Technical Details Relating to 3D Live Scotland vs England Six Nations Match

David Wooster and Duncan Humphreys from The3DFirm provide us some technical information regarding the recent the 3-D live rugby match.

What was the HD format used in the capture, encoding, compression and presentation etc?
1080i

What was the bit rate of the uplink for each of the streams?
19 Mbps on each stream. We played safe for this test so we did not to take up too much bandwidth but would anticipate going to 40 Mbps per stream in the future.

How where the streams time locked or bonded together?
Each camera was gen-locked. These feeds were then sent to the vision mixer where they were paired together so the mixer saw them as one (when you cut to camera one you actually cut the 2 cameras that were on position one) and then a fairly standard OB edit took place between camera positions. The output from the mixer or broadcast feed was then compressed as 2 SCPC ASI streams, multiplexed together and transmitted via satellite. This satellite signal was then received in London, decoded and fed to 2 Christie 8K HD projectors.


Half way through the game there was a video “glitch” what was that caused by?
Satellite issue due to weather. Also happened on 2D TV signal.

Was it circular polarization on the glasses or linear?
Linear.

How many seconds behind live was it?
Approx 6-7 Seconds.

How did you re-balance the audio for the radio to the video sync?
We took the Radio Scotland commentary straight from their commentary booth shifted the sync slightly and mixed it on site with the international sound.

What was the sound format?
4.0 (Quadraphonic) with phantom centre speakers.

What was the make/model of the camera?
Pairs of broadcast Sony 950 cameras with wide angle HD Zooms on 3DFirm Calcutta 3D rigs.