SEMINAR REPORT ON

TECHNOLOGY BEHIND CRICKETBROADCASTING

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER IN COMPUTER APPLICATION

Submitted by:

Deviprasad sahoo MCA 3rd Semester

Reg. No: 20MCA/08Email: devi.thecool08@gmail.com

Submitted to:-

Mrs.Sanjibani Sudha Pattnayak.Mrs.Debaswapna Mishra.

CENTER FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDIESORISSA UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND

TECHNOLOGYBHUBANESWAR

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Acknowledgement

It gives me immense pleasure to salute the personalities those who have helped me in preparing this seminar report.

I am especially indebted to my department and my teachers who all have given their ideas and valuable time in preparing the report. They stood behind me as a friend rather than a guide.

I am deeply indebted to our H.O.D. Mr. Abhimanyu dash, Mrs. S.S Pattnayak ,Mrs. Debaswapna Mishra & other teachers for their valuable guidance & encouragement.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to my friends who let me to present myself to the other students and has helped me in documenting the report.

Last but not the least I am thankful to my friends and colleagues who have given their valuable ideas in completing the report.

Date: -18/12/09 Deviprasad sahooMCA – 3rd semesterRoll No:20MCA/08

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CONTENTSSLNO TOPICS PAGE NO

1 Abstract

…………………………………… 4

2 Introduction

………………………………. 5

3 OB

Van…………………………………… 6

Video management………………... 6

Sound management………………... 6

Video store………………………… 7

4 Details…………………………………

….. 8

Cameras…………………………… 8

The graphics………………………. 8

The sound…………………………. 9

5 Hawk eye

camera………………………… 9

6 Virtual

advertisement……………………. 11

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7 Virtual

spectator…………………………. 12

8 IT at stumps

…………………………….. 13

9 IT at

stand………………………………... 14

10 Analyzing team performance ……………

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11 Conclusion………………………………..

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12 References………………………………..

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ABSTRACT

TECHNOLOGY BEHIND CRICKET BROADCASTING

Thousands of miles away Tendulkar played a cover drive and the very next

moment (actually it’s 4 seconds after he hit it) you saw in on your screen. Have

you ever thought how it happens? Ever thought how the pictures travel millions of

miles and comes to you? It is the technology behind it which gives us the live

telecast of the match. The outside Broadcasting or OB Van for short is the heart of

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any cricket telecast. All signals both video and audio come to the OB Van, are

processed there and then broadcasted.

From the OB Van the feed including the graphics are broadcasted to a

satellite, not to your house; not yet they are sent to an “Earth station “. The station

can be nearby in the same vicinity or could be millions of miles away. You may

wonder why they can’t directly broadcast it to your home. Among others, there’s

one simple reason: The broadcaster needs to do business and the business comes

from advertisements. So the Earth Station takes care of this task. Other tasks may

also include inserting the logo of the channel on the screen. The feed is then fed to

various cable operators through a satellite again. And finally the feed comes to

your house. And you thought a flick of a switch on your remote would start a

cricket match!

IntroductionThousands of miles away Tendulkar played a cover drive and the very next

moment (actually it’s 4 seconds after he hit it) you saw in on your screen. Have

you ever thought how it happens? Ever thought how the pictures travel millions of

miles and comes to you?

These days we take it for granted that whenever / wherever any cricket

match is played we can enjoy it in the comfort of our living room couch. The kind

of technology that goes into making this possible is not funny, and not to mention

the human skill and effort required along with it. Here’s how it all

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Outside Broadcast Van(OB Van )

The outside Broadcasting or OB Van for short is the heart of any cricket telecast.

All signals both video and audio come to the OB Van, are processed there and then

broadcasted. A typical OB van could be divided into three major parts.

Video Management

Sound Management

Video Store

Video Management:

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The first part takes up the major part of the van, and is where the director sits with technician. They have a video mixer and a wall of monitors in front of them. The monitors accommodate all the video feeds from various sources, which could be graphics from graphic workstations; video feeds from cameras and video-tapes, slow motion replays. The wall of monitors also contains two other monitors other than those form the video feeds – the Preview monitor and Program monitor. The latter contains the dirty feed (mixture of video and graphics), which is broadcasted to the Earth station. The former shows the clean feed (only the video feed without the graphics) that is seen before broadcast. The video mixer may be accompanied by two or more computer operators for scoring the games and giving appropriate graphic feeds to be layered over the video feeds.

Sound Management:

The next portion is where the sound is managed. The sound engineer has a

sound mixer, which is being fed with all the audio feeds from various sources like:

commentators, the stump microphone, field mocks, etc. He has them in different

channels and can control them individually. He is also supplied with a dirty feed

monitor to help him with the synchronization of sound on instructions from the

director.

Video Store :

The last portion of the van is the Video store. The video store has a

collection of Video Tapes (VTs) and could also have an EVS system. The VTs are

a collection of pre-made CG videos to be used upon wicket fall, etc. These may

also contain feeds from previous matches, which could be used for comparison.

EVS is live event system (slow motion disk based editor) used for slow-

motion pictures and replays in the match.

Who manages all this ?:

Here the director is the boss, and managing all this is no mean feat. In reality

he is the man who decides what you see. All people involve are in direct contact

with each other using headsets for communication. An interesting fact here

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regarding being in touch: Harsha Bhogle may be listening more to director’s

remark then he is actually commenting on the match. Can you believe that.

From the OB Van the feed including the graphics are broadcasted to a

satellite, not to your house; not yet they are sent to an “Earth station “. The station

can be nearby in the same vicinity or could be millions of miles away. You may

wonder why can’t they directly broadcast it to your home. Among others, there’s

one simple reason: The broadcaster needs to do business and the business comes

from advertisements. So the Earth Station takes care of this task. Other tasks may

also include inserting the logo of the channel on the screen. The feed is then fed to

various cable operators through a satellite again. And finally the feed comes to

your house. And you thought a flick of a switch on your remote would start a

cricket match!

Details:The Cameras:

Starting with the video capturing , there are at least 16-21cameras used on

the cricket field placed at different locations to bring you the various views. These

could be as small as a stump camera and as advanced as the super slow motion

camera used behind the bowlers arm to provide high quality replays. All cameras

are connected to a video mixer inside the out – Broadcast (OB) van. The director

and the operator sitting on the mixer can switch to any of these cameras while

broadcasting.

The Graphics:

Graphics is one of the most exciting parts of the whole match production

saga and uses computers in more ways than one. A skilled data entry operator

records each ball bowled in a cricket match on custom made software, made

specifically for a broadcast company. For instance, ESPN STAR sports uses a

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software called Namadgi. It typically uses 3-4 machines. One is a laptop PC

running Win 2K(any network enabled OS) for keeping track of the score. It’s

connected to a MS-SQL server database via TCP/IP. The other computers are an

AD-HOC machine and Score-Ticker Machine.

The layout for this graphics is predefined and the information updated

dynamically form the data base on the server. The other machine i.e. The AD-HOC

machine gives you the entire special graphics that you see on the screen. These

may include play statistics, wagon wheels showing where the player scored his

run, etc. All these graphics are generated dynamically from the data capture by the

scoring laptop. Not only that but the operator can key in the data and make an AD-

HOC graphic based on the data provided to him by the scorer. The graphic are then

send to the vision mixer in either analog or digital format. This is then supper

imposed on the live action happening on the field. The system can also use a

moving graphic instead of the live broad cast.

The Sound:

Imagine a match without Sidhuisms. The sound in the broad cast of a cricket

match is as important as the video if not more. There are various sound sources

that are controlled by a sound controller using an audio mixer, in various channels

located in the OB Van and then broadcasted. The sound sources may include the

commentators, the stump microphones, the sound sparks, (e.g. Graphic displayed

when a wicket falls etc, or CG when a new batsman comes to play), microphones

on the fields etc. The person controlling the sound also has access to the final feed

which is being broadcasted.

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As we have seen above there is a lot happening all together. The cameras

giving the video feed, the graphic machines providing all the indulging graphics,

replace, super slow motion, historic data base management etc.

How Hawk Eye WorksThis technology uses a special image-processing system that helps

umpires take LBW decisions

One of the most difficult, and sometimes controversial, decisions that an

umpire has to take on the cricket field is for LBW (leg-before wicket). To take the

final call on a batsman, the umpire has to juggle with many variables—

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Whether the ball pitched outside the leg stump, hit the batsman in line with

the stumps or whether it would have hit the stumps, and most importantly whether

the player was making a genuine effort to play the shot.

Hawk Eye aims to aid the umpire by giving inputs on the physics of the ball

by tracking and predicting its motion. It uses a special image-processing system

from Roke Manor Research (a Siemens R & D company) and commercial off-the-

shelf hardware along with six specially placed cameras. Hawk Eye incorporates

both image analysis and radar technology. The six fixed JAI monochrome

cameras, with 120 MHz frame rate, are placed around the playing field (see

picture). They track the ball’s entire trajectory, right from the point where it is

released from the bowler’s hand to the point the ball is considered dead. This is

updated 100 times every second. The cameras are used in two sets, and a multi-

channel frame grabber handles each set. The images captured are then processed

by software to produce a 3-D image. The future path is predicted using a

parametric model. The system is able to locate the ball in 3-D and can predict the

motion with a claimed accuracy of 5mm. Some of the esoteric statistics that can be

generated by this system are: the areas where a particular bowler pitched and how

much swing or spin a particular bowler generated. In some cases where the

system’s accuracy is questionable, it just gives a “can’t help” message to ensure its

accuracy never goes below acceptable limits.

Besides aiding the umpire in taking a decision, the Hawk Eye is also used to

give a more enhanced feed to TV viewers. Who can forget all those virtual replays

shown from various angels of a player being called for an LBW?

The application of Hawk Eye goes much beyond cricket. The company,

Roke Manor, is also developing similar technologies for tennis, football, baseball

and snooker.

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Virtual Advertising In future ads you see on stadium billboards may not really exist, but are

inserted virtually

Virtual advertising is the electronic insertion of advertising images

during live TV broadcasts of sports and entertainment events.

In this, digital images, advertisements, and logos are super-imposed on live

video or inserted into a completed movie or television show.

The advantage of such a system is that different advertisements can be

inserted for different regions thereby giving the broadcaster more advertisers. For

example, electronic boards can replace peripheral boards in a stadium and show a

Pepsi board in India and Coco-Cola in Europe. While the viewers of the video

broadcasts will see the board shown to them specifically, the actual board may be

totally different or may not be present at all. They can also be used to insert

synthesized messages onto the playing field or other empty spaces.

All this is possible with virtual advertising. The technology has been used in

Major League Baseball in the US and may soon be used in cricket games also.

Imaging Allan Donald running on a virtual advertisement strip while taking his run

up or Sachine Tendulkar hitting a six directly into a virtual glass of some cola

product.

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Virtual advertisements have to be inserted at specific points in the

video, like the billboards on the field. So there has to be a way to locate

and track designated insertion locations in the live video. All this work

is done is real time so that the viewers could see the video live with the

virtual advertisements. To locate insertion points in the video, pattern

recognition techniques are used. These techniques analyze the video and

look for patterns in the video. These patterns are then compared with

the stored patterns of the desired locations. Once there is a pattern

match, these points in the video are located in replaced by virtual

advertisements.

Requirements:To create the digital advertisements of products, standard off-the-shelf 3D,

Alias Power Animator, Wavefront, 3D Studio MAX, Shockwave 3D player,

Macromedia Shockwave player, Intel internet 3D graphics, a scalable 3D engine

for generating graphic Web content. For the hardware, dedicated video processors

are used with high performance graphic workstations like the Silicon Graphics

ONYX2. These enable the real time rendering and processing of video.

Virtual SpectatorUsing 3-D graphics to broadcast additional match information

If your remember, some time back when India was being thrashed

by the Kiwis in Newzeland, some new type of graphics were being

shown on TV. Instead of tardy 2-D wagon wheels for the shots played,

it showed color-coded 3-D views of a wagon wheel. This actually

showed the path taken by the ball before it crossed the boundary, and the

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placement of fielders on the ground depicting a ‘theoretical’ area of

influence. These views were fairly realistic representations, generated

by a 3-D rendering machine called Virtual Spectator.

Before a match starts, an aerial photograph of the ground and the

surrounding area is taken. Pictures are also taken by somebody standing on the

pitch. These photographs are then used to make a 3-D model of the stadium in 3D

studio MAX. People wearing team colors are also photographed. This is mapped

to 3-D player models created on the screen.

The Virtual Spectator system consists of two machines. One is used to record live data from the match, like score, fielders’ positions, where the ball was hit and how high it bounced. The data-entry operator sits in high position to get the whole view of the ground. The other machine is used to provide feed to the broadcaster, and its operator works out the various graphics based on data coming from the first machine. These graphics may include field placements on the screen, proposed field placements, wagon wheels, etc. The graphics are fed to the broadcaster through a BNC cable using digital down converter that takes the DVI monitor feed from the computer and grabs a particular area of the screen and converts it to industry standard SDI. The BNC cable comes to the video mixer directly and that director uses the feed as needed.

The software used is written in C++ with MFC ( Microsoft Foundation

Classes) for the interface and Open GL for graphics. Both machines used are 2.4

GHz P4 processors with GeForce 4 graphic cards for great graphic results.

Animation research Ltd, a New Zealand company has developed the product.

Of Bats and Stumps:

How would it feel to be a stump and see a speeding bowl comes strait on to

your face? TV has left nothing to imagination, thanks to stump cameras. These

are micro-cameras placed inside the stumps, giving couch potatoes the experience

of being where no spectator on the cricket field can ever imagine being. IN many

cricket fields, there’s wire traveling underground, connecting the camera to other

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TV equipments or even PCs, to remotely control them. Many international cricket

grounds have this facility. Cordless cameras with radio or microwave

transmission are also used. Wired transmission is preferred over wireless

transmission because the players tend to come in the way in the case of the latter.

The first stump camera installation was done by the BBC the early 1990s. They

placed a Hitachi KP-D8s camera in the middle stump. This was a color camera

that used 410,000 pixel CCD with micro lenses, and offered a horizontal resolution

of 470 TV lines. The size of the camers, 42 cubic cm (80 gms) makes it possible

for it to be inserted into the stumps. If one camera is not enough, then two can be

placed, one with a wide-angle lens and the other with a narrow angle lens, giving

the TV broad caster four different views to choose from.

These Hitachi cameras can connect to PCs over a RW232C line

(serial port), and can then be remotely controlled using a software

application specifically written for them. The protocol is also available

on request to write custom applications. The Hitachi KP-D8s camera,

for instance uses a social program written in Microsoft VC++ 5.0 for

controlling it. The software works on Win 95/NT machines, and lets

you control several parameters like white balance and picture control.

You can even control its electric shutter speed from it.

IT at the Stands:

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You would be forgiven for thinking that technology has been put into place

only for cricketers and that too on the greens. Nothing could be farther from truth

at South Africa 2003. On the field or off it, in the stadium or in you living room,

you can’t escape IT anymore, Interesting is the crowd-control mechanism in

operation in South Africa. For the first time manual ticketing has been replaced by

automated ones.

The main companies involved in developing this are Dimension Data and

Choice Technologies. Dimension developed the back-office operations software

as well as the POS (point of sale) interfaces. Allowing the fans to enter the

stadium is the job of intelligent turnstiles made by Turnstar. Based on a 386

processor with 8MB memory, these turnstiles act as intelligent doorkeepers

keeping tack of and allowing people to enter and leave the stadium. The turnstiles

can scan the barcodes on the tickets and keep updating a central database over a

LAN. If at any point, should the LAN connectivity fail, the turnstiles can connect

peer-to-peer.

Analyzing Team Performance:Complex information-management systems are used to analyze each

player’s performance in a match

When a short ball is bowled to Ganguly in his rib cage, he is more likely to

play it to backward short leg. So a fielder is placed accordingly at backward short

leg. This is just a hypothical example of the information used by various cricket

teams. Imagine having this kind of detailed information about each player a team is

playing against. Enter information management system for cricket.

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The information in these system is gathered in the same manner as the TV

broadcasters captured it with some auditions here and there because of difference

in application. We will look at the information management system-e-cricket pro

by phoenix global solutions being used by the Indian cricket team. So lets dig and

find out what e-cricket pro is all about and how it helps the player and team.

As with other cricket analysis software, e-cricket pro also needs a very

skilled data entry operator with a good knowledge of cricket to feed the data live

during a cricket match. The system used is a P4 based laptop with 256 Mb RAM

and External video capture box.

There are various modules in the software, the major ones being the data

capture, record to media and a report generation. At the start of the match all

details including pitch condition, whether, toss etc, are recorded. When the match

starts the detail of each and every ball are recorded. As soon as the bowler comes

to bowl the video recording is stated which ends when the bowl is dead. This done

the operator stats with a series of clicks GUI, recording each and every detail about

the ball including parameters like swing, comfort zone, stroke type and run scored.

Each ball takes around 4 to 8 mouse clicks to record. Once recorded the data is

stored in an Oracle database at the back end.

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During the lunch brake or at the end of the match the players and the coach

can view and analyze the data. The most important part of it is being able to query

the videos database. The database can be queried on various parameters and even

gives an option of replays, frame-by-frame video and split screen video. These

video can later the burnt on a CD for various needs and for various players.

A lot of tools and lot of options but are they being utilized to the

fullest? Only the performance of the Indian cricket team can answer that.

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Conclusion:

Though here I discussed only

about Cricket. IT takes crucial role in broadcasting of each & every

live event. As we know till we have no taste of any thing what we

have missed. We can now feel what we missed in the past, the

excitement of stroke play by our legendry players. Now we can

feel that IT is the backbone of live telecast.

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REFERENCES

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.howstuffsworks.com

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