A Revolution in Sports Production

revolution

IP technology will revolutionize the traditional approach to sports broadcasting, much in the same way that the transition from analog (traditional CCTV) cameras to IP cameras revolutionized the security and surveillance industries.

What is a sports broadcast production? This surprisingly simple question is left largely unanswered by current streaming sports-broadcasting solutions. We at Strive have defined the vocabulary for scalable, IP-based sports broadcast production.

The first element of an IP-based sports broadcast production is Core Game Content. This is game content that is purely functional with respect to an observer’s ability to follow the game. Attributes of core game content include: maintaining game activity within the field of view, maintaining resolution so players’ numbers can be read and so that the ball can be seen, and the determination and presentation of the game score which is critical for observers who start watching in the middle of a broadcast. Core Game Content is a necessary element of any IP-based sports broadcast production, and is the only element of current IP-based sports broadcasting solutions. An example approach is simply streaming a fixed high-resolution camera positioned at a sports-event. While this may meet the requirement for Core Game Content, at Strive we believe that customers expect much more. Specifically, the belief that fully scalable IP-based sports broadcast production will only happen when Superbowl-quality production is delivered to customers at a fraction of current broadcast-quality production costs.

The core additional elements we believe are required for fully scalable IP-based sports broadcast production are: Enhanced Game Content, and Scalable Low-Cost Production.

Example components of Enhanced Game Content include: a camera view that follows the game activity to more actively engage the viewer, graphic overlays of information relevant to the game (such as players records, or live twitter feeds), and multiple-views to further engage the viewer, all performed with adherence to well-understood cameraman and broadcast production rules, such as avoidance of jump-cuts and maintenance of smooth camera motion.

An example component of Scalable Low-Cost Production includes Remote Production. Traditional sports broadcast production makes use of highly-skilled expensive staff, and expensive unwieldy equipment (for example outside-broadcast trucks) located typically at the sports event itself. Strive’s Remote Production technologies however enable unskilled, less-expensive staff to provide basic input that is filtered and corrected by software algorithms with the aim of matching the production quality normally provided by skilled cameraman and producers. Strive’s technologies enable the relocation of production processes from the location of the sports event to any location, even to another country. Crucially, Strive’s Remote Production technologies overcome the bandwidth and latency problems that have been barriers to such attempts in the past, and do so at a fraction of the cost of current attempts at such solutions.

We believe that Strive’s technologies deliver core and enhanced game content with scalable low-cost production will dramatically change the paradigm for sports broadcast production. For example, hundreds of events that were once too expensive to broadcast will now become available to customers worldwide.

Stay tuned to this blog to hear more.

 

February 22, 2016 | StriveCast.tv | By Keith Hanna