NFL champions The Los Angeles Rams have gained a passionate group of new fans since returning to their home city in 2016. By using Frame.io, they’re able to get game-day content from stadium to broadcasters and social media by saving 10x time in the review process.
Feeding hungry fans the latest news, scores, analysis, and highlights is a challenge for every professional sports franchise. That content predominantly comes as video for broadcast and social media, which means that it has to be delivered in numerous formats. With a video team of only 12 people processing anywhere from 1,200 to more than 3,000 clips per game, it’s always a race against the clock—especially in a large, high-profile market, where getting results even 24 hours later may be too late.
The Rams video team creates approximately 70% of their content in-house, relying on a video platform based around Adobe Creative Cloud apps—particularly Adobe Premiere Pro and Frame.io, to edit, review, and deliver the many assets their fans are eager to consume. They're also using the Camera to Cloud workflow to further accelerate their deliveries, which increases the chances of their clip getting the biggest engagement on social media outlets.
Prior to using Frame.io, the Rams video team gave feedback via email, resulting in lengthy threads with branching conversations and contradictory notes—which the editor had to keep track of. With anywhere from six to ten reviewers (high-profile games or partner content has even more), they can now put their reviews on the same video at any time, even if they're on the road. By using Frame.io, they’ve been able to get through that process 10x faster; for their managing producer alone, it equates to saving him six hours per week.
The Rams video process is streamlined by using the Camera to Cloud workflow to get footage from the camera to the editor, and Frame.io through the review and approval process. But the Rams’ video team also takes advantage of it to distribute footage and finished pieces. They use Frame.io to centralize storage for their assets, which makes it easy to share files internally, or with video freelancers, for smoother collaboration. Editors can share videos with external partners as a downloadable presentation with expiration dates to control access and increase security, as well.
In addition to having all clips from all original sources accessible in Premiere Pro timelines, editors create motion graphics templates (MOGRTs) in After Effects to add and customize transitions, titles, scores, lower thirds, and more. Audition lets them clean up the audio from noisy stadiums or crowded locker rooms. Because the Rams often release each of their videos in half a dozen edits and formats—broadcast-ready highlight reels for ESPN, 15-second previews for X/Twitter, and 1x1 videos for Instagram—they rely on Auto-Reframe to keep the focus of each video in frame, no matter the format. Finally, Media Encoder lets them output video for any screen size or resolution.
The Frame.io mobile experience is a favorite of the team. Not only are they able to give notes from anywhere in minutes, they’re also able to view videos on their phones, giving them a different look so they can evaluate videos with fresh eyes. But beyond convenience, the efficiencies gained by an end-to-end Adobe workflow gives the team more time to spend on pre-production, from planning briefs to getting buy-in from partners. They also have more time to train on the latest cameras or editing technologies, or time to explore what other teams across the league are doing for inspiration.
All stats are accurate as of September 2023.
