SVG Europe reveals Sport Technology Reception award recipients
SVG Europe is pleased to announce this year’s honourees at the IBC Sport Technology Reception, to be held on 14 September at the RAI in Amsterdam. Red Bull Media House, Riedel and Origin Digital will take home the honour for Production Achievement for the impressive work done on last October’s Red Bull Stratos launch. Meanwhile, the honourees for Technical Achievement are BSkyB and ChyronHego for the development of Premier League player tracking graphics.
To turn Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic 24-mile Red Bull Stratos skydive into a globally iconic moment, Red Bull Media House brought together a unique mix of bleeding-edge and traditional video-production tools that ran the technological gamut. The Red Bull Stratos skydive teamed Red Bull Media House with a umber of production partners, including Flightline Films, Riedel Communications, Origin Digital, and others. In the end, the live feed of Baumgartner’s 128,100-ft. free fall garnered a YouTube-record 8 million concurrent streams (280 digital syndication partners streamed it) and was picked up by 80 TV outlets in 50 countries.
The compound in Roswell, New Mexico, was composed of mission control, the production offices, the media/press center, and Lyon Video’s MU8 mobile-production unit, along with the nearby capsule launch pad. Riedel tied the entire compound together with its Artist Digital Matrix fiber-based communications system.
In addition, all video signals on ground were distributed and routed with a Riedel fiber-based MediorNet real-time network. A total of 24 Riedel MediorNet nodes were installed in a redundant ring topology to prevent a connection loss, and the main system was connected to the launch pad via a MediorNet system with two MediorNet Compact frames.
Red Bull Media House brought on Origin Digital and its Live Events Automation Platform (LEAP) to help distribute the stream to devices around the globe. The live stream was sent via satellite from Roswell to Origin Digital’s encoding facility in Denver, where it was encoded and fed to YouTube’s CDN. The live stream was then played out on the same video play YouTube used for its record-breaking work at the London Olympic Games last summer.
Meanwhile, the honourees for Technical Achievement are BSkyB and ChyronHego for the development of Premier League player tracking graphics. At the back-end of the 2012/2013 English Premier League season, Sky Sports wanted to trial out a brand new analysis tool for enhancing its live EPL football coverage. The aim of the solution was to give the ability for the production to create fast-turnaround analyses of game-play events from a match within a time window of a first or second replay. It was also to give the ability to make highlights where appropriate within the live coverage. To achieve this, it relied upon the deployment of the Tracab player tracking system from ChyronHego, which has recently been selected as the official player tracking technology by the EPL for the next three seasons.
The data from the tracking system was fed over fiber from the tracking server within the stadium down to the OB compound. Within the OB production truck an operator received this data into a version of the acclaimed ChyronHego Virtual Placement system, which has been specially developed for the needs of virtual graphics in football. The result was that all players and the ball were able to have live graphics attached to them in real-time and follow them around in true 3D space.
“This year’s achievements once again prove the important role that sports broadcasters play in advancing technology and our entire industry forward,” says Peter Angell, SVG Europe, chairman.
SVG Europe will present this honourees with awards during the SVG Europe Sport Technology Reception at IBC, held on 14 September beginning at 1800 in the First Floor Restaurant.
To sign up and attend the reception please click here: https://member.sportsvideo.org/events?eventId=708973&EventViewMode=EventDetails
Player tracking graphics on BSkyB English Premier League coverage: At the back-end of the 2012/2013 English Premier League season, Sky Sports wanted to trial out a brand new analysis tool for enhancing its live EPL football coverage. The aim of the solution was to give the ability for the production to create fast-turnaround analyses of game-play events from a match within a time window of a first or second replay. It was also to give the ability to make highlights where appropriate within the live coverage. To achieve this, it relied upon the deployment of the Tracab player tracking system from ChyronHego, which has recently been selected as the official player tracking technology by the EPL for the next three seasons. The data from the tracking system was fed over fiber from the tracking server within the stadium down to the OB compound. Within the OB production truck an operator received this data into a version of the acclaimed ChyronHego Virtual Placement system, which has been specially developed for the needs of virtual graphics in football. The result was that all players and the ball were able to have live graphics attached to them in real-time and follow them around in true 3D space. The graphics and the tracking data were synchronised frame accurately by timecode. As a result of these successful trial productions, Sky Sports now plans to role this solution out extensively across its EPL coverage over the coming season and well into the future. Additionally, other European broadcasters are also expressing a strong interest in the solution and have strong ambitions to achieve the same end results. This interest is especially strong in Germany, Holland, Spain and Denmark, where Tracab is also already deployed as the official player tracking system on the national football leagues.