Live From Paris 2024: OBS's Matt Millington on the Expanded Use of Athletes Moment' and Launching an AR Studio OBS digital efforts take leap as the power of video beyond the big screen continues to grow By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, August 8, 2024 - 5:41 am
Print This Story
The efforts that OBS puts into digital-related projects and services continue to expand. At the Paris Games, the effort is highlighted by an AR studio for athletes at the Olympic Village, the expansion of Athletes Moments to more venues, and content components of the OBS Video Player made available as widgets for easy integration into a rightsholder's own apps and digital environments.
OBS has traded virtual reality for augmented reality, most notably with an augmented-reality studio in the Olympic Village, where athletes can do interviews with rightsholders or have OBS staffers shoot social-media clips. The beauty of augmented reality for us, says Matt Millington, director, digital content production, OBS, is that it is super-easy to distribute, with no app required, no special equipment.
The studio has 29 cameras in a circle to capture the actions of an athlete in the middle of the circle. The signals from the cameras are processed, and CPUs synthesize all the angles with audio. The end clip is a high-quality digital representation of the athlete that the viewer can spin around and view from any direction.
OBS's Matt Millington in an AR studio that is located at the IBC and is similar to the one at the Olympic Village
When they do a back flip or do flares on floor, says Millington, you can spin them around and look at them, pause them and look at them. It gives a really good perspective on the athlete's movement.
A couple of render passes improve the quality, he adds, noting that, in less than an hour, the clip is ready for distribution. Athletes can distribute content on their own social media, and a library of clips is accessible by rightsholders and national organizing committees.
Because this AR image of Matt Millington in the studio was live, its quality does not match the final quality once the image has been rendered a few times.
The intention was to get a mixture of styles of content, says Millington. We've got some people doing sport guides or showing their poses for things like throwing a javelin or their training exercises. But we've also got lots of humorous and goofy ones, which is actually what they tend to prefer to do. We've got probably more of those than we have of the sporty ones, but we've got a good mix.
There had been concern that the athletes might not want to do it, but there has been a ton of athlete interest. And the athletes themselves have benefited: in performing a skill, they can see their form from all angles - suggesting the potential for the technology to become a training aid.
We've done around 900 videos, says Millington. Some of those have two, three, or four athletes as they do a group video. That means we've probably got more than 1,000 athletes taking part, which is way more than we anticipated.
Helping drive athlete enthusiasm is that, in many respects, this year's Games are the first involving a large number of athletes who have grown up with social media and understand the power a clip can have in reaching current fans and making new ones. Some athletes' poses or moves, for example, are trending on TikTok. And they're familiar with vertical video, adds Millington, which is how we're presenting it.
As for the interviews, rightsholders can tap into the augmented-reality set from either the IBC or their home-country studio. We can offer a live interview with an athlete in either 2D or 3D, depending on their integration capability, says Millington. If they're able to use something like Unreal Engine in a virtual studio, we give them the 3D version. The beauty of that is, they can pan around the athlete with their camera.
Rightsholders are in more of a test mode with that feature, he notes, but it could possibly be an important production tool for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, given the long distances between event clusters. We could give instant access to the athletes for a rightsholder who is unable to have teams in every one of these locations. Then we will really see the benefits.
Expanding the Athletes Moment Project Millington and his team oversee the Athletes Moment, a workflow born out of the pandemic to bring some emotion to venues where there were no fans. A video-conference call, using a large TV monitor, is set up between the athlete at the venue (and prior to their hitting the mixed zone for interviews) and family or friends at a remote location. The technical infrastructure for Athletes Moment has been expanded to include about 20 sports.
The athletes loved it, says Millington. Coming to Paris, obviously, there are crowds, so there was a concern that maybe it wouldn't be as popular. But there are a lot of families who cannot make it to Paris for a number of reasons, so we decided to keep going, and it's doing really well. With several days still to go, we've already got more Athlete Moments than we did for Tokyo 2020.
The workflow once again involves a control room in Brussels, where the Moments are coordinated with moderators at each venue (family members are sent a link with instructions on when to dial in), and the quality of the experience has been improved. We fined-tuned it a bit so it looks nicer than in the past, says Millington. There is also no jarring delay. The production team at the venue now has a pure live feed, which is a big improvement. In addition, we can handle about 12 Moments at once.
The Athletes Moment is available to all the athletes, not just medal hopefuls and those expected to do well
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the First Look for Land of Sin' - Premier...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
Live From Paris 2024: OBS's Matt Millington on the Expanded Use of Athletes Moment' and Launching an AR Studio OBS digital efforts take leap as the power of video beyond the big screen continues to grow By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
