Big Picture deploys Brompton for xR broadcast
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Brompton Technology’s 4K Tessera SX40 LED processor was a crucial element in the multi camera xR workflow, offering reliable timing and consistency of image at this high-profile event.
“Big Picture has a long-standing relationship with Fox Sports, providing LED and other services to its studio and broadcast projects,” says Josh Moffat, business development at Big Picture. “When their team approached us about the Dally M Awards, we were both thrilled and honoured by the opportunity to get involved. We also quickly realised that this would be a perfect platform to use our knowledge of ground-breaking Extended Reality (xR) technology and bring it to the next level by producing live to air broadcast xR production, which has never been done before.”
The timing of the event could not have been more challenging. This was one of the busiest times of the year for Australian sports, with various sporting fields having their competition finals, so the Fox Sports studio was fully booked with broadcasts throughout the week preceding the awards show. “This meant we had to prepare for this a little differently,” says Nathan Barnier, senior technician & content specialist at Big Picture.
The team ensured that all the main components of the system were set up and ‘tuned’, including Panasonic cameras, stYpe kits, Brompton Tessera LED processors, tally integrations and disguise media servers, all working in harmony.
“We loaded the full system in a few days prior and were able to secure a small corner of the studio to build a full height strip of ROE Black Onyx LED video wall,” continues Barnier. “This allowed us to not only get ahead of the system integration with Fox Sports, but gave us time to nail our disguise xR timings, point our three cameras at the strip and get all our timings locked down - with xR the frame accuracy is the first step to getting the project to run seamlessly.”
The final system comprised a 12m x 3m ROE Black Onyx 2.8mm LED wall integrated into the disguise xR workflow. Disguise’s xR multi-camera registration workflow proved to be invaluable to the team by allowing effective switching between camera perspectives and the screen content. For LED processing, the team used two Brompton 4K Tessera SX40 LED processors and four Tessera XD 10G data distribution units.
