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News  The3DFirm Completes World First Live 3D Satellite Transmission
The3DFirm Completes World First Live 3D Satellite Transmission
17/03/08

On Saturday March 8th, the BBC test-screened the RBS Six Nations rugby match between Scotland and England live in 3D HDTV, as a joint venture between BBC Sport and The3DFirm. The3DFirm is a consortium comprising Inition, media communications firm Can Communicate and hire and post-production house Axis Films. The match was beamed live from Scotland to a venue in West London in front of an invited audience of industry and press. A number of new 3D technologies were deployed at both the game and the screening venue.

The3DFirm worked with BBC Resources to produce the 3D transmission from 3 stereo camera positions which were sent via satellite to Riverside Studios in London.

The Match (click thumbnails to view full images, and move between each by clicking on the left and right edges of the enlarged image):


The Venue (click thumbnails to view full images, and move between each by clicking on the left and right edges of the enlarged image):


Press Coverage:

"I have seen the future of big-event sports broadcasting and it wears funny plastic glasses and sits in the dark with its mouth wide open. The broadcast handed you an eerily convincing simulation of being placed within the bowl of the stadium. You could see how it might provide an attractive alternative to old-fashioned, two-dimensional public screenings, if offered in a local cinema." Giles Smith, The Times (read article here).

"It was a fascinating experiment, when they were lining up to take a kick, the camera from the touchline showed a view along the length of the pitch and the 3D effect was startling.....The view from the stands made you feel as if you were right in with the crowd. When people got up in the stands it was difficult to tell the difference between them and the people really around you." Quote from Kevin Roberts of Sport Business in London Lite Article.

"As one of my fellow audience members put it, this wasn't like watching TV, it was like being at the match. And you know what, it really was." John Galliver – BBC News (read article here).


View a behind-the-scenes video here.

Technical details:

What was the HD format used in the capture, encoding, compression and presentation etc? 1080i
What was the bit rate of the uplink for each of the streams? 19MB/sec on each stream. We played safe for this test so we did not to take up too much bandwidth but would anticipate going to 40mb per stream in the future.
How where the streams time locked or bonded together? Each camera was gen-locked. These feeds were then sent to the vision mixer where they were paired together so the mixer saw them as one (when you cut to Camera One you actually cut the 2 cameras that were on position one) and then a fairly standard OB edit took place between camera positions. The output from the mixer or broadcast feed was then compressed as 2 SCPC ASI streams, multiplexed together and transmitted via satellite. This satellite signal was then received in London, decoded and fed to 2 Christie 8K HD projectors.
Half way through the game there was a video “glitch” what was that caused by? Satellite issue due to weather. This also happened on the 2D TV signal.
Was it circular polarization on the glasses or linear? Linear.
How many seconds behind live was it? Approximately 6-7 seconds.
How did you re-balance the audio for the radio to the video sync? We took the Radio Scotland commentary straight from their commentary booth shifted the sync slightly and mixed it on site with the international sound.
What was the sound format? 4.0 (quadraphonic) with phantom centre speakers.
What was the make/model of the camera? Pairs of broadcast Sony 950 cameras with wide angle HD Zooms on 3DFirm Calcutta 3D rigs.

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