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Of course! Of course you have to do color correction on all the different cameras pointed from different angles at a sports event. I absolutely love reading ab
by laserbeam 2y ago
Of course! Of course you have to do color correction on all the different cameras pointed from different angles at a sports event.
I absolutely love reading about hard problems that are invisible to most people.
- abrookewood 2y agoYes, it's one of those super-niche & super important functions that are obvious once you know about them, but would never think about otherwise.
- myst 2y agoWhy is it super-important?
- GiorgioG 2y agoBecause events using many cameras without this type of setup would cause jarring visual differences when switching between one camera/view to another during the broadcast.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoWhy wasn't it jarring in early Superbowl games?
- lgeorget 2y agoFewer cameras, lower resolution, poor color rendering even with one camera anyway?
- devmor 2y agoAnd less color fidelity on receiving displays I would imagine!
- davidbou 2y agoThey used around 150 cameras for the last Super Bowl. Most of them were Sony studio cameras, controlled with Sony remotes to ensure perfect alignment. But now, they’ve added a lot of specialty cameras: probably 4 or 8 pylons, each equipped with 2 to 4 cameras, plus drones, handheld mirrorless cameras, mini high-speed cameras, and a few other mini-cams for PoV (Point of View) shots. Last year, they even had a mini-cam inside the cars driving from the Bellagio to the stadium, controlled remotely over cellular. An Elixir process ran on a RIO in the car to manage the camera and connect to a cloud server, while the remote panel was linked to the same server to complete the connection. All three ran Elixir code, with the cloud server acting as a simple data relay. If you want the green of the grass on all the pylon cameras to match your main production cameras, adjustments are a must. And with outdoor stadiums, this is a constant task—lighting conditions change throughout the day, even when a cloud moves across the sky. When night falls, video engineers are working non-stop to keep everything perfectly aligned with the main cameras.
- danielvf 2y agoThere was even more color correction happening then - cameras were worse and more analog! It just was not being controlled from offsite, instead there was a dedicated room and engineer in the broadcast truck doing camera configuration + color correction. The usual technique was to start by holding up a color card on the stage/floor then use a vectorscope[1] and get all the dots to line up in the right place. Then with a waveform monitor for exposure. During the event, there would be fine tuning by eye, or as things drifted out of line. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope#/media/File:PAL_Vector.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope#/media/File:PAL_Ve... PS: You can also see modern vectorscope / waveform monitor images in this photo from the cyanview blog. Look for the black and white X-ray looking things on the screens. https://www.cyanview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221006-AMP-BPI-1.jpeg https://www.cyanview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221006...
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- lo_zamoyski 2y agoI don't think he's saying the end this tech is serving is super important (televised professional sports), only that in order to televise professional sports and other events requiring similar camera work, it is important to do this kind of stuff.
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- pdntspa 2y agoIf you've ever watched a poorly-produced porno where the colors change with every camera cut, you'll know why....
- johnisgood 2y ago[flagged]
- laserbeam 2y agoThe article doesn't go in detail about how they solve that. But that's the key problem they highlight as being solved. It's a product which manages multiple cameras for events, and color correction is one of those "obvious in hindsight" problems to be solved.
- johnisgood 2y agoManaging multiple cameras is definitely something I would consider important, but keep in mind I am not knowledgeable at all about the entertainment industry.
- anttiai 2y agoI interpreted that Cyanview controls color settings in cameras, but video doesn’t run through their product. I wonder if an AI model could efficiently balance colors after the video mixer, especially if the incoming feed was in 10-bit color depth and the outgoing feed 8-bit.
- andruby 2y agoWith all the switching between camera angles during a sports broadcast, the difference in white balance, brightness and color grading would be really distracting and annoying.
- dagi3d 2y agoIt if wasn't that important no one would buy it. Doesn't matter how good your sales people are, if the product doesn't solve a real problem, it's very unlikely you will sell it in a sustainable way.
- johnisgood 2y ago> if the product doesn't solve a real problem, it's very unlikely you will sell it in a sustainable way. I do not believe this. If you look around, there are many non-issues being sold as real problems[1], and people buy it. People buy all sorts of crap, that is just consumerism in effect. If you did sales, you probably know this. Same thing with "bullshit jobs". Perhaps "sustainable" is the keyword here, but I am not so sure about that either. [1] Snake-oils comes to mind. Pretty flourishing business.
- rekttrader 2y agoIt’s the basis for the 99% invisible podcast.... I loved the one about elevators.