NEW YORK— While broadcasting to
the home viewer in 4K resolution is
some years in the future, Fox Sports
is already using a 4K camera as part
of its “A-Game” NFL telecast retinue.
The excess resolution (to a 720p
production) supplied by the Sony
F65 digital cinematography camera
is critical to the sports network’s “Super
Zoom” feature.
The camera is tied electronically
to a “Vortex” system developed by
PsiTech, a provider of high-speed digital
video technology, and deployed
in the OB truck. “We can move it
around, zoom in where we want, and
extract the particular piece of that
4K that we want,” said Jerry Steinberg,
senior vice president, technical
operations, of Fox Sports. Because
the resolution from the Sony F65 is
nine times that of the telecast’s 720p frame,
the operator can zoom in to 1/9th of the
frame during replay and still supply crisp,
in-focus video.
“If the original shot showed a full player,
head to foot, you could probably get to his
feet and read what’s written on his shoes,”
said Steinberg.
5-GIG PAYLOAD
Because the F65 is designed to operate
as a stand-alone camera, recording to a
RAW recorder, “we’ve added a CDU unit to
it for this application,” said Rob Willox, director
of marketing, Large Sensor Cameras
at Sony Electronics.
He said the total data payload coming
out of that camera at 60p is 5Gbps.
John Kerr, president of PsiTech, described
the video path from camera to
production trailer. “That [5Gbps] gets
crunched down onto a single fiber and
sent down, all around the stadium, into the
video truck. The data is translated into multiple
wavelengths on the same fiber so we
only have to use a single resource down
from the camera site.” A second fiber run
“has a whole bunch of control signals to a
bunch of control interfaces.”
PsiTech’s Vortex is the latest in a series
of high data rate camera capture systems
from the Fountain Valley, Calif.-based company.
“It actually grew up in the government
test and evaluation arena,” said Kerr,
“where they wanted to be able to get just
lots of data to look at, evaluate whatever
they were evaluating in crashes and explosions
and whatever else they might want
to look at.
“And so in this case we had to configure
it for the Sony F65. We then have done
some custom work for Fox to give them
this particular Fox Super Zoom effect.”
The F65 is fitted with a Fujinon cinestyle
zoom lens with zoom and focus controllers
familiar to an OB camera operator.
It also sports a studio viewfinder.
STADIUM LOCATION
Where in the stadium to locate the Super
Zoom camera is still a work in progress,
according to Steinberg. “The questionable
plays are usually: ‘Is it a catch,
was it in-bounds or out-of-bounds?’” The
camera has been located in the end zone,
on the 50 yard line, or on the 50 from a reverse
angle. “Wherever the director wants
to put it.”
Kerr pointed out that it is critical to the
system that there is no compression of the
F65’s RAW video output on its way to the
Vortex. “If there’s any compression, as we
zoom in, we will start suffering from that
compression,” he said. “We store all the data
from the camera, and then we play back
from all that data and do our processing on
the output. By the time we do our extraction,
we are giving the viewer the best possible
view of that data.”
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Deciding where in the stadium to locate the Sony F65 camera is still a work in progress, according to Jerry Steinberg of Fox Sports. |
The Super Zoom playback operator controls
not only where to zoom, but also playback
rate. “And that becomes sort of a ‘style
thing’ for the replay operator,” said Kerr.
“We’ve had operators who like slow motion,
we’ve had operators that like regular
motion, we’ve had some that like to be able
to step it, so it shows the foot’s on, foot’s
off, foot’s on, foot’s off. So it’s really a style
thing for the operator. The good news is
the system gives them the flexibility to do
it the way they feel is the best.”
The video replay from Fox’s Super
Zoom is available to the NFL game’s referee
during a challenge, and Kerr pointed out it
had a decision-making effect already in one
game, the second week of the season this
year:
During a challenge at the Tampa Bay
Buccaneers-New York Giants game at Giant
Stadium, none of the other camera angles
showed definitively whether the receiver
crossed the goal line inside the outside
the sideline pylon. “Did the Tampa player
step on the line before he got to the end
zone? At the last minute, as he’s falling over
the goal line, he gets pushed outside the
pylon, and the ball never crossed over the
goal line inside the pylon,” Kerr said. “Both
of these things were just not visible from
other cameras, and not visible unless we
could zoom in on them the way we did.
“Not only did they feed it to the refs,
not only did they put it out over the air for
the home viewer, but they also put it up on
the Jumbo-Tron in the stadium, so all the
people in the stadium could see what the
referee was seeing. And it was very clear,”
Kerr added.
So what’s next? According to Willox, a
new version of the F65’s software will allow
Fox to supply its 4K video at 120 progressive
frames per second, which will provide
smoother slow motion playback.
Can PsiTech’s Vortex handle the doubling
of the data? “The system is a generic,
high-data rate system,” said Kerr. “Within
some parameters we’ll have the capacity
to absorb that. Certainly at some point we
end up having to add more channels, add
more storage, but we’re hoping that we’ll
be able to run the higher frame rate without
having to change too much the hardware
that Fox already has.”