In the spring of 2011, Merrill Richardson, Director of Facilities for the Lexington Center Corporation (LCC)—a private, non-profit agency of the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG)—was looking for an advanced, high-definition (HD) video record and playback system. The goal was a system that would help his production team distribute content as digital files throughout Lexington, Kentucky's famous Rupp Arena (home to University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball) in the most efficient way, while providing a great fan experience.

Richardson chose the Grass Valley™ K2 Summit™ media server platform and a Grass Valley K2 Dyno™ Replay System (which is made up of an intuitive, tactile K2 Dyno Replay Controller tightly linked to a K2 Summit server). From a central video production control room inside Rupp Arena, the new server system also feeds seven other AV systems—including a new IPTV system for the numerous concession stands located throughout the building.

New Century Productions (NCP), in Göteborg, Sweden, is well versed in the production of high-definition (HD) live sports and entertainment events and is one of the "go to" production services suppliers when a major event occurs in Sweden or abroad. In 2011 alone, NCP produced: the 2011 World Cup of Biathlon, in Antholz, Italy; 2011 World Cup Alpine Skiing, in Are, Sweden; World Cup Cross Country, in Sweden; and the 2011 Wimbledon tennis tournament, in London UK (supplying the national feed for Japanese broadcaster NHK), Diamond League, and classical music and opera.

NCP tackled its first 3D production, working at the Royal Swedish Opera House in Stockholm to televise a live staging of the comedic opera Zémire et Azor in stereoscopic HD (dual 1080i signals). NCP parked a 3D-capable OB van outside the Opera House to handle the production, which used numerous LDK 8000 Elite multiformat HD cameras, the Kayak™ HD video production switcher and the T2™ iDDR.

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is the world's biggest non-sporting live TV event and a strong household name among hundreds of millions of people in Europe.

The ESC 2011 was produced and broadcast in high-definition 1080i with 5.1 surround sound and two-channel stereo. A key role in the production of the ESC 2011 were four Grass Valley™ LDK 8000 Elite cameras with wireless adapters.

In 2008, Lindenwood University, in St. Charles, MO, built new production and teaching facilities, now called The Charter Communications High-Definition Studio, to support its educational mission. The state-of-the-art HD facility includes a main control room—based around a Grass Valley™ 2 M/E Kayak™ HD switcher.

Because of its renowned reliability, that Grass Valley equipment has been working steadily ever since it was installed, getting a "full workout," by the hundreds of student operators in the Communications program.

Each time MTVG builds a new truck reliability in its chosen technology is key. MTVG relies on the Kayenne™, Kalypso™, and Kayak™ video production switchers, LDK Series HD cameras, and Trinix™ NXT multiformat routers to help produce more than 4,000 sports and entertainment events each year.

Over the past seventeen years, Mobile TV Group and Colorado Studios (which builds MTVG's trucks) have designed and built a wide variety of SD and HD mobile production trucks, which now cover both the home and away games of about half of the NBA, NHL, and MLB teams in the US.

When your company is producing two to three live sports and entertainment events per day (and up to ten per week), virtually all year round, you don't have time for equipment failures or unhappy clients. That's why Trio Video, a premiere video production services company based in Chicago, Ill., relies on Grass Valley™ cameras, production switchers, and routers to keep their projects up and running.

Red Union Films is an independent movie production company, based in the north-west of England. It enjoyed great success with its 2009 feature film Awaydays, and has just completed the adaptation of another Kevin Sampson novel, Powder, about the rise and fall of a rock band.

For Awaydays, Red Union Films invested in its own editing facilities, based on the Grass Valley™ EDIUS, and this platform continued to do sterling service on Powder. Owning their own EDIUS systems has enabled Red Union Films to respond to all the creative variables that happen in independent filmmaking, while allowing them to maintain complete control over production from the beginning to the very end.

XL Video, an award-winning provider of video equipment and services, supports many of the world's most high-profile live sports and entertainment events. When its equipment and technicians arrive on site, things get done quickly and correctly. There are no second chances.

That's why the premiere rental and staging company—with locations in Europe, Russia, the UK, and the US—continues to update its growing inventory with the latest standardand high-definition video production equipment from Grass Valley™. XL Video recently added several new Grass Valley LDK Series SD and HD cameras, Kayak™ video production switchers, and six T2 intelligent digital disk (iDDR) recorders to its arsenal.

Wedding days are always special, but if you are the heir to a throne, you can expect even more attention. In June of 2010, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden married Daniel Westling. It was the first royal wedding in Sweden for more than 30 years, and interest was high, at home and abroad.

For the wedding day itself, three of Mediatec's largest, double-expanding OB vans were parked outside the Royal Palace. At the heart of each was a Grass Valley™ Kayenne™ Video Production Center switcher, bringing all the feeds together and giving the directors the creative freedom to add multiple layers of graphics and effects, as required. Apart from some remote cameras in tight spaces in the church, all the pictures came from Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite cameras.

To develop skills and understanding of the growing phenomenon of stereographic 3D production, Abraham Joffe set himself a real challenge: shooting Australia's first 3D wedding video, which is now believed to be one of the world's first multicam 3D wedding shots.

Joffe had created a deadline for posting which only gave the post crew a couple of days to produce an edit to screen at the premiere. What made this possible was sticking with their current 2D editing platform, the Grass Valley™ EDIUS. EDIUS has good support for 3D, and it meant they were completely familiar and comfortable with the way it works.

Based on the best-selling novel by Kevin Sampson, the independent, cult film Awaydays was shot in 2008 in and around Liverpool, but is set 30 years earlier. Awaydays was shot primarily with a Panasonic VariCam for off-speed shots and 25 fps production, with some scenes using 16 mm film for ramp shots and a Phantom camera for very slow-motion. In the mix, a variety of other digital formats were also used.

To handle the editing of all of these formats, Red Union Films' Post Production Supervisor and Partner David Harry chose the EDIUS® nonlinear editing platform and NX boards from Grass Valley™ for real-time mixed-format editing, including uncompressed video. This allowed a very fast, efficient, and creative post production process.

The Bill is a long-running and very popular police procedural drama produced by Talkback Thames for the UK's ITV network. Early in 2009 the decision was made to change the requirement to a weekly, one hour high-definition drama for a 9:00 pm/21.00 timeslot. That called for Talkback Thames to re-equip its production capabilities to upgrade to HD, and as part of that they looked at new cameras.

One of the characteristics of the way The Bill worked in SD was that Talkback Thames used system cameras recording to separate devices, rather than the camcorders that might typically be used for drama. Having looked carefully at all the options available as they moved to HD, Talkback Thames decided to maintain the same approach, and placed an order for five Grass Valley™ LDK 8000 Elite cameras, which record onto the Panasonic P2 format.