Bundesliga champions crowned in 3D glory
Germany: At the close of play on match day 34, Borussia Dortmund captain, Roman Weidenfeller, raised the Bundesliga championship plate to the skies to a thunderous roar from the massive crowd packed into the Signal Iduna Park, writes Reinhard Penzel for Live Production. For the seventh time, Borussia’s name will be immortalised on the nation’s most coveted “salad dish” – and all the action on the field was broadcasted on Sky Deutschland and “Liga Total” in stunning 3D.
The TV media service provider Sportcast finished the Bundesliga season 2010/11 with the production of another soccer highlight in 3D – Borussia Dortmund crowned their championship-winning season with a 3-1 victory on home turf, relegating Eintracht Frankfurt in the process. Sportcast again had commissioned TopVision to cover the match and the victory ceremony in 3D – this time with ten 3D camera pairs.
Camera pairs #1 and #2 were Sony HDC-1500s mounted on side-by-side rigs from Element Technica and positioned high next to the traditional HD camera platforms. Camera pair #3 consisted of two HDC-1500’s mounted on an Element Technica Quasar mirror rig, while camera pair #4 saw two Sony HDC-P1s on a Steadicam with an Element Technica Pulsar mirror rig. Camera pair #5 was a Polecam with an LMP side-by-side rig and two LMP HD:1200 chip cameras. Camera pair #6 (again two HDC-1500s) was mounted on Element Technica’s Quasar mirror rig. The “behind the goal” pairs #7 and #8 were made up of HD:1200 mini cameras fixed on side-by-side rigs from LMP.
To cover the victory ceremony in the best way possible two more camera pairs were set up: camera pair #9 (two HDC-P1s on an Element Technica Pulsar mirror rig) and camera pair #10 (two HDC-1500s on an Element Technica side-by-side rig). The left and the right eye camera signals from all the Element Technica rigs were fed into Sony’s fibre optic video transceiver HDFA-200 and send together with the camera, lens and rig control data via one optical fibre cable to Sony’s MPE-200 production processors in the convergence area, located in one of TopVision’s tender truck. All the HDC-1500/P1 cameras were equipped with Canon zoom lenses.
During the match the 3D director in the 3D production area also had the choice of integrating some of the 2D camera signals (up-converted to 3D via the Sony MPE-200 box) for his story telling. At this production the director, Knut Fleischmann, mainly used the Spidercam feed. The camera signals were mixed on a MVS-8000 from Sony and recorded on an EVS LSM network for SloMo playback while the 5.1 surround sound was composed on a Stagetec Aurus console.