IBM, NFL aim to fast-forward footage

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IBM and the National Football League are expected to announce Thursday that they have teamed up to fast-forward the process of republishing footage and statistics for sports TV shows.

Under the partnership, IBM developed technology designed to allow TV producers and hosts to scan through coaches' game footage, broadcast programming, video, audio and text using a PC and on-demand technology. The digital material can then be repackaged and viewed simultaneously by a variety of producers and hosts on television shows such as ESPN's "EA Sports NFL Matchup," NFL Network's "Playbook."

"It not only gives producers and hosts quick and easy access to any particular game element, but will help us capitalize on new business opportunities around digital content," Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, said in a statement.

IBM is hoping to leverage its partnership with the NFL to work with companies that want to speed up the process of managing, storing and retrieving disparate pieces of digital media and information, such as health care providers searching for medical records or a company seeking to assemble a training video, said Steve Canepa, vice president of IBM's global media and entertainment group, one of 15 industry groups operated by Big Blue.

The NFL deal is also a good example of how the technology could be applied toward tracking the movement of digital content throughout an organization and to various partners, he added.

"Audio and video are changing the way that businesses operate," Canepa said.

Before the introduction of digital technologies, an NFL host or producer would have to manually search through printed game books or review reels of video tapes before assembling the material and later watching it on tape.

 

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