Comments

fp615 wrote on 2/3/2014, 8:28 AM
I watched the superbowl during the italian night, I'm still recovering from no sleep.... I don't want to talk about the match but about the images. I was ready to watch a state of the art show.

We were shown the "international" video signal and I hope that what you (US based) got as video was better than mine: there were several errors in the switching of the cameras and one "replay server" did not work correctly (or the operator was not following director commands).

Sometimes a replay was shown and colors were... well, musicvid10 could do a lesson on this... they were very pale, as if a completely different camera setup was used. Were they using some cameras used for US video ?

We got very few stats and we didn't get any "drawings" on the still frame... how don't know how are they called, the drawings that show how the player moved...

Not the pleasant experience I expected...
Gary James wrote on 2/3/2014, 9:46 AM
Mike, these are great links showing the meat and potatoes of what it takes to produce an NFL football game ( or as you Brits call it, American football ).

I was totally turned off by the NFL players strike back in the mid 80's, so it was many years later before I ever turned on a game again. And when I did, the new technology blew me away. The super-imposed Down and Line markers, and flying cable-cam are absolutely brilliant. That cable-cam looks like it can almost position itself into a huddle.

Did I hear them saying they record everything in 4K, and then broadcast an HD sub-portion of that 4K source material?
riredale wrote on 2/3/2014, 10:51 AM
Interesting juxtaposition between this link and the nearby link discussing drones--I wonder how long before the cablecam is replaced or supplanted by a dozen flying cameras? I can picture one following a long pass downfield...

Also, I wonder how they pick the cameraman for the 50-yard-line camera. Probably more video comes from him than from any other single camera, a pretty heavy responsibility.
cbrillow wrote on 2/3/2014, 4:58 PM
Quite a few years ago, a dear friend -- gjesion here on the forum -- produced a public access video 'documentary' that he created as a guest in the production truck at a Monday Night Football game. Although I'm sure modesty prevents his mentioning it and he probably wouldn't want anyone to see it, it was an interesting look at 'the bigtime' in comparison to the local cable access high school football games that he worked on with the precursor to Comcast in our area.

No doubt, the gee-whiz technology factor has increased ten-fold since then, with the features that have already been mentioned, but it was still a fascinating look at how the pros did it...

Take a bow, Jerry. You did a great job!