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SEMINAR REPORT

ON
TECHNOLOGY BEHIND CRICKET
BROADCASTING
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of
MASTER IN COMPUTER APPLICATION

Submitted by:
Deviprasad sahoo
MCA 3rd Semester
Reg. No: 20MCA/08
Email: devi.thecool08@gmail.com

Submitted to:-
Mrs.Sanjibani Sudha Pattnayak.
Mrs.Debaswapna Mishra.

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CENTER FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
ORISSA UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY
BHUBANESWAR
Acknowledgement

It gives me immense pleasure to salute the personalities those who have helped
me in preparing this seminar report.

I am especially indebted to my department and my teachers who all have given


their ideas and valuable time in preparing the report. They stood behind me as a
friend rather than a guide.

I am deeply indebted to our H.O.D. Mr. Abhimanyu dash, Mrs. S.S Pattnayak ,
Mrs. Debaswapna Mishra & other teachers for their valuable guidance &
encouragement.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to my friends who let me to present


myself to the other students and has helped me in documenting the report.

Last but not the least I am thankful to my friends and colleagues who have given
their valuable ideas in completing the report.

Date: -18/12/09 Deviprasad sahoo


MCA – 3rd semester
Roll No:20MCA/08

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CONTENTS
SLNO TOPICS PAGE NO
1 Abstract …………………………………… 4
2 Introduction ………………………………. 5
3 OB Van…………………………………… 6
 Video management………………... 6
 Sound management………………... 6
 Video store………………………… 7
4 Details…………………………………….. 8
 Cameras…………………………… 8
 The graphics………………………. 8
 The sound…………………………. 9
5 Hawk eye camera………………………… 9
6 Virtual advertisement……………………. 11
7 Virtual spectator…………………………. 12
8 IT at stumps …………………………….. 13
9 IT at stand………………………………... 14
10 Analyzing team performance …………… 15
11 Conclusion……………………………….. 17
12 References………………………………..
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ABSTRACT
TECHNOLOGY BEHIND CRICKET
BROADCASTING

Thousands of miles away Tendulkar played a cover drive and the very next
moment (actually it’s 4 seconds after he hit it) you saw in on your screen. Have
you ever thought how it happens? Ever thought how the pictures travel millions of
miles and comes to you? It is the technology behind it which gives us the live
telecast of the match. The outside Broadcasting or OB Van for short is the heart of
any cricket telecast. All signals both video and audio come to the OB Van, are
processed there and then broadcasted.
From the OB Van the feed including the graphics are broadcasted to a
satellite, not to your house; not yet they are sent to an “Earth station “. The station
can be nearby in the same vicinity or could be millions of miles away. You may
wonder why they can’t directly broadcast it to your home. Among others, there’s
one simple reason: The broadcaster needs to do business and the business comes
from advertisements. So the Earth Station takes care of this task. Other tasks may
also include inserting the logo of the channel on the screen. The feed is then fed to
various cable operators through a satellite again. And finally the feed comes to
your house. And you thought a flick of a switch on your remote would start a
cricket match!

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Introduction
Thousands of miles away Tendulkar played a cover drive and the very next
moment (actually it’s 4 seconds after he hit it) you saw in on your screen. Have
you ever thought how it happens? Ever thought how the pictures travel millions of
miles and comes to you?
These days we take it for granted that whenever / wherever any cricket
match is played we can enjoy it in the comfort of our living room couch. The kind
of technology that goes into making this possible is not funny, and not to mention
the human skill and effort required along with it. Here’s how it all

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Outside Broadcast Van(OB Van)
The outside Broadcasting or OB Van for short is the heart of any cricket telecast.
All signals both video and audio come to the OB Van, are processed there and then
broadcasted. A typical OB van could be divided into three major parts.
 Video Management
 Sound Management
 Video Store

Video Management:
The first part takes up the major part of the van, and is where the director
sits with technician. They have a video mixer and a wall of monitors in front of
them. The monitors accommodate all the video feeds from various sources, which
could be graphics from graphic workstations; video feeds from cameras and video-
tapes, slow motion replays. The wall of monitors also contains two other monitors
other than those form the video feeds – the Preview monitor and Program monitor.
The latter contains the dirty feed (mixture of video and graphics), which is
broadcasted to the Earth station. The former shows the clean feed (only the video
feed without the graphics) that is seen before broadcast. The video mixer may be
accompanied by two or more computer operators for scoring the games and giving
appropriate graphic feeds to be layered over the video feeds.
Sound Management:
The next portion is where the sound is managed. The sound engineer has a
sound mixer, which is being fed with all the audio feeds from various sources like:
commentators, the stump microphone, field mocks, etc. He has them in different
channels and can control them individually. He is also supplied with a dirty feed
monitor to help him with the synchronization of sound on instructions from the
director.
Video Store:
The last portion of the van is the Video store. The video store has a
collection of Video Tapes (VTs) and could also have an EVS system. The VTs are

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a collection of pre-made CG videos to be used upon wicket fall, etc. These may
also contain feeds from previous matches, which could be used for comparison.
EVS is live event system (slow motion disk based editor) used for slow-
motion pictures and replays in the match.
Who manages all this ?:
Here the director is the boss, and managing all this is no mean feat. In reality
he is the man who decides what you see. All people involve are in direct contact
with each other using headsets for communication. An interesting fact here
regarding being in touch: Harsha Bhogle may be listening more to director’s
remark then he is actually commenting on the match. Can you believe that.
From the OB Van the feed including the graphics are broadcasted to a
satellite, not to your house; not yet they are sent to an “Earth station “. The station
can be nearby in the same vicinity or could be millions of miles away. You may
wonder why can’t they directly broadcast it to your home. Among others, there’s
one simple reason: The broadcaster needs to do business and the business comes
from advertisements. So the Earth Station takes care of this task. Other tasks may
also include inserting the logo of the channel on the screen. The feed is then fed to
various cable operators through a satellite again. And finally the feed comes to
your house. And you thought a flick of a switch on your remote would start a
cricket match!

Details:
The Cameras:
Starting with the video capturing , there are at least 16-21cameras used on
the cricket field placed at different locations to bring you the various views. These
could be as small as a stump camera and as advanced as the super slow motion
camera used behind the bowlers arm to provide high quality replays. All cameras

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are connected to a video mixer inside the out – Broadcast (OB) van. The director
and the operator sitting on the mixer can switch to any of these cameras while
broadcasting.
The Graphics:
Graphics is one of the most exciting parts of the whole match production
saga and uses computers in more ways than one. A skilled data entry operator
records each ball bowled in a cricket match on custom made software, made
specifically for a broadcast company. For instance, ESPN STAR sports uses a

software called Namadgi. It typically uses 3-4 machines. One is a laptop PC


running Win 2K(any network enabled OS) for keeping track of the score. It’s
connected to a MS-SQL server database via TCP/IP. The other computers are an
AD-HOC machine and Score-Ticker Machine.
The layout for this graphics is predefined and the information updated
dynamically form the data base on the server. The other machine i.e. The AD-
HOC machine gives you the entire special graphics that you see on the screen.
These may include play statistics, wagon wheels showing where the player scored
his run, etc. All these graphics are generated dynamically from the data capture by
the scoring laptop. Not only that but the operator can key in the data and make an
AD-HOC graphic based on the data provided to him by the scorer. The graphic are
then send to the vision mixer in either analog or digital format. This is then supper
imposed on the live action happening on the field. The system can also use a
moving graphic instead of the live broad cast.

The Sound:
Imagine a match without Sidhuisms. The sound in the broad cast of a cricket
match is as important as the video if not more. There are various sound sources

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that are controlled by a sound controller using an audio mixer, in various channels
located in the OB Van and then broadcasted. The sound sources may include the
commentators, the stump microphones, the sound sparks, (e.g. Graphic displayed
when a wicket falls etc, or CG when a new batsman comes to play), microphones
on the fields etc. The person controlling the sound also has access to the final feed
which is being broadcasted.
As we have seen above there is a lot happening all together. The cameras
giving the video feed, the graphic machines providing all the indulging graphics,
replace, super slow motion, historic data base management etc.

How Hawk Eye Works


This technology uses a special image-processing system that helps
umpires take LBW decisions
One of the most difficult, and sometimes controversial, decisions that an
umpire has to take on the cricket field is for LBW (leg-before wicket). To take the
final call on a batsman, the umpire has to juggle with many variables—

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Whether the ball pitched outside the leg stump, hit the batsman in line with
the stumps or whether it would have hit the stumps, and most importantly whether
the player was making a genuine effort to play the shot.
Hawk Eye aims to aid the umpire by giving inputs on the physics of the ball
by tracking and predicting its motion. It uses a special image-processing system
from Roke Manor Research (a Siemens R & D company) and commercial off-the-
shelf hardware along with six specially placed cameras. Hawk Eye incorporates
both image analysis and radar technology. The six fixed JAI monochrome
cameras, with 120 MHz frame rate, are placed around the playing field (see
picture). They track the ball’s entire trajectory, right from the point where it is
released from the bowler’s hand to the point the ball is considered dead. This is
updated 100 times every second. The cameras are used in two sets, and a multi-
channel frame grabber handles each set. The images captured are then processed
by software to produce a 3-D image. The future path is predicted using a
parametric model. The system is able to locate the ball in 3-D and can predict the
motion with a claimed accuracy of 5mm. Some of the esoteric statistics that can
be generated by this system are: the areas where a particular bowler pitched and
how much swing or spin a particular bowler generated. In some cases where the
system’s accuracy is questionable, it just gives a “can’t help” message to ensure its
accuracy never goes below acceptable limits.

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Besides aiding the umpire in taking a decision, the Hawk Eye is also used to
give a more enhanced feed to TV viewers. Who can forget all those virtual replays
shown from various angels of a player being called for an LBW?
The application of Hawk Eye goes much beyond cricket. The company,
Roke Manor, is also developing similar technologies for tennis, football, baseball
and snooker.

Virtual Advertising
In future ads you see on stadium billboards may not really exist, but are
inserted virtually
Virtual advertising is the electronic insertion of advertising images
during live TV broadcasts of sports and entertainment events.
In this, digital images, advertisements, and logos are super-imposed on live
video or inserted into a completed movie or television show.

The advantage of such a system is that different advertisements can be


inserted for different regions thereby giving the broadcaster more advertisers. For
example, electronic boards can replace peripheral boards in a stadium and show a
Pepsi board in India and Coco-Cola in Europe. While the viewers of the video
broadcasts will see the board shown to them specifically, the actual board may be
totally different or may not be present at all. They can also be used to insert
synthesized messages onto the playing field or other empty spaces.

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All this is possible with virtual advertising. The technology has been used
in Major League Baseball in the US and may soon be used in cricket games also.
Imaging Allan Donald running on a virtual advertisement strip while taking his run
up or Sachine Tendulkar hitting a six directly into a virtual glass of some cola
product.
Virtual advertisements have to be inserted at specific points in the
video, like the billboards on the field. So there has to be a way to locate
and track designated insertion locations in the live video. All this work
is done is real time so that the viewers could see the video live with the
virtual advertisements. To locate insertion points in the video, pattern
recognition techniques are used. These techniques analyze the video
and look for patterns in the video. These patterns are then compared
with the stored patterns of the desired locations. Once there is a pattern
match, these points in the video are located in replaced by virtual
advertisements.
Requirements:
To create the digital advertisements of products, standard off-the-shelf 3D,
Alias Power Animator, Wavefront, 3D Studio MAX, Shockwave 3D player,
Macromedia Shockwave player, Intel internet 3D graphics, a scalable 3D engine
for generating graphic Web content. For the hardware, dedicated video processors
are used with high performance graphic workstations like the Silicon Graphics
ONYX2. These enable the real time rendering and processing of video.
Virtual Spectator
Using 3-D graphics to broadcast additional match information

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If your remember, some time back when India was being thrashed
by the Kiwis in Newzeland, some new type of graphics were being
shown on TV. Instead of tardy 2-D wagon wheels for the shots played,
it showed color-coded 3-D views of a wagon wheel. This actually
showed the path taken by the ball before it crossed the boundary, and the
placement of fielders on the ground depicting a ‘theoretical’ area of
influence. These views were fairly realistic representations, generated
by a 3-D rendering machine called Virtual Spectator.
Before a match starts, an aerial photograph of the ground and the
surrounding area is taken. Pictures are also taken by somebody standing on the
pitch. These photographs are then used to make a 3-D model of the stadium in 3D
studio MAX. People wearing team colors are also photographed. This is mapped
to 3-D player models created on the screen.
The Virtual Spectator system consists of two machines. One is used to
record live data from the match, like score, fielders’ positions, where the ball was
hit and how high it bounced. The data-entry operator sits in high position to get
the whole view of the ground. The other machine is used to provide feed to the
broadcaster, and its operator works out the various graphics based on data coming
from the first machine. These graphics may include field placements on the
screen, proposed field placements, wagon wheels, etc. The graphics are fed to the
broadcaster through a BNC cable using digital down converter that takes the DVI
monitor feed from the computer and grabs a particular area of the screen and
converts it to industry standard SDI. The BNC cable comes to the video mixer
directly and that director uses the feed as needed.
The software used is written in C++ with MFC ( Microsoft Foundation
Classes) for the interface and Open GL for graphics. Both machines used are 2.4
GHz P4 processors with GeForce 4 graphic cards for great graphic results.
Animation research Ltd, a New Zealand company has developed the product.
Of Bats and Stumps:

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How would it feel to be a stump and see a speeding bowl comes strait on to
your face? TV has left nothing to imagination, thanks to stump cameras. These
are micro-cameras placed inside the stumps, giving couch potatoes the experience
of being where no spectator on the cricket field can ever imagine being. IN many
cricket fields, there’s wire traveling underground, connecting the camera to other
TV equipments or even PCs, to remotely control them. Many international cricket
grounds have this facility. Cordless cameras with radio or microwave
transmission are also used. Wired transmission is preferred over wireless
transmission because the players tend to come in the way in the case of the latter.
The first stump camera installation was done by the BBC the early 1990s. They
placed a Hitachi KP-D8s camera in the middle stump. This was a color camera
that used 410,000 pixel CCD with micro lenses, and offered a horizontal resolution
of 470 TV lines. The size of the camers, 42 cubic cm (80 gms) makes it possible
for it to be inserted into the stumps. If one camera is not enough, then two can be
placed, one with a wide-angle lens and the other with a narrow angle lens, giving
the TV broad caster four different views to choose from.

These Hitachi cameras can connect to PCs over a RW232C line


(serial port), and can then be remotely controlled using a software
application specifically written for them. The protocol is also available
on request to write custom applications. The Hitachi KP-D8s camera,
for instance uses a social program written in Microsoft VC++ 5.0 for

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controlling it. The software works on Win 95/NT machines, and lets
you control several parameters like white balance and picture control.
You can even control its electric shutter speed from it.
IT at the Stands:
You would be forgiven for thinking that technology has been put into place
only for cricketers and that too on the greens. Nothing could be farther from truth
at South Africa 2003. On the field or off it, in the stadium or in you living room,
you can’t escape IT anymore, Interesting is the crowd-control mechanism in
operation in South Africa. For the first time manual ticketing has been replaced by
automated ones.
The main companies involved in developing this are Dimension Data and
Choice Technologies. Dimension developed the back-office operations software
as well as the POS (point of sale) interfaces. Allowing the fans to enter the
stadium is the job of intelligent turnstiles made by Turnstar. Based on a 386
processor with 8MB memory, these turnstiles act as intelligent doorkeepers
keeping tack of and allowing people to enter and leave the stadium. The turnstiles
can scan the barcodes on the tickets and keep updating a central database over a
LAN. If at any point, should the LAN connectivity fail, the turnstiles can connect
peer-to-peer.

Analyzing Team Performance:


Complex information-management systems are used to analyze each
player’s performance in a match
When a short ball is bowled to Ganguly in his rib cage, he is more likely to
play it to backward short leg. So a fielder is placed accordingly at backward short
leg. This is just a hypothical example of the information used by various cricket

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teams. Imagine having this kind of detailed information about each player a team
is playing against. Enter information management system for cricket.

The information in these system is gathered in the same manner as the TV


broadcasters captured it with some auditions here and there because of difference
in application. We will look at the information management system-e-cricket pro
by phoenix global solutions being used by the Indian cricket team. So lets dig and
find out what e-cricket pro is all about and how it helps the player and team.
As with other cricket analysis software, e-cricket pro also needs a very
skilled data entry operator with a good knowledge of cricket to feed the data live
during a cricket match. The system used is a P4 based laptop with 256 Mb RAM
and External video capture box.
There are various modules in the software, the major ones being the data
capture, record to media and a report generation. At the start of the match all
details including pitch condition, whether, toss etc, are recorded. When the match
starts the detail of each and every ball are recorded. As soon as the bowler comes
to bowl the video recording is stated which ends when the bowl is dead. This done
the operator stats with a series of clicks GUI, recording each and every detail about
the ball including parameters like swing, comfort zone, stroke type and run scored.

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Each ball takes around 4 to 8 mouse clicks to record. Once recorded the data is
stored in an Oracle database at the back end.
During the lunch brake or at the end of the match the players and the coach
can view and analyze the data. The most important part of it is being able to query
the videos database. The database can be queried on various parameters and even
gives an option of replays, frame-by-frame video and split screen video. These
video can later the burnt on a CD for various needs and for various players.
A lot of tools and lot of options but are they being utilized to the
fullest? Only the performance of the Indian cricket team can answer
that.

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Conclusion:

Though here I discussed only


about Cricket. IT takes crucial role in broadcasting of each &

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every live event. As we know till we have no taste of any thing
what we have missed. We can now feel what we missed in the
past, the excitement of stroke play by our legendry players. Now
we can feel that IT is the backbone of live telecast.

REFERENCES

 www.google.com
 www.wikipedia.com
 www.howstuffsworks.com

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