10 TVBEurope News & Analysis By Adrian Pennington
AS THE All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and Sony look to extend their contract to produce the Wimbledon tennis championships in 3D beyond 2013, the particular nature of the venue continues to restrict their ambitions. This year 12 matches from the quarter finals were captured in 3D with the production itself by CAN Communicate and Sony, broadly mirroring that established in 2011. Centre Court was populated with six 3D camera positions, five of which were 3Ality Technica Pulsars carrying Sony P1s while a sixth position in the cramped commentary box area is a PMW-TD300 camcorder. An additional TD300 was used to capture colour shots and ad hoc interviews docked to an SR Master R1 in order to boost the rate of data throughput. The TD300 would normally record at 35Mbps to SxS cards. NEP Visions Gemini trucks housed the technical operation including stereographer convergence ops, while another housed the editorial teams of the BBC and ESPN. Live feeds were ingested into EVS XT2s with recording also being made to solid-state SR Master decks, effectively rendering the production tapeless as well as bringing substantial space saving in the truck. Broadcasters taking the host 3D feed included BBC, ESPN, Canal+ (Spain), Nova (Greece), Sky Italia and Japan’s WowWow. Mervyn Hall, broadcast
manager at the AELTC, professed to be “very pleased” with the 3D experiment to date and has opened talks with Sony about extending its three year deal which ends in 2013. “We have begun exploring what the possibilities might be,” he said.
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Wimbledon 3D stays in court
3D) but despite a will to make it work, no model for ‘5D’ has been agreed. Hall said, “The problem is we haven’t yet found a way to use 5D cameras which don’t, in our view, interfere a bit with the essential core service which is a 2D world feed. We are very cautious about impacting on that but no doubt it can work out and sooner or later it will. “There is also an editorial consideration. If we did it in 5D the direction would have to be the responsibility of the BBC since it is the host broadcaster, directed in a 2D way because that is what is effectively paying the rent. That’s what broadcasters really want.” The editorial production style
The AELTC’s ambition for doing more 3D will depend on
broadcaster demand, which this year was led by ESPN
“There is some debate about the effectiveness of tennis in 3D…. there are some who think it doesn’t deliver as well in 3D as other sports like boxing or football” Paul Davies, BBC
“We believe in starting these conversations early and we are very determined that this relationship should go further.” The AELTC’s ambition for doing more 3D will depend on broadcaster demand, which this year was led by ESPN, but it is reluctant to begin covering more than the Centre Court in 3D because of fears it would negatively impact on its primary 2D coverage. “The more 3D broadcasters
that come on board the more incentive there is for us to be able to generate more 3D coverage,” said Hall. “We might do more days. We might include additional camcorders for 3D studio excerpts and more 3D ISOs.” The BBC is to introduce a 2D wirecam for 2013, which will
probably be rigged for 3D. BBC Executive Sport
Producer Paul Davies said, “There certainly seems an appetite from broadcasters that if content is there they will take it. If it is made available by the club as a 3D host feed they will take it.” The biggest problem however
remains the constraints of space on Centre Court. “We have six 3D cameras around court and it’s been very hard to find a seventh and an eight [position],” said Hall. “There is no point just putting them anywhere. We’d like more space but while that is not possible the production team is learning to get good coverage from six. “We are trying our best to accommodate 3D cameras but it is challenging simply because of the
compact structure and availability of places to put them on court, especially when ESPN have additional cameras there and other broadcasters would like to have more,” he added. “So while 3D is not way down the pecking order it is not the most important. We have to complement what we’re doing in 2D with our 3D ambitions.”
Production style One solution to cutting costs would be to produce a joint outside broadcast combining 2D with 3D camera positions and taking a 3D or a 2D cut from either left or right eye. The number of pooled cameras increased this year (the panoramic camera on Murray Mound and the robotic track camera on Centre Court were converted into
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of 3D broadcasts at Wimbledon, as honed by Sony and CAN Communicate, features fewer cameras, fewer cuts and longer dwell times on shots than 2D. In addition, the 3D director will navigate to either end of the court by way of a central 3D camera position to maintain a viewer’s understanding of their position relative to the action. In 2D a straight end-to-end cut is more common. According to Davies, “5D
is a real possibility but there are issues of resilience and making sure the output is not compromised in any way by issues in 3D coverage. There is a nervousness about building 3D into one [5D OB] and there needs to be a bit more reassurance on that before it comes off. He added: “There is some
debate about the effectiveness of tennis in 3D. While it is very fresh and impactful there are some that think it doesn’t deliver as well in 3D as other sports like boxing or football. “You can also argue that in those sports the jury is still out on 3D and ask whether the long term coverage of sport may be more like Super Hi-Vision.”
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