The two companies partnered up for the Air&Style in Munich, one of the renowned Ticket to Ride World Snowboard Tour (TTR) events. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful cooperation, that culminated in the TTR season of 2010/2011. This particular season, the organizers of TTR decided to go a new way. Normally, an on-air graphics package consists of the usual suspects: a lower third with up to three rows, a score board, mini statistics and a butterfly.
Not so for TTR: “They have developed a new rating system, which combines points for each snowboard trick with points for the entire run, they call it flow,” explains Alex Doerr of EIM. “So what they needed was a graphics system which could be animated dynamically while already being on-air, according to the points given by the jury at that very moment.”
Although this is quite a challenging task, they found a solution. “The great advantage of using Ventuz,” says Johannes of Rayd, “is that it lets you implement a large portion of the logic on the graphics side which you then don’t need to worry about on the control side. The interfaces are really easy to handle and you have enormous functionality.”
But that was not the only challenge for this season of TTR. While in the years before each event had created their own design and graphics layout, this season the goal was to use one consistent design for the entire tour. “This gave us the time and budget to create something astounding,” says Alex of EIM. But at the same time it posed some new problems.
The TTR events are scattered all over the world, and they are naturally also broadcast all over the world. “In the beginning it was completely uncertain whether we would run on 4:3 or 16:9 format, let alone whether we should use SD or HD,” says Oliver. “And the events are also streamed online. So we needed to deliver a package that would work for all possible combinations. With Ventuz, this is no problem at all. You simply create the graphics at the highest resolution and then quickly adjust the project to the output needed at the respective location, and that’s that.”
One of the TTR events, the Burton US Open in Vermont, USA, was broadcast by ESPN in March of 2011. “Usually American television networks are quite restrictive when integrating third party graphics into their shows,” says Alex. “But after we sent them some samples, they decided to adopt our graphics one-to-one, which means that all our graphics actually were on the ESPN show. That is a real accolade.”
After the successful projects which EIM Solutions has realized in cooperation with Rayd, they have implemented Ventuz as their sole broadcast-graphics tool of choice. “Since we have started working with Rayd in the season of 2007/2008, we have made about 60 live productions using Ventuz. And it hasn’t failed once,” says Alex, and Oliver adds: “I know a lot of people who use Ventuz, and these guys run some quite impressive shows. I haven’t heard of a single crash of Ventuz during an event, and I have never experienced one myself.”
The cooperation between Rayd and EIM will continue for the coming TTR season, but also for other action sports events all across the globe.