Orad is providing a variety of products and services to CCTV for this summer’s coverage of the Olympic Games. Orad will help CCTV create two full virtual studios on the Olympic site, along with 3D graphics, virtual outdoor billboards and a host of visual augmentation to the hard sets that will anchor truly unique coverage of the Games. 

“Orad’s first virtual studio will be a traditional-type Chinese broadcast, which their viewers are used to seeing,” explains Shaun Dail, vice president of sales and marketing for Orad. “The second channel will be a much more modern set design. It takes things as far as the Chinese go to the edge, targeting a younger, more dynamic audience.”

Both facilities will air live for 13 or more hours daily, utilizing some live and some on-tape video clips, and each virtual studio will have its own virtual monitor wall.

“The virtual monitor walls will map and play video on those virtual objects,” Dail syas. “We’re eliminating the huge expenses involved with building actual video walls.”

CCTV will utilize Orad’s on-air graphics, channel branding and 3D play controller to combine their virtual and hard environments. The company’s outdoor billboard system will also be utilized to place virtual objects throughout Beijing.

The system, used by Turner Sports during the NBA All-Star Game, will project video virtually onto CCTV buildings for a unique graphical look on outdoor shots that is limited only by 270 degrees of camera movement and the imagination of the company’s designers.

“The outdoor billboard system is designed to place graphics not only within a studio, but within a city,” Dail explains. “We have a sensorized camera track data, and then we overlay the graphic on top of the camera feed. The key is real-time rendering and accurate tracking.”

Indoors, Orad will virtually augment the hard sets with visual objects that help advance the content on the set and make a point.

“We use it in a topical way as opposed to a fixture way,” Dail says. “We’ll be mapping live video and clips to virtual objects throughout the IBC center.”