17 November 2023

LA Clippers: producing social media with Ninja Ultra

Delivering 4K H.265 clips to the cloud allows the LA Clippers production team and their remote editors to share highlights and memorable scores with fans within minutes.

By Atomos

For the Los Angeles Clippers, an important part of their social media marketing strategy is connecting and engaging with fans, both in the arena and through their owned platforms. To support this, the Clippers’ Content & Production Department, led by Head of Content Tommy Zweibel, captures a variety of content for social channels including highlights, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. Short-form videos allow the team to interact directly with their fans, include them in the conversation around the team, and show that they’re listening. In addition to continued engagement with their core audience, the Clippers’ social strategy provides them with a much bigger stage to grow their fan base.

In the demanding environment of live sports, the internal media production team has a busy schedule traveling with the LA Clippers during the season. The production team gathers a vast amount of video and photography on game days, organizing and delivering it in real-time to remote editors, and then on to the social media team for distribution. The camera crew needs to go where the action is, from team warm-ups to location b-rolls and interviews. Pulling all this media together can be a challenge, especially when it comes to downloading large files for editing and distribution. “What we needed was a solution that could seamlessly integrate with our Sony FX and FS camcorders, provide on-board recording capabilities, and video monitoring, and create collaboration between our camera, editing, production, and social media team,” adds Zweibel. “We were looking to unlock the potential for remote collaboration and share the content directly from camera to cloud.”

“We no longer wait for camera cards to download – the footage is ready to go into editing after each take”.

To help evolve their production workflow and enhance efficiencies, the LA Clippers’ media production team turned to the Atomos Ninja Ultra monitor-recorder. With its new AtomOS 11 operating system, optimized for camera to cloud, coupled with Atomos Connect it allows the media team to simultaneously share files and collaborate in real-time using Frame.io. “The beauty of our new workflow is that our videographers no longer worry about rushing to get clips to our remote editors. Our editors, who are working on a variety of software applications, have instant access and, once edited, content gets uploaded to social for our fans to have real-time Clipper updates,” adds Zweibel. “Whether we’re instantly populating our social feeds, or producing a team story, this way of working has enriched our creative output, not to mention our productivity.”

The new 4K H.265 upload facility of the Ninja Ultra allows the production team to capture content and automatically upload high-quality 10-bit 4K H.265 proxies to Frame.io right after each take. With these 4K proxies, editors can punch in and crop the image using different aspect ratios for delivery on multiple social media platforms. Delivering 4K clips to the cloud through this H.265 upload feature allows the LA Clippers production team and their remote editors more creative flexibility and freedom when choosing their composition, all without sacrificing quality.

“We no longer wait for camera cards to download – the footage is ready to go into editing after each take, helping us work in tandem. We are constantly trying to keep up with the athletes and grabbing those memorable shots, so we must move quickly and share these moments with fans,” concludes Zweibel.

The LA Clippers are focused on creating unique fan experiences that drive engagement and loyalty, and using social media to connect to audiences is at the core of their marketing strategy. Creating authentic content is driving the experience. Fans want content on demand, and the Ninja Ultra with Frame.io integration is helping the LA Clippers to meet these expectations – with speed and efficiency.

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