Hero Indian Super League graphics provided by Vizrt virtual and interactive graphics technology

The Hero Indian Super League football championship is in its second year and features a total of 61 matches between the league’s eight franchises. The tournament is a drive towards India qualifying for the upcoming Soccer World Cup and for the U17 tournament being held in 2017. To deliver the best possible viewing experience, the league is committed to producing a premiere broadcast of the championship using the industry’s leading production tools.

Remote match day graphics
For graphics production AE uses a combination of Vizrt’s character generator (CG), Viz Trio, and AE’s own bespoke software applications. This produces presentation graphics including scoreboards, statistics, the play clock and lower thirds. Controlled remotely from the Mumbai studio, the application allows users to control the video and graphics output and make changes to graphics quickly and easily.

Onsite telestration and augmented reality (AR)
While the match day presentation graphics are added to the broadcast from a central studio, OB facilities at each game include a one-stop telestration and augmented reality (AR) solution. Viz Arena is part of this system, augmenting 3D graphics, providing analysis tools, and inserting virtual advertising into the broadcast feed.
 
Alston Elliot chose Viz Arena for the ISL because it allows them to start with a blank canvas before adding any graphic enhancements to the feed. The solution guarantees a consistent workflow and with its compact and mobile two-box hardware solution, is easy to set up.

Intuitive touchscreen design
Additional augmented elements are implemented into the Mumbai studio touchscreen as an extension of the AR graphics delivered at the OB truck. This is through Vizrt graphics-driven environment supported by custom, AE-designed plugins.

This system design and the flexibility of the Vizrt graphics environment means the entire solution is easily scalable. AE can employ any number of Viz Engines to recognise events raised via the touchscreen and render the graphics needed. This allows Alston Elliot to add any number of more complex graphics to the live production.

“Every time we look at designing a touchscreen like this, we analyse how we did it last time and find a way to improve it,” said Chris Izatt, Senior Designer at Alston Elliot Ltd. “Using this Vizrt graphics setup we were able to implement a technically ambitious application.”
 
“This project and our partnership with Alston Elliot is a testament to our leading live sports production tools,” said Stephan Würmlin Stadler, EVP Sports at Vizrt. “We design our solutions to be highly flexible, suiting our partners and customers’ specific needs. That’s just what AE did here – they found a way that would make our products work for them and implemented a very innovative system.”

The Hero Indian Super League kicked off on Saturday 3 October and is being played at the franchise’s eight stadiums around India. The championship’s final will be played on Sunday 20 December.

Vizrt provides real-time 3D graphics, studio automation, sports analysis and asset management tools for the media and entertainment industry. This includes interactive and virtual solutions, animations, maps, weather, video editing, compositing, and playout tools. Vizrt has customers in more than 100 countries worldwide including CNN, CBS, Fox, BBC, BSkyB, Al Jazeera, NDR, ITN, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, TV Today, CCTV, NHK and the list keeps growing. Vizrt has nearly 600 employees and operates in 40 offices worldwide.