In Broadcast - November 2012 - 43

ISSUE 14 - NOV/DEC 2012 | WWW.INBROADCAST.COM

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

N E W S

InFOCUS
Closer To The Sports Action Cont.
ends and any crowd spills onto the pitch, you tend to see technicians racing onto the pitch and replacing the valuable SIS stump cams with normal wooden stumps. For the America’s Cup, the team rigged the aerial and power amp at the top of the mast on each boat, allowing the company to employ a land-based diversity receive system. This method provided a faultless system with no break-up of pictures whatsoever in the ten days of the initial regatta. Wireless can be a problem too, though: “We’re starting to get to the limit of what each link can do with the resolution of the cameras,” says Valentino. “1080i HD-SDI MPEG-2 4:2:2 is still leading the ﬁeld in quality, running at 18Mbits maximum. That gives us a picture quality which we accept. MPEG-4 is starting to come in, but the ﬁrst generation encoders are 4:2:0 and the pic quality hasn’t been as good. 10-bit 4:2:2 encoders are around the corner though and we’ll see a bit leap in quality when they come in.” the appropriate time, and one has to remember that there are always editorial decisions that have to be made along the way too. “Take Formula One; how much vibration do you give it so that it doesn’t look perfectly smooth and like a video game?” asks Valentino rhetorically. “You can take things for granted. Current F1 shots look very good but it makes the cockpit seem quite a sedate environment. It’s not. It’s very violent but the cameras take that out. But search for ‘1989, Senna, Onboard Monaco’ online and you’ll see him drive a hot lap round the circuit with one of the original F1 onboard cameras. Every time I watch it, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.” One thing Baumgartner’s jump proved more than anything though is that cameras routinely have to go where athletes and competitors in all sports go. The viewer wants to ride alongside the athlete, see what they see, and experience some of the thrills of the action, no matter how vicariously. Asked what he sees as the potential challenges coming his way, McNeil offers a simple and succinct answer: “A producer waking up one morning and saying ‘what if...’” ■

BSI’s 360 degree on-car camera

understanding of cars as different formulae have engines working at different RPMs and consequently the bodywork any camera is mounted on has a different resonant frequency. “You can’t just walk in and mount a camera on an IndyCar, a NASCAR car or a Formula One car and not have it fall to bits after a couple of laps,” explains BSI’s Technical Director, Tony Valentino. “It’s a really harsh environment for a camera or microwave system, and it’s taken years of evolution for us to get where we are today with robust cameras and link systems that delivers lap after lap of hi-def shots. It’s not just a case of tightening the bolts a bit more.” The other problem that can be overlooked is the challenge of getting the signals back to base, which McNeil describes as “often a complex task”. “We have expert teams at SIS LIVE who handle fibre systems, RF and wireless connectivity, special cameras and spectrum

management,” he says. “An example of this is the stump cam in cricket, which involves the HD signal, sound and camera data being sent down Cat5 cable from the wicket to a bespoke interconnect boundary box and then on to the OB vehicle. All of this happens in the “ﬁeld of play” in ducts or in case slots cut in to the turf.” This is why before the match

Editorial Cuts
Cricket is a fine example of an extreme camera capturing a nonextreme sport. The point is that the appropriate technology is used at

Close to the action – a SIS LIVE kerb camera at a TT race

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In Broadcast - November 2012

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