In Broadcast - July 2013 - 71

ISSUE 21 - JULY 2013 | WWW.INBROADCAST.COM

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

N E W S

InSTUDIO

Hybrid’s Sports Track Technology
Follows Live Action
H

ybrid, a provider of real-time
graphics and robotic camera
systems, has developed Sport
Track, an exclusive, innovative
technology that enables robotic
cameras to automatically follow live
game action.
The breakthrough technology
sends the positional tracking data
from the manned master camera to
an unmanned slave camera so that
it can follow the game’s movement.
“Sport Track enables sports
broadcasters to reduce the number
of manned cameras required to
cover a live game,” said Hybrid

Sport Track reduces the number of
manned cameras employed to cover
a live game

CEO Olivier Cohen. “It not only
reduces operating costs, it also
enriches the quality of the program.
Broadcasters and production
companies can employ more
cameras to cover the game while
staying within increasingly tight,
competitive budgets.”
When Hybrid began developing
Sport Track one year ago, the
technical challenge was daunting.
While robotic cameras have long
been used in ﬁxed positions, Hybrid
faced a new question, ‘How could a
robotic camera be made to see and
follow fast moving live game action
like soccer or football in real-time?’
After considerable trial and error,
Hybrid discovered the answer. A
manned Cartoni motion tracking
pan/tilt/zoom/focus (PTZF) camera
serves as the master camera, which
is networked to a Hybrid Titanium
robotic camera head.
Using the newly developed
software and drivers from Hybrid,
all of the camera data - including

Hybrid’s Sport Track enables robotic cameras to automatically
follow live game action

position, angle, distance, and speed
– is optically tracked, encoded and
transmitted by the Cartoni camera
over to the Titanium robotic camera
head. These coordinates “tell” the
Titanium (robotic slave) camera
head how and where to move while
following the game action precisely.
“The idea for Sport Track was
originally inspired by Host Broadcast
Systems (HBS), who approached
us with a need for this technology
in the coverage of their live soccer
championships,” said Cohen.

Owned by Infront Sports & Media,
HBS is the host broadcaster of
major sporting events, including
the upcoming 2014 FIFA World
Cup Championships in Brazil. “We
also found tremendous interest
in this automatic camera system
when we spoke with sports
broadcasters and producers at the
2012 IBC Show and the 2013 NAB
Show – who wanted to increase
the number of cameras for a more
visually interesting live game without
increasing operating costs.”
71

Tel. +44 (0)1327 872 531 info@medialease.com www.medialease.com

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