Article Overview

PREVIEW: Wimbledon in 3D

Wimbledon Championships will see Sony and key partners bring a live HD 3D feed to 3D capable cinemas

From the lens to the living room: Making it happen - Based on the 3D experience gained at several key sporting events over the past two years, Sony’s work with Wimbledon is on the cutting-edge of broadcast innovation. Sony has partnered with experts across the industry to make Wimbledon in 3D a reality and is the only broadcast manufacturer able to provide an end-to-end solution that delivers 3D content and expertise across the value chain.

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Wimbledon in 3D: Behind the Scenes with Sony Professional

See the Behind the Sceens Video from the first 3D Tests at Wimbledon on vimeo

Sony and Wimbledon serve a 3D Ace!

For the first time ever, the finals of Wimbledon, the premier tennis championship in the world will this year be filmed in 3D and screened live in High Definition 3D to 3D capable cinemas around the world. The live 3D production, in partnership with the Wimbledon host broadcaster the BBC, will also be offered to interested global broadcasters.

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Arqiva partners with Sony to deliver 3D Wimbledon tennis to worldwide cinemas

Sony has selected Arqiva as their technology partner for the live global 3D distribution of the 2011 Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships to worldwide cinemas. This will be the first time this famous tournament has been transmitted live to cinemas or seen in stunning high-definition 3D, and so it represents an innovative and unique viewing opportunity for tennis enthusiasts all around the world. Four key matches will be transmitted - the men’s semi-finals, the women’s final and the men’s final.

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CAN Appointed to Film Wimbledon in 3D for Sony

CAN will be covering the Wimbledon men's semi-finals, finals and women's finals. Utilising the same 3D workflow successfully used at the FIFA World CupTM, five camera positions will be deployed for each match with each position comprising of two Sony HDC-1500s mounted on Element Technica rigs and configured with Sony MPE-200 processors for convergence and interocular alignment.

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Inside the game: Wimbledon 3D update

Andy Stout talked to Can Communicate’s Creative Director, Duncan Humphreys, about the tests, the future, and installing a Quantel Pablo in an OB truck. “All we’re doing is installing it as a standalone device and there’s plenty of space for it – it’ll sit in the truck’s air-conditioned racking and all we need to do then is play in the left- and right-eyes and clip as we go,” says Humphreys of the Pablo. “The place we’ll be in might be slightly smaller than the space you might traditionally reserve for a Quantel suite, but it was felt that it was better to have everything on site rather than be biking tapes here there and everywhere.”

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Sony and Can Communicate Confirm 3 Year Wimbledon 3D Partnership

Working closely with SONY and BBC Sport, CAN will use the same 3D workflow that was successfully deployed at the 2010 FIFA World CupTM. With 5 camera positions per match, each position will comprise 2x SONY HDC-P1 cameras with Canon lenses fed into a SONY HD fiber adapter mounted onto Element Technica rigs and configured with SONY MPE-200 processors for convergence and interocular alignment. The 3D signals generated from the 5 camera positions will be fed to a dedicated 3D outside broadcast facility supplied by our partner, NEP Visions. Pictures will be processed using a complete SONY 3D broadcast solution and encoded for 3D TV broadcast and 3D cinema audiences.

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BBC Confirms Wimbledon 3D Broadcast

The BBC’s broadcast, produced in collaboration with the AELTC and Sony Professional, will use the existing BBC HD channel, meaning coverage will be available to all those with a 3DTV in the UK via a mix of Freesat, Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. There are also plans to run live 3D screenings of the Men’s Final at selected 3D-enabled cinemas and at BBC Television Centre in West London. Paul Davies, BBC executive producer of sport, commented: “During our 75 years of televising the Wimbledon Championships the BBC has continually broken new ground in broadcasting techniques. This unique 3D transmission is the latest innovation to bring to life all the tension, drama and excitement on one of the most iconic arenas in the world”.

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EVS Provides Past & Present Tennis Action at Wimbledon 2011

EVS will once again deploy its industry-leading production solutions at The All England Tennis Lawn Club Wimbledon Championships, working with various partners to provide major international broadcasters, including BBC Sport, with host broadcast services. EVS servers will also record the first ever 3D coverage of the gentlemen’s and ladies’ Wimbledon finals and, working alongside partners IMG Media and Timeline TV, EVS will provide instant searchable access to archive footage from the last four Wimbledon tournaments. Several EVS servers will also be installed in NEP Visions’ Gemini OB units which are providing host OB technical facilities for the tournament, including the feeds from the first ever 3D broadcasts of the gentlemen’s and ladies’ finals.

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Visions Supplies Host OB Facilities for First Live 3D Wimbledon Broadcast

NEP Visions has won the contract to supply host OB technical facilities for the first ever live 3D coverage of the Wimbledon lawn tennis championship. Visions will work alongside the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), Sony and CAN Communicate to deliver live 3D pictures around the world of the men’s and women’s finals matches. This prestigious project represents Visions’ first live 3D broadcast, utilising its state-of-the-art 3Gb/s Gemini OB units. Six Element Technica 3D camera rig systems will be installed around Centre Court, utilising Sony P1 cameras, HDFA200S and MPE-200 control systems.

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Wimbledon in 3D - Coming to a Cinema Near You!

The 2011 Wimbledon Championships will see Sony and key partners bring a live HD 3D feed of Men’s Singles Semi-Finals and the Ladies and Men’s Singles Final to 3D capable cinemas and homes around the world, bringing the magic of Centre Court to a global audience for the first time. Beyond the grounds of Wimbledon, Sony is working with Supervision to collaborate with a number of different exhibitors that will take the live 3D feed to cinemas around the world. From Hong Kong to Ecuador, global cinema exhibitors have partnered with Sony Digital Cinema 4K to screen the finals of the 2011 Wimbledon Championships, attracted by the opportunities presented by alternative content.

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Sony’s 3D Production of Wimbledon to be Broadcast and Screened Worldwide

On 21 June 2011Sony announced that several major global broadcasters and cinema exhibitors will broadcast and screen the 3D production of the Wimbledon 2011 men’s semi-finals, men’s final and women’s final in multiple countries and regions worldwide. Through its official supplier partnership with The All England Lawn Tennis Club to produce the final matches of The 125th Championships in 3D, Sony aims to deliver the exhilaration and excitement of the world’s premier tennis championships - with unprecedented depth and realism - to viewers worldwide.

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Wimbledon Goes 3D with Element Technica Rigs

The Wimbledon 3D telecast is utilizing five ET rigs: three large camera Quasar rigs and two Pulsar rigs, designed with a smaller form-factor to mount mid-sized cameras. “The addition of the Pulsars to our camera chain has allowed the production to man the most sensitive camera positions on Wimbledon Centre Court with extremely low profile and unobtrusive 3D cameras.”The rigs are configured in the “broadcast mode.” Most beam-splitter 3D rigs mount the mirrored camera above the rig, which does not allow conventional placement of the operator’s viewfinder monitor and can block spectators’ views of the event. The under/thru configuration is not as high, cutting down on the need to eliminate spectator seating. It also allows use of a full monitor and operator controls in the back, which provides a familiar look and feel to a camera operator new to 3D production.

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GlobeCast Delivers 3D Wimbledon Coverage for IMG

GlobeCast will deliver four key matches, the men's semi-finals, the women's final, and the men's final to broadcasters around the world. Working closely with IMG and their 3D producers, GlobeCast will deliver a side-by-side 3D signal to multiple satellite platforms for Europe, Asia, and the Americas, providing the necessary frame rate and line rate as applicable for the Americas market.

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HBS at the 125th Edition of Wimbledon

"This is yet again an experiment for everyone involved because 3D is a new type of viewing experience" Peter Angell, HBS Director of Production & Programming and Executive Producer on behalf of Sony, at this, the 125th edition of Wimbledon, hastens to tell anybody questioning him about the future of 3D. "It’s a three year contract as far as Sony and the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) are concerned, but for all other parties, it is very much a question of working on "the evolution of 3D delivery.."Peter Angell and Duncan Humphries, the Creative Producer from Can Communicate, Sony’s Technical Production Partner, go on to add:"We will use the same 3D workflow that was successfully deployed in South Africa. With 5 camera positions per match, each position will comprise 2 x SONY HDC-P1 cameras with Canon lenses fed into a SONY HD fibre adapter mounted onto Element Technica rigs and configured with SONY MPE-200 processors for convergence and inter-ocular alignment. The 3D signals generated from the 5 camera positions will be fed to a dedicated 3D Outside Broadcast facility supplied by our other partner, NEP Visions. Pictures will be processed using a complete SONY 3D broadcast solution and encoded for 3D TV broadcast and 3D cinema audiences".

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92 EVS Servers at Wimbledon

At the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s (AELTC) 125th Wimbledon Championships EVS severs and IPDirectors were in operation at Timeline TV, ESPN, the HD OB trucks of SIS LIve, Mediatec and NEP Visions for the 2D and 3D production, providing the host broadcaster and all international broadcasters with replays of the matches and instant searchable access to archive footage. Since 2007 Timeline TV, subcontracted by IMG Media, provides the host broadcast solution for the Wimbledon Championships. The system consists of 16 EVS XT servers and around 60 EVS IPDirector terminals to manage ingest control, content management, metadata management and on the fly editing. Each point played was logged in IPDirector combining live statistical information from the on-court scoring system (provided by the official Wimbledon technology sponsor IBM) with producer-entered classifications.

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MOOV Aces Through Wimbledon With Chyron Graphics

MOOV has become the graphics company of choice for leading broadcasters including BBC, ESPN, AI Jazeera, RTE, ITV, Sky Italia, and Channel 4. The company has provided on-air graphics for Wimbledon for the past seven years, but this is the first time the company has relied solely on Chyron graphics equipment. Three HyperX3 systems — along with a graphics control interface engineered by MOOV — supported the BBC domestic feed, and another HyperX3 system supplied by MOOV supported graphics for ESPN STAR Sports.During the tournament, the graphics created by MOOV were incorporated into all production outside of live tennis. Graphics enriched segments highlighting action in other matches and live scores across the tournament, as well as opening titles, interviews, trailers, and promos. MOOV created an event-specific interface to connect live data — scores, draws, order of play — from the tournament's IBM scoring system to Chyron graphics playout. In addition to supporting live updates, the Chyron systems allowed MOOV to use headline sequences in which video from a match point could be shown with a full-screen graphic in real time using live video and requiring no rendering. Operators were able to run multiple such headlines in succession.

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CAN Serves up Wimbledon in 3D to much Applause

An estimated 18,000 viewers watched the BBC’s 3D coverage, which given the currently limited number of 3D TV sets in the UK, was impressive. Feedback and reviews from consumers and journalists has been overwhelmingly positive, proving how compelling the 3D coverage was.  As well as heightening the televised Wimbledon experience, much of the feedback focused on the fact that viewers felt they could see more of the technical aspects of the game such as the swerve and slice on the ball. Danielle Nagler, Head of BBC HD & 3D said “It exceeded my expectations:  It showed us tennis in a new and different way, giving a perspective which placed viewers court-side.  I felt that emphasised the speed and power of the tennis.”