Follow the Bouncing Balls

[kevin_standlee]

I've been following the Australian Open tennis as my time permits and as ESPN3 (the free online channel) permits. As we near the end of the tournament, the only feed I've been able to watch is the "multi-cam" replay of the previous days feature match. This is a feed that shows the main coverage in the center of the screen, with two picture-in-picture shots focused on the players. This would ordinarily be okay, but for some reason, the two player feeds are running about one second ahead of the main feed. That ruins the show for me, because it makes the player feeds effectively "spoilers." It was so distracting that I've tapes pieces of cardboard on my monitor covering up the player feeds, so I can watch the main feed in peace.

Comments

[delosharriman]

Synchronizing video feeds is not a difficult problem. Not anything like it was in the 1940s, when multi-camera work had to be in step to within a fraction of a microsecond (to avoid causing people's sets to go wonky when switching from one source to another, & to make mixing possible at all), using vacuum-tube electronics, & carefully measuring the length of cables to trim out the lightspeed lag.
Today, digital memory makes everything easy. And yet, somehow, it's less likely to be done well now than it was then.

[lindadee]

Tell that to Comcast who frequently can't synchronize sound and picture. The picture can be one second behind, in which case it's like reading lips, or one second after, which just causes confusion.

[scott_sanford]

Anyone doing delays by adjusting lightspeed signal travel paths may be forgiven for getting close and declaring the result good enough.