NEWS ANALYSIS
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A Sporting Chance
The demand for quick, accurate decisions in major sporting events is driving innovation in the world of broadcast audio, writes Kevin Hilton.
SPORT IS a round-the-year phenomenon, even more so through the efforts of TV and radio channels dedicated to covering all the major events all day, every day. Despite this, there is always something significant about the start of a new football season, a sign that – in Europe at least – summer is almost over and fans can return to the stadiums (or more likely their flatscreens) to follow the fortunes of their teams. Because football and
broadcasting are now so closely associated – and to a degree interdependent on each other for publicity and future development – any new technology used for the coverage or analysis of a game deserves as much enthusiasm as the matches themselves. The big technological innovation for the 2013-14 English Premier League season is the introduction of goal line technology (GLT) to settle once and for all the on pitch, TV studio pundit, and fans-down-the-pub arguments over whether the ball crossed the line or not. Other visual introductions making their debut last month were much of the content of the new BT Sport studios in east London. The telecom giant has pumped money into rights for both Premier League football and Premiership rugby, among other sports, as well as
facilities built into part of what was the international broadcast centre for the London 2012 Olympics. At 14,000sqft Studios 1 and 2 contain a glass floor with built-in LEDs that can be configured to represent different pitch markings for a variety of sports, including football, rugby, and tennis. The idea is that the large roster of experts signed up by BT Sport can re-enact and analyse moments from a game, rather than just relying on graphics.
DIFFERENTIATION Less obvious is BT Sport’s use of audio. It does, however, play an important role, particularly in the broadcaster’s drive to differentiate itself from other sports channels – most notably the long-term leader in the field, Sky, which has been responsible for originating many of the sound and video innovations now familiar in TV sport. A Wisycom wireless mic and in-ear monitoring system, working in conjunction with Boxx TV radio cameras and a Cobham RF network, allows presenters to not only move between BT Sport’s three main studios but also round the rest of the building as well, visiting offices and dressing rooms.
All this is, of course, passive technology as far as the viewer is concerned. The thrust today
is interactivity and BT Sport, Sky, the BBC, and other sports broadcasters are using streaming to PCs and mobile devices, as well as connected digital TVs, to not only bring events to wherever people might be but also give them the opportunity to watch what they want when they want. On the audio side, interactivity has the potential to solve two of the big bugbears in sports
“Any new
technology used for the coverage or analysis of a game deserves as much enthusiasm as the matches
themselves.” Kevin Hilton
broadcasting’s intrusive background effects – including the crowd and noisy competitors along with the witterings of pundits and commentators. Fraunhofer IIS was the first to produce practical technology for this with its Dialogue Enhancement system, which, gained notoriety after it was tested on BBC Wimbledon tennis coverage in 2011 and became known as the Grunt-o-meter. Additional information to the main mix, relating to individual dialogue
and effects elements, is carried in the broadcast stream; viewers can then use an on-screen app to increase or decrease the commentary or crowd noise. Most people found it useful for toning down the grunting of women tennis players, which again hit high decibels during this year’s tournament.
VIEWERS’ CHOICE Dialogue Enhancement was demonstrated by France Télévisions during the French Open and Fraunhofer IIS hopes to standardise the system so it can be included in broadcast systems. While the BBC used Dialogue Enhancement for the Wimbledon trials its R&D department has been working on a separate project, using object-based audio to give radio listeners the ability to not only select their preferred balance between effects and commentary but also which end of the pitch the majority of crowd noise comes from (relating to where the fans of the listener’s team are). This technology was tested during the Championship play-off match between Crystal Palace and Watford at the end of the 2012-13 season. Anthony Churnside, a technologist with BBC R&D, says the experiment was to see whether such capabilities could be achieved technically and what people at home thought
of it. R&D is collating responses from listeners, a task that is taking longer than anticipated because 3,000 people took part when researchers expected only 1,000. Churnside says initial responses have been “overwhelmingly positive” and a report is set to be submitted to the Immersive Media Experiences 2013 workshop. While referral technology is
now being used in football in the form of GLT, cricket, which adopted the Decision Review System (DRS), is under scrutiny as to whether the technical aide is helping the sport or not. At the moment the DRS is based on the HawkEye ball-tracking and Hot Spot infrared imaging systems but the recent Ashes Test showed that even these were not infallible. A third technological
analysis tool that is used by broadcasters but now has official status within the DRS is the Snickometer, also known as Snicko. Microphones behind the stumps pick up the sound of ball on bat, which can be used – in conjunction with a waveform representation – to judge whether a batsman made contact or not. Snicko is not used in the DRS because it apparently takes too long for material to be analysed, but the developer is working on reducing the time taken. So maybe audio will come to the rescue after all.
26 September 2013
www.audiomedia.com
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