Live from NBA All-Star 2022: Live Player Mics, Canon Viewpoint Make the Big Game More Immersive

Live from NBA All-Star 2022: Live Player Mics, Canon Viewpoint Make the Big Game More Immersive A large mix of vendors are supporting a variety of events all weekend By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Friday, February 18, 2022 - 11:11 am

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The 2022 NBA All-Star Weekend is set to tip off later today, but it's on Sunday night when the innovations will come fast and furious. It will be the first NBA All-Star Game to feature live miking of players and coaches (with a 10-second delay and three NBA personnel monitoring), a live drone inside Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, and the Canon Viewpoint system giving a whole new look to replays. Oh, and let's not forget a separate broadcast on TBS called Inside the All-Star Game, anchored by its Inside the NBA crew of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal. Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green will also contribute to the TBS telecast from the sidelines.

There is a ton of anticipation going into the weekend from the standpoint of production because production is going full force and pushing the limits on everything, says Chris Brown, VP, operations and technology, Turner Sports. That positive energy from production and their willingness to continue to create and innovate is definitely in the air. And couple that with the fact that we're fortunate enough that the NBA is working with us to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the league, and it just makes it super exciting.

The Turner Sports team at NBA All-Star: (from left) Dan Nabors, engineering manager, Tech Ops; Lee Estroff, director, Tech Ops; Chris Brown, VP, Operations and Technology; Jennifer Vanderbilt, manager, Tech Ops; and Alex McKeen, manager, Tech Ops.

The innovation begins tonight with the Rising Stars Game at Rocket Mortgage. The three-game tournament this year features four teams, each drafted by a member of the NBA's 75th Anniversary team: Rick Barry, Gary Payton, Isaiah Thomas, and James Worthy.

The new iteration means a new technology stack for how the graphics are presented, says Brown. We're working with Mixon Digital, who basically does the lion's share of in-venue graphical presentation, and, with the new format, it made sense to work with them on stats and data. They will generate the information that we need for our graphics, and we're loading that into the template they're creating. It's going to create a very cool graphics representation.

Also today, the Canon Viewpoint system will get a tryout. The system comprises 100 Canon cameras and lenses placed around the arena to capture the action from all angles. The system synthesizes the images and allows for a virtual camera to fly through the space and create replays from virtually any angle.

The NBA on TNT on Thursday night broadcast its studio show from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the help of NEP Supershooter 32.

It's going to be used during Rising Stars, says Brown, so we can see what it can really do and see if we can build it into the Saturday show.

Saturday afternoon will see the addition of a new event: the NBA HBCU Classic, to be played at the Wolstein Center and featuring Morgan State and Howard University. That game will be carried by both ESPN and Turner Sports.

There was a lot of collaboration with ESPN on the operations side, says Brown. We will take over the Game Creek Spirit truck that is doing the celebrity game and then flip it from 720p to 1080i. We'll build the graphics for the show in the B unit and finish the setup. It should be a good game, and we're excited about it. ESPN and Game Creek have been good partners.

All-Star Saturday Night All-Star Saturday Night returns with the bells and whistles launched last year: for example, the Canon EOS C500 with a fixed 50mm lens, which can be swapped out for a 24-70mm lens.

That is definitely coming back, says Brown. We'll also have another Steadicam, which will give us four this year, not including rigs for entertainment. We've added a wireless super-slo-mo camera on a Steadicam for Saturday night and are hoping to get some really compelling images for replay.

A C360 camera will be built into the bottom of the stanchion to capture wide images allowing for zoom and video grabs for replay.

The production team has been playing around with it in rehearsals, says Brown, and I think there's an opportunity to catch some really compelling images from that camera.

Mixon Digital will also be involved with All-Star Saturday Night, its system ingesting all the scoring data for the in-arena videoboards. We'll leverage that and reformat it for our telecast graphic look, adds Brown.

NEP Supershooter 24 will handle All-Star Saturday night; NEP EN1 is handling Rising Stars Challenge and the All-Star Game. NEP NCP 11 unit is handling the studio show (NEP Supershooter 32 was onsite Thursday for the NBA on TNT broadcast from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), and Supershooter 16 is doing the entertainment portions of the weekend.

Signal distribution is being handled via an IP core in NEP Supershooter CBS.

NEP has handed out 23 IP gateways to distribute video, says Brown, and that has tremendously decreased the number of fibers we need to connect the compound to the venue IO panel. We need only three or four fibers to handle 200 video paths vs. 20 or 30 fibers.

Inside the All-Star Game Production Sunday night will see the biggest leap in production innovations at an All-Star Game in quite some time. For the first time ever, there will be live player and coach mics.

The goal is to lean into those, lay out, and listen to what they're saying on the court, says Brown. There will be three NBA screeners listening to the microphones, and production will get their prompts from them.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/02/18/live-from-nba-all-star-live-pla...
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