Live from the Ryder Cup: Sky Sports uses Vizrt for tournament coverage

Sky Sports uses the Ryder Cup to debut new studio and graphics using Vizrt systems.

The following are excerpts from articles published by SVG Europe.

Live from the Ryder Cup: Sky Sports studio bigger, better than everKen Kerschbaumer / SVG Editorial Director

The existing design team has a heritage going back to Brookline in 1991 and there is a lot of experience, says Ceri Sampson, Sky Sports, head of design. So we have evolved over time and for each studio we have created and borrowed from the previous one.

The touch screen inside the Sky Sports Ryder Cup studio.

Sampson says a traditional OB box studio would not have enough space as Sky Sports needed something about twice that size. The set includes a standard set where a host and guests can sit and talk as well as a touch screen powered by Vizrt. And then there are massive windows with a dramatic view of the first tee box.

In the past we have had studios on the 18 fairway, 18 tee, and clubhouses, says Sampson. But we knew the excitement at the first tee gets bigger and better every year and this has lived up those expectations. We have never been as close as we are this year to the action and it is spine tingling to be on the set. So we hope some of the passion and excitement there gets back to the people at home. You can't really get closer to the first tee unless you are a player.

The studio for this Ryder Cup is almost more of a revolution than an evolution. Located with a dramatic view of the first tee box the massive studio takes virtual technology first deployed for Monday Night Football coverage to the next level.

For Monday Night Football we bring in avatars of the players so when the presentation team is talking about the defense of, say, Chelsea, the players appear virtually in the studio, says Sampson. So we wanted the same grandeur here and to deliver on the expectations of our customers for the way we push technology.

The creation of virtual players that can seemingly walk into the studio and stand alongside the presenters began with shooting each of the 24 players earlier this week. A green screen studio was set up and each competitor had two videos shot: one formal and another more playful of the players taking two or three steps towards the camera. Once the video of the players was shot it was sent back to London via file transfer where the post-production team keyed the players off of the green screen using a Flame graphics engine. The finished clips were then sent back up to Sky Sports operations at Gleneagles.

Once they are here we size them and position them using a virtual camera in Viz Scene that talks to a sensor on the camera located in the studio, explains Sampson. We pay very close attention to making it believable.

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Live from the Ryder Cup: Sky Sports leads out the European broadcast teamFergal Ringrose / SVG Europe

Keith Lane (left), director of operations and James Clement, head of operations Sky Sports at the Ryder Cup

A key on-screen difference for Sky Sports' Ryder Cup coverage this year involves analysis and augmented reality. We have the touchscreen in the studio this year, and we're also doing virtual walkthroughs with the players - so the studio is really quite large, says Keith Lane, Sky Sports director of operations.

The touchscreen is a Viz set-up this year (in previous years it's been a Hego set up where we did all the modelling internally). We have a Vinten data head in there that works into the Viz, and the players will walk into the studio, as an augmented reality. You will see them appear in the studio - that's something new this year. That's taking things on from where we've gone with Monday Night Football and some other augmented reality.

Hence when you see the size of the studio it looks slightly odd, because you've got the main presentation area and to the left of that you've got the touchscreen - but the depth of the studio is considerably more than you would normally have, to provide the depth of perspective for the player walkthroughs. Those walkthroughs will happen every day of the competition.

Actually, touchscreen technology is challenging to get working consistently. No matter how well it's working, as soon as the talent step in front of it, it just doesn't quite behave as well as they want. We've put extra support effort trying to make sure we're pushing what we're doing but hopefully also that they get comfortable using it every day. As soon as that confidence goes - they'd rather not use it

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Live from the Ryder Cup: Sky trials 4K UHD across cameras, replays and encodersFergal Ringrose / SVG Europe

Sky Sports UHD 4K screen in the broadcast compound at Gleneagles

What you're looking at there [on the 84-inch 4K UHD screen in the Sky Sports HD testing cabin in the TV compound] is straight from the Telegenic truck, being sent over a quad fibre and then through an AJA box to decode into HDMI. That's raw, and then we're playing around with some other bits and pieces as well. And we've two Viz for graphics, one for live and one for standby.

Quad HD is feeding the Sky Experience and the truck and then compressed down to London and feeding it through our existing infrastructure in Sky Studios. And then we're just doing some testing locally in Sky Studios on HEVC, just to see how the latest generation of HEVC encoders work at p50 - because, obviously, until recently you only had the availability of p25. And we can let the guys back in London see what we're doing up here as well - all the staff can see what's happening.

It's a chance to test, test, test, says Johns. At IBC everyone was talking about the small shoots they've done. This is just one big event where we can test as much of the kit as possible in one

LINK:	http://www.vizrt.com/news/newsgrid/42277/Live_from_the_Ryder_Cup_Sky_S...
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