IBR camera system for live TV sport productions

Abstract: The mix of regular sport production and new digital techniques can give the audience a more spectacular viewing experience. Nowadays, for example, commercial banners can be virtually added onto the arenas, and statistical information, such as shot speed in soccer games, lengths in athletics and yards in American football, can be calculated and visualized during the events. A dream scenario for many sport producers would be to have a virtual camera system that can give a free viewpoint of the events delivered in real-time. A virtual camera system can render a new viewpoint of the scenery using only existing image material as input. This kind of system would be able to produce more spectacular images and give the audience a clearer view of the events taking place. The purpose with this thesis work is to investigate whether Image Based Rendering techniques can be used to produce such a system and what the difficulties and the restrictions from the broadcasting techniques are. Based on a theoretical background and interviews with Swedish sport producers a software system for the virtual camera was designed. This system was then evaluated based on three tests performed. At the moment the system is unable to fulfil all of the requests set up by the producers. An important part of the work has therefore been to make suggestions on further improvements that can increase the system performance.