It started over drinks and a sketch on a napkin. Don't all great ideas?
WATCH: Replay Technologies' freeD system in action during the Notre Dame-Arizona State game at AT&T Stadium on Oct. 5.
It was New Year's Eve 2011 when Israeli expats Oren Haimovitch-Yogev and brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira decided to spend their lunch break at a pub in London watching a Manchester United match. All three were engineers and developers in the military-drone business, working for Britain's UAV Tactical Systems.
The tenor at the table changed when Aviv made an innocent comment: I want to see what the game looks like from the perspective of the ball. Replay Technologies was born.
Since that meeting less than two years ago, the startup's new freeD product has become the talk of the sports-production industry in the U.S. The 24-camera, 360-degree, real-time replay system has been called by Fred Gaudelli, highly respected producer of NBC's Sunday Night Football, the most innovative technology to hit sports television since the 1st and Ten line. A method of replay that seems to instantly connect with a generation of NFL fans who grew up playing football on their videogame platforms.
This Sunday, millions of viewers will be treated to a whole new way of watching football when freeD - or, as NBC brands it on its broadcasts, NBCeeIT360 - will be available to the production crew in Arlington, TX, when the Dallas Cowboys host the Washington Redskins on Sunday Night Football.
Replay Technologies installed 24 cameras throughout AT&T Stadium, which are each connected individually to a server through approx. 2,000 feet of single-mode fiber.
We are just beginning to utilize it and look at things differently, says Ken Goss, SVP, remote operations and production planning, at NBC Sports. You want to pick specific plays that will enhance your broadcast, and that has been Fred's goal all along. We can fly all around from different angles while still maintaining perspective. You pick specific plays, and, when you can move around in that 360-degree motion, it creates an entirely new dynamic in the game.
But how does it work?
It's not selecting a camera; it's building a camera, says Aviv Shapira, who serves the chief of operations and programs for Replay Technologies. We're actually building a camera that is essentially the size of the field.
The Dallas Cowboys, NBC Sports, and Replay Technologies made a commitment to the technology over the summer when a deal was struck to install the freeD Arena System infrastructure inside AT&T Stadium, the first 360-degree deployment of the technology.
Twenty-four 4K (12-megapixel) cameras, designed by Canadian digital-imaging developer Teledyne Dalsa with Nikon lenses, are installed in a complete circle around the stadium. Each camera is fed to the server room via single-mode fiber. It takes direct links to each camera - about 2,000 total feet of fiber - to connect them to the server, where they are synched and recorded. In the server room, the fiber data is translated back to Replay Technologies' own protocol via KVM extenders developed by Thinklogical.
These cameras create a 3D atmosphere, says Haimovitch-Yogev, a co-founder who serves as the company's CEO. You don't have to have a camera right in front of the scene. So we can have multiple angles and endless choices, and we can run the same scene in different ways.
As a result, freeD also offers a unique way for fans to view controversial calls, creating a 3D effect and depth of field on a 2D plane.
In conventional replays, we're looking for was he in bounds or out of bounds,' was he safe or was he not safe?' says Jack Kestenbaum, director, technical operations, YES Network, which branded the system YES View when the network used the technology during Yankees telecasts this past season. Consistently, they'll say well, the angle. Change the angle.' By changing the angle, you can see whether he was in or out. When this is done correctly and if there's enough infrastructure in place, this technology gives you 360 degrees.
The pilot' (pictured at Yankee Stadium during a YES Network broadcast) operates the system, making all creative decisions as to what path the replay will take when played back and making any necessary pixel corrections.
On Sunday night, a crew of three will be stationed in an office trailer in the production compound that the Replay Technologies team has essentially turned into a makeshift TV truck. Split into three sections, the trailer houses the server room, an office, and an operations area, where the pilot, navigator, and an NBC Sports representative will execute the technology.
The pilot operates the systems, making all creative decisions as to what path the replay will take when played back and making any necessary pixel corrections. The navigator is on-site to handle the more technological aspects, such as color correction and lighting, which become a major factor during day games, with constantly changing shadows and sunlight. The NBC associate producer is there to relay messages into the ear of Gaudelli when a shot is ready for playback. To build and render a replay takes about a minute.
The producer has to make creative decisions while understanding the game, says Aviv Shapira. It's like flying around a camera with a joy stick. It's much more advanced, and it takes us about a minute to build the shot.
In addition to TV, the Cowboys are using freeD during all home games on their massive in-venue video screen.
The freeD people have been great to work with, says Dwin Towell, director of broadcast engineering for the Dallas Cowboys. We were all facing a very tight timeline to make this technology happen, and everything fell into place like clockwork. Even though, many times, coo
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It started over drinks and a sketch on a napkin. Don't all great ideas?
