Northwoods Baseball League
Video Streaming Systems Make Northwoods League More Competitive
With over 60 alumni having made it to the Major Leagues and hundreds more in the Minors, the Northwoods League is one of the elite summer collegiate baseball leagues in the country. To keep attracting the best college baseball players, the front office and Board of Directors takes seriously their league’s motto “Get Ready for the Show”. For the Northwoods League, this motto also extends to implementing the latest in video technology. For the 2010 season, the league designed a new website, produced a virtual media guide and hired Alpha Video & Audio to install a four-camera video production system in every ball park so all games are streamed live over the internet. 16 Teams, Four States, One Province Founded in 1994, the Northwoods League was a place for college baseball players with professional aspirations to get the experience of competing with wooden bats. Starting with five teams in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, the league has grown to 16 teams, making it the largest summer collegiate baseball league. The league has seven teams in Minnesota, six in Wisconsin and one in Michigan, Iowa and Ontario. “As we do at the end of every season, I sat down with Dick Radatz, League President, to look at how we could make improvements for the 2010 season that would keep us ahead of the other summer leagues,” said Curt Carstensen, Director of Operations for the Northwoods League. “We quickly identified the inconsistent video coverage of the league’s games as one area that needed improvement. All teams had at least two cameras but the difference in production quality among the teams was apparent to anyone who watched video replays of our ball games. Working with George Sirbasku, our league’s Video Production Supervisor, we developed a plan for installing similar equipment in all the ball parks so we could stream every game to the internet.” Carstensen continued, “The ability to webcast high-quality productions to the internet was identified as a top priority for two reasons. One is that it makes the league more fan-friendly. Our fans can follow the teams without having to go to the ball park for every game. Equally important, it gives our league and players valuable exposure. Professional scouts and people around baseball can watch our games on their computers and get a sense of the fun atmosphere of our games and the skills of the Northwoods League players.” Carstensen added, “Plus, it’s nice when a player’s mom who is in another state can watch her son’s game.” In early November 2009, Sirbasku started visiting every ballpark to take inventory of the audio and video systems already owned by the ball clubs and gauge what need to be installed for a superior system. A request for proposal was sent out in late January and Alpha Video in Edina, MN was selected as the winning bidder at the beginning of April. “Alpha Video provided the best technical solution for our requirements and they had a reputation for great customer service.” explained Carstensen. Technical Solution The solution provided by Alpha Video called for the installation of four cameras: - Two manual-operated cameras mounted on tripods, one down the first base line and the other down the third base line - One PTZ camera for a center field shot - One PTZ camera mounted on the grandstand for a high home base shot. For the manual operated cameras, Canon GL2 MiniDV Camcorders were selected. A Panasonic weatherproof WV-CS964A PTZ was installed for the center field shot and an owner furnished PTZ camera used for the home base shot. The control room is located either in the press box or a separate trailer. The control room equipment includes a Data Video 4-input switcher, Kramer video distribution amplifier, Kramer audio distribution amplifier and two 22” LG monitors. One monitor is for camera preview and one for viewing the program video signal that is going to the PC webstreaming encoder. The audio for the webcast is provided by the radio announcers and a microphone that captures the natural background sounds of the games. Besides streaming the games to the internet, the league also wanted the highlights of each game sent to the league’s office so they could be compiled into a league-wide video recap of the previous day’s games. The video recap runs on the league’s website and is uploaded to YouTube. To accomplish this, a Grass Valley Canopus ADVC-55 media converter captures the streaming video signal to a MacBook where an operator uses Final Cut Express to edit the video clip. All of the high-quality video is saved for future use. Alpha Video’s Installation Challenge After winning the contract, it quickly became apparent to Jake Remus, Alpha Video’s Project Manager, that the installation was going to be a logistic challenge. “From the start of the project to the beginning of the season on June 1, we had about 30 days to install the systems in 16 dispersed cities. Since each job would take at least a couple of days once travel and training was included, I quickly realized that I was going to need to coordinate two crews to get the job done in time. In fact, I had to get three crews going in one week. ” Remus continued, “The real challenge was that every installation was different from every other installation. Some were using a lot of existing equipment and some were using very little. Some had easy access to install the high home base camera while others did not. In addition, every city had their own electrical contractor who needed to get their job done before we could get started. The key to this successful installation was effective communication among the baseball teams, the electrical contractors, the installation crews and me as the project manager.” Commenting on the work by Alpha Video, Carstensen said, “One of the reasons for selecting Alpha Video was their reputation for excellent customer service. Their ability to install all of these systems in a wide geographic area under a tight schedule shows that their reputation is well earned. We are extremely satisfied with the design and installation job that Alpha Video completed.”
