With the broadcast of the game supported by technology, it is difficult for players to stop the urge to pick up the handle.
“This thing looks like the real thing!”
In the past, when we played football games, the elders who stopped by to watch would always say such a dark comment.
However, with the extensive use of advanced live broadcast technology, we occasionally catch a glimpse of the game on TV, and even we have to take a closer look to distinguish “true from false”.
La Liga broadcast, which is a testing ground for cutting-edge broadcast technology, has become the hardest hit area of this “cognitive disorder”
The common sense of sight shared by fans and players, on the one hand, is due to the increasingly rich graphical details, which endow football games with the potential to be fake. On the other hand, it is the use of digital means that allows the TV broadcast screen to have the screen texture and lens language that originally belonged only to games.
The above-mentioned illusion created by the stadium photographers and the directors together starts from three aspects.
1
The reason why we can see the difference between live broadcast and game at a glance is that the latter’s picture is too “transparent”.
Due to the lag of technical specifications in the broadcasting and television industry, the resolution of TV signals has not been comparable to that of games for a long time in the past. In addition, even in the case of good lighting conditions, the stadium facilities and the outline of the players will still cause complex light and dark contrasts on the green field, and it is impossible to be as clean as a game field as if it were a dust-free vacuum environment.
As for details in close-ups, the difference is even greater.
The reason why we can recognize Messi below is a fake at a glance is because even under the premise of crazy polygon stacking, the lack of subsurface scattering technology makes the skin of virtual players still too delicate and delicate, and the jersey material is full of All kinds of unnatural reflections, it’s hard to get rid of that familiar plastic feeling.
In order to prevent loss of focus, the background blur effect in the game does not appear frequently in the live broadcast.
So the difference between football game footage and live footage can be summed up in the following: overly bright colors, greasy characters, and a flood of shallow depth-of-field effects.
However, after the five major leagues entered the 4K HDR era in early 2019, their style of painting has also become full of game-
As shown in the figure below, the ultra-clear signal not only achieves a leap in the resolution of live broadcasts, but also the high dynamic range imaging technology allows the details of the dark parts to be seen at a glance, and the entire picture is so transparent that it almost loses the “reality” of the past.
Blonde teenager De Jong became a game character after being blurred with a large aperture and short focus
Thanks to the ultra-high-spec image sensor and large aperture advantage of film-grade equipment, courtside photographers can highlight the subject image of star players through a shallow depth of field effect. Under the combined effect of stadium lighting, high ISO and HDR effects, the Barcelona superstars all look oily and delicate, like game players deducted from FIFA21.
If it is said that the live broadcast of the game is moving closer to the game in terms of painting style, it is the result of unintentional insertion, then in the proposition of enhancing the dynamic sense of the picture and the immersive experience, the football live broadcast directors have indeed drawn a lot of inspiration from the game.
2
As a sport with fierce confrontation and ever-changing competition situation, if you want to fully present its power and beauty, it is not enough to increase the number of fixed cameras on the sidelines.
But aside from the sidelines shot with Steadicam cameras, it’s impossible to have a lot of action shots like an action movie. For a long time before, the dynamic change of perspective mainly relied on the rocker arm and the side rail behind the goal to achieve, and the movement of the lens was very simple.
It is precisely because the live broadcast of the event lacks a shooting method that can penetrate deep into the field without interfering with the progress of the game, such as the sports bird’s-eye view in the picture below, and the “one goal to become famous” perspective. The mirror effect has long been the patent of football games.
The emergence of the “Spidercam” camera system has completely solved this problem for the live broadcast directors. As the name suggests, this set of equipment can not only allow the camera to run wild in the invisible giant web above the court like a spider, but also turn into an agile cat, flying up and down in vertical space.
Technologies such as Kevlar cables, gyroscopes and optical image stabilization are enough to ensure that the “Flying Cat” can output stable images in strong winds
The structure of “Flying Cat” is not complicated: 4-6 cables are connected around the stadium roof, and the camera is suspended in the air. Through the control of a specific rope length by a linear motor and a universal pulley, “Flying Cat” can reach any three-dimensional coordinates according to the trajectory set by the director. Compared with the traditional fixed camera position on the ceiling and the automatic follow-focus lens on the sidelines, the “Flying Cat” system allows the live broadcast to have an infinitely variable lens group similar to the game, thus greatly improving the visual impact of the game screen.
Since the opening game of the Chinese Super League in 2015, the “flying cat” technology has been widely used in CCTV-5 broadcasts
In addition to tracking the changes of the situation on the field in real time at a fixed height, when there are scenes in which player behaviors such as free kicks, scoring celebrations, referees suspending the game, etc. are relatively controllable, the director can even let the “Flying Cat” drop to the height of the ordinary camera, remote control The device realizes the traditional mirror movement effects such as pushing, pulling, shaking, moving, and following. For example, setting the camera behind the penalty shooter to create a sense of tightness, or shooting around the scorer to present the moment that exploded the audience… These used to only exist in football games. It has become a standard for live TV.
Relatively close-up of telephoto, “Flying Cat” provides an excellent sense of presence without affecting the game
3
Of course, the increasing “gamification” of the picture texture and lens language will at most only make football game players a little confused in front of the TV. However, whenever the following screen appears in the live broadcast, it is still difficult for us to calm down.
This 360-degree stereo playback effect, which is widely used in La Liga broadcasts, is the result of Intel’s True View system. Its principle is basically the same as the “bullet time” special effect in “The Matrix” 20 years ago, that is, the high-speed camera around the character takes pictures of the target from all angles, and then combines the single frames, and finally becomes the result after software processing. Dynamic picture.
Although the principles of the two are similar, their application scenarios are quite different.
Of course, the size of the field, the complexity of player dynamics, and the distance between the camera and the subject of the shot are far greater than the green screen studio. This means that even if there are more cameras, the visual information collected by them is not enough to form a coherent and stable dynamic panoramic picture.
The main function of the 36 5K cameras that support True View is to collect hundreds of terabytes of spatial motion data for the entire game, and through the background processing of high-speed CPUs and graphics accelerator arrays, generate 3D models of equal volume—equivalent to the The real arena is converted into 3D animation in real time.
In the game playback screen, the director and commentator can use the gamepad to arbitrarily adjust the position and angle of the virtual camera, so as to more comprehensively analyze the movement of the players on both sides and reproduce the complete trajectory of the ball.
The camera can even be indented into the player’s first-person view, allowing the audience to “put themselves in” the player’s every choice
Player cursors, running lines, data virtual projection… The La Liga field with new technology has never been rejected, and AR technology has been widely used to perform a series of fancy tricks for football game players. The existence of these “UI interfaces” also makes us always have the urge to pick up the handle when watching the ball.
With the support of augmented reality technology, every player’s offensive and defensive intentions are clearly visible
4
The completely different visual experience of football games and live broadcast of football games in the past is determined by the production characteristics of the two entertainment forms. As for the increasing convergence of their perceptions, it is also a product of the same goal. There is no question of who is higher and who is lower, or who is copying who. However, advances in computer graphics technology have indeed brought them closer together.
The complementarity between the two not only allows fans and players to take what they need, but also allows the overlap between the two groups to continue to expand.
Just like the profound charm of Chinese language – “Your food tastes like a restaurant”, “Your food tastes like your home” – two sentences with contradictory intentions can actually make a rainbow fart at the same time. . Perhaps in the future, there will be more and more commercial exchanges between live TV and football games, as well as the happiness and troubles of “being confused and unclear”.
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