I’m watching the BCS Championship, and I’m wondering why the networks never provide synchronized split-screen replays in football games so that the viewer (and the officials) might be able to triangulate the position of the ball or the player in question at a critical moment. The individual replays of the Gators’ Percy Harvin’s TD rush did nothing to establish the position of the ball when his knee was down, but the side and goal camera angles combined and synched would have easily done the job.
cygweb
blather listen repeat redux
cygweb 
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January 9, 2007 at 1:39 am
Matt
My guess would be that each camera is recording to a seperate tape or digital recording device, each of which are also re-racked and played back independently. Anybody who’s done any video editing knows how completely tedious it is to sync different camera angles into a seamless combination.
I would imagine that attempting to sync multiple replay angles would be (a) too time-consuming for the window given to review plays, (b) cost-prohibitive, and (c) too easily screwed up by officials who either don’t entirely understand or fail to properly use the technology.
I’m betting it would create more problems than it would fix.
January 9, 2007 at 9:30 am
aharden
I’m definitely not a broadcast video expert, but I would think that sync shouldn’t be an issue due to the use of SMTPE (or equivalent) time code on all devices. I’ve seen Fox show an “In Sync” feature before, but not for precision replays to determine ball placement.
Perhaps the issue is the difficulty of dynamic tying the disparate hi-res (and high frame rate) replay feeds into a composed image on the fly. I can only guess there’s a lack of processing power, bandwidth, tools, or all three. Seems like a hole that need filling.
Thanks for the comment!