As content creators strive to capture defining and dramatic moments from every angle of live events, Sony Electronics continues to be an industry leader when it comes to delivering can’t-miss details to television audiences.
Inside a sporting landscape where fans and game officials alike rely on instant replay to determine anything from whether a wide receiver kept his feet inbounds during a catch to what angle a perfectly placed pitch crossed the plate, Sony remains at the forefront, and is often pacing the rest of the field, not only in grabbing precise HD and 4K images, but also producing them in a manner that ensures compelling storytelling.
A fleet of Sony cameras were placed in strategic locations around NRG Stadium in Houston for the Super Bowl. Those cameras utilized High Frame Rate technology that allowed production teams to capture action from an array of vantage points and deliver meaningful images that until only recently, would have otherwise been considered unimaginable. The ability to shoot at six or eight times slow motion enables more replay options from more angles and at different speeds.
“What that means is an increased drama for the end user at home and an increased ability for the content creator to do storytelling about the difficulty of an athlete to make a certain play during the game,” said Deon LeCointe, Sony’s senior manager of IP Production Technology and Sports Solutions.
In Houston, more than 60 cameras were used to capture game action. Sony utilized a collection of its HDC-4300 cameras, which LeCointe refers to as the runaway success of the sports market. Sony introduced the 4300 in 2015, when the model became the first to use three 2/3-inch 4K image sensors, which allowed 8x the normal frame rate acquisition in HD and 2x the normal frame rate in 4K. In addition, two HDC-4800 cameras were also utilized for the Super Bowl, which grabbed 8x the normal frame rate per second in 4K and 16x – or an amazing 960 frames per second – in HD.
With a vast number of options now being made available for use at major sporting events, whether it be the NFL, NBA, PGA TOUR or MLB, the trend is for production teams to capture images from more locations inside venues in order to provide more definitive looks at the drama unfolding inside the game.
And as the desire for enhanced storytelling among content creators and producers continues to expand, Sony technology continues to lead the way – not only with the rate of speed images are collected, but quality coming out of them.
High Dynamic Range Technology, which was once designated for film production, has gradually transitioned over to the sports realm. HDR affords content creators a greater gamut of color with which to work, which leads to sharper contrasts in the final product the viewing audience receives at home.
Production teams working at venues across the country now have Sony’s real-time HDR Live technology at their disposal. The technology allows producers, in real time, to collect sharp and powerful images that dramatically allow powerfully detailed images to be collected and used to better convey the atmosphere inside stadiums where the action is taking place. Content creators are now blending 4K image acquisition and HDR acquisition together, which produces better resolution and a wider color gamut, giving storytellers more bang for their buck, LeCointe said.
“The image now has a pop,” LeCointe said. “It looks much more profound. It looks much more powerful.”
Telling powerful stories, however, comes with a cost. As broadcast companies work to keep production costs down while still achieving the highest quality possible, Sony’s IP technology is offering solutions.
As the move is made from an HD world to a 4K reality, truck companies and networks find themselves building facilities to handle higher-bandwidth signals. But as technology changes, companies are discovering that their infrastructure is no longer properly equipped to keep up. Sony’s IP technology aims to allow companies to revamp their existing facilities at a lower cost while also staying ahead of the game as technology continues to evolve.
With IP, the same content creators and production teams searching for new ways to deliver stories in quality ways now have more options to work with in order to deliver acquire content in 4K and beyond. IP allows production teams to operate from remote locations through fiber connections from stadium venues back to master control, which in turn, means lower production costs. That allows a network’s resources to be more efficiently and effectively utilized, which leaves more money left to be at invested in 4K and HDR technology.
And in the end, that provides broadcasters and production teams what they’re looking for most.
“They want to be able to capture the game from every angle possible,” LeCointe said. “It’s all about delivering an enhanced experience and telling a better story”.