SVG Europe
The autonomous production of sporting events, eliminating
the need for an on-site production team, director or camera operator, is making
serious headway among professional clubs, federations and leagues. The
technology is gaining ground as a tactical and performance analysis tool and
increasingly used to fully automate live streamed production.
Spanish soccer league La Liga, for instance, is the first
league in the world to introduce an automated production system that is making
every game available to any analyst in any of the league’s clubs. Since the
beginning of the 2017-18 season all 42 La Liga clubs are using Automatic TV,
devised by media group and domestic rights holder Mediapro, for analysis not
just post-event but to inform team decisions at half-time.
Keemotion, a U.S company behind a rival automated sports
video technology “has the potential to disrupt the way all live events are
produced,” claims one of its investors, the former NBA commissioner David
Stern. “And that’s not limited to sports. This is a game-changer.”
Speaking to Forbes, Stern also described the ability to automate production as the
“Tesla for sports broadcasting”.
MediaPro has informed SVG Europe of major announcements at
NAB in April one of which will see the current HD camera system upgraded to UHD
and the ability to picture stitch 8K-10K panoramas in real-time.
Aside from La Liga, MediaPro also says its system is in use
by two other national European leagues, including a division one, although it
said it cannot reveal names. The system is active in the US for gymnastics,
Australia for new Olympic sport 3 x 3 basketball, in the UK, Denmark and China.
“We are delivering both tactical camera feeds and live
streaming and we provide that to analysts, sports body and coaches of the clubs
on a closed network,” explained Joan Bennassar, who initiated the project
within Mediapro’s R&D team five years ago.
“The first step was to understand if we were able to make a
video production without any human intervention – just a camera and computer
and software analysis of what is happening on the pitch. Within a few months we
were able to prove that concept.”
A year later Automatic TV was installed at Barcelona FC’s
training facility to record all training sessions. “We waited one more
year until launching commercially worldwide. We now have distributors in more
than 20 countries and are able to create a full HD multi-camera production from
different angles.”
Primary applications
There are, Bennasser explains, three primary applications
for ATV. “The first is tactical analysis using mainly a master view of the
game. Conventional broadcast coverage concentrates on only a few players. You
are not normally in a wide shot so you cannot see everything that is happening.
As a coach or a scout you want to see all the players all the time.”
La Liga is making most extensive use of this Tactical
camera. Software specifically designed to manage a 3-camera fixed rig creates
the video feed, which is imported into the video motion analysis tool
Mediacoach, also devised by Mediapro.
The system,
which was approved by every club, means each club has access to the same
tactical data for all home and away games – though how that is interpreted is
up to the skills of club analysts. The feeds are stitched into a 6K x 1K
quality panorama controlled remotely by an operator in a purpose-built central
control in Madrid. Individual club analysts can view the live stream and
provide feedback to the manager at half time. An hour after the final whistle
and all clubs are able to access any tactical camera feed from any of the other
matches via the Mediacoach platform, while La Liga can deliver the video to all
interested broadcasters. Other sports analysis tools including Sportscode,
Nacsport, and Fluendo’s Longomatch are also compatible.
The second ATV application is for training. “Typically,
during a training session you will have different groups practicing different
things simultaneously. ATV can record several video files separately,
automatically and simultaneously so that a coach is able, later, to follow for
example the goalkeeper training and then some tactical practice or a small
match.”
Valencia FC adopted this in its training facility for the
start of the 2017-18 season.
The third application is “broadcast-style” live streams
using up to 8 HD cameras ringed around the venue. This is being used by clubs
as an inexpensive means to stream to official websites. Bennasser says this is
typically semi-automated with production by one or two personnel on site – a
camera operator filming handheld touchline clips and a vision mixer to switch
the feeds.
Automatic TV works with nine sports including hockey,
basketball, handball and volleyball. It comes with software to schedule games
and links to a manned monitoring site.
It is not as yet offering automated editing of highlights
packages although where edits are needed there is capability for an operator to
clip selections into a playlist.
“The system can also be used as a low cost video assistant
referee system,” says Bennasser. “We can go back in time and analyse any action
frame by frame and provide replays.”
MediaPro says its product is commercialised in a small but
competitive and fast growing market. Rival technologies Pixellot and Keemotion
are neither applicable to as many sports as Automatic TV, nor multi-cam
capable, it claims.
‘Motion Following Technology’
Keemotion is based on a proprietary ‘Motion Following
Technology’ which detects and tracks player movements, and follows the game
through additional scoreboard interaction. The technology enables coaches to
break-down, analyse and share game footage real-time, while fans can
simultaneously watch the event and connect it with others through social media.
Games are available either live or on-demand, and accessible for web
streaming and mobile distribution.
The system – recently backed with $3.6 million of funds from
investors including Guggenheim Baseball Management, the Los Angeles Dodgers and
David Blitzer, co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils – is
being used within both divisions of the men’s pro basketball league in France
(LNB Pro A and Pro B) and by all 12 teams in the LFB, the women’s pro
basketball league in France. Across all three leagues, Keemotion has taken the
production of French basketball from four games per week to over 20.
Keemotion works with basketball, ice hockey volleyball,
handball and futsal and the new funds will be used to address more sports.
The Brooklyn-based outfit currently produces basketball
games and other sporting events for professional leagues, colleges and
universities and high schools in nine countries – the U.S, France, Italy,
Germany, Austria, Finland, Belgium, England, and The Netherlands. Its European
customers include Bayern Munich, the Austrian Basketball League and the Finnish
Basketball Association. It says it also works with content distribution
partners including Sky Austria and Dailymotion.
Meanwhile, Keemotion is in early-stage conversations with a
number of technology companies to figure out how its technology might
potentially be used more broadly in film production, sports and consumer
technology, or how technology such as deep learning and artificial intelligence
might help to improve its product and accelerate the development of its
automated technologies.
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