Sky Deutschland is looking to enhance its live coverage of the German Bundesliga football championship by using real-time camera tracking technology to generate augmented reality (AR) graphics.
Sky recently signed a new four-year extension to its Bundesliga rights package, starting with the 2017/2018 season. The agreement will see Sky broadcast 572 live matches per year from the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, once again using Ncam’s augmented reality solution to generate the pitch-side graphics.
Last season the Sky Sports and Sky Sports News production department of the German media company was solely responsible for providing the coverage of 612 Bundesliga matches and used Ncam’s camera tracking technology to add to the coverage.
The broadcaster faced the challenge of having to generate coverage from pitch level instead of working with a dedicated Bundesliga studio. “This way of working limits the introduction of new technologies,” explained Alessandro Reitano, VP sports production at Sky Deutschland. “However, Sky Deutschland was able to fix the Ncam device onto the Steadicam camera stabiliser mount.”
Ncam’s camera-agnostic sensor bar attaches to the camera to track its movements using real objects in real time, allowing the camera to move freely while generating a continuous stream of positional and rotational information to feed Sky Deutschland’s Vizrt graphics engine.
