SVG Europe editor The BBC successfully tested the potential of 3D stereoscopic sports coverage last week in London with a presentation of the England-Scotland rugby union match last weekend. The Calcutta Cup fixture of the 6 Nations tournament was shown live on a big screen to an invited audience of television industry types and journalists at the Riverside Studios, London, in a joint production between BBC Sport and the 3DFirm consortium. BBC Resources OBs supplied the facilities and equipment for the coverage, with three pairs of Sony HDC950 cameras arranged around Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, one high and central for the main wide-shot and another at ground-level. The third rig was also initially to be pitch-side but due to the unrelenting wind and rain on the day it was moved into the grandstand on one side of the venue. The director of the 3D coverage, Rhys Edwards, says this worked out better than the original configuration might have done. "That third angle gave a completely different feel to the coverage," explained Edwards, who works for BBC Wales and is the son of Welsh rugby legend Gareth Edwards, "with the camera looking over the heads of spectators." For those watching in London this was probably the most effective shot, giving the impression of being at the game. Occasionally the urge to shout at someone to sit down in front, forgetting the person was in Edinburgh, was quite strong. Some low-level shots from the pitch-side also gave a sense of depth and immediacy. Edwards said that in the main he used the central camera, with its wide shot of most of the pitch, cutting away to the other two angles occasionally to break things up. The two HDC950s in each rig were bolted to a mounting plate, joining them together so that any sideways or up-and-down movement applied to both lenses equally. The operators had a large single viewfinder for framing. To preserve a proper 3D image the signals from each pair of cameras were gen-locked together. A standard vision mixer in the BBC OBs scanner was used to mix the signals in sync, although Edwards and the camera operators monitored in 2D. Two multiplexed HD signals were then uplinked from the BBC's Link 21 truck direct to Riverside Studios. The feed was decoded as a HD-SDI output and fed to two Christie projectors for the screening. The audience wore special glasses, but not the old-fashioned cardboard pairs with the red and green lenses. A polarised 3D system was used rather than the colour spectrum method, for the purely practical reason that the necessary filters would not fit on the projectors. Commentary of the match was relayed from BBC Radio Five Live, as that was considered to be more descriptive for the wider camera angles. This was mixed into 4.0 surround sound with crowd effects and the referee's mic by sound supervisor Dave Rolls, working at a Studer Vista 8 console. Whether 3D will appeal to the serious sports fan will have to be seen. Those who cannot get to see a game live would probably want the multi-camera TV coverage with graphics, zooms and slo-mos and may see a three-angle presentation, even in 3D, as a step backwards. Adding more cameras with all the expected extras might tip the balance in favour of 3D, especially for screenings in venues rather than standard TV viewing in the home, but even that would not have saved a terrible game, which was won 15-9 by Scotland, the prime contenders for this year's 6 Nations wooden spoon. © Copyright 2006-2009 sportsvideogroup |