51 VR FOCUS Sports
roadcaster BT Sport is known for its innovative approach, trialling technology such as 5G, HDR and Dolby Atmos for live
“We still use the Nokia Ozo for the football, but we also use a camera called the Insta360 Pro, an 8K camera system built into one body that is capable of real- time stitching and live streaming.” BT Sport now also has live VR 360 feeds on its boxing coverage. “On the boxing we have a three-camera setup,” explains Beale. “We have a couple of cameras in the two neutral corners of the ring, with one to cover the whole of the ring and the rest of the arena. We use a camera called the Mini EYE because we wanted to have no parallax, which is quite difficult to do. “The boxing is incredible in VR because it’s so up close and personal, very immersive,” continues Beale. “We do live graphics on that, some replays and a beauty shot camera as well.” On smaller sports events, with two or three cameras, the live VR production is handled using a software solution, vMix. “It runs on a powerful PC with I/O cards,”
How BT Sport is leading the way in media tech innovation with experiments in live VR and 360 part of its DNA...
production coverage. Now its approach to VR and 360 video has been given a boost, thanks to the BT Sport app. BT Sport started streaming live VR 360 during the 2016-17 UEFA Champions League, with a 360 production of the final from Cardiff in June 2017, streaming 4K feeds from 12 Nokia Ozo VR cameras. “We ended up doing a very large multicamera VR live feed to YouTube, which included all angles and TV replays,” recalls Andy Beale, chief engineer at BT Sport. “Since then we’ve been doing more, including working to have the VR experience natively in the BT Sport app in 2017 and 2018. We now provide VR angles for all our premium sports, so we have the cameras at every Premier League (EPL) game and every UEFA Champions League home game.
Words by Michael Burns
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