Interview: Reed Kaufman, Fox Sports

On his first visit to IBC, Reed Kaufman headlined the session ‘Fox Sports Revolutionises Delivery of 2018 FIFA World Cup’. As Executive Director Post Production, he wanted his IBC experience to reveal the key technology themes at the show, so he could judge how they differ when compared to his NAB experiences.

According to Kaufman, the revolutionary aspects he sought to expose were not so much about the direct viewing experience. “It was more about getting content generated in Russia back to our facility in LA or editing for our studio shows,” he says. “It was moving media around for production workflows.

“Not only were the matches far apart in Russia, there were the time changes and the distance from Moscow to LA,” he adds. “One of the goals was to limit the costs of doing a lot of the programming we wanted to do, and use our resources in LA.”

Content created by Fox Sports’ own teams and HBS had to bounce its way into audio and edit bays in LA.

“It was not just the what, which was dealing with hours of 1080p footage. [It was also] the how… where the term revolutionary becomes more accurate,” says Kaufman. “We used a lot of…