When will we see "ball cams" in sports?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27166

by amichail • 19 years ago

5 22 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

gibsonf1• 19 years ago

Thats a great idea - but boy could that be disorienting unless they included some sort of amazing stabilization mechanism. (Think spinning balls). One way to pull it off would be to make a clear ball with a camera mounted on a gyroscope on the inside so the camera could move independent of the ball. On second thought, maybe the value added here doesn't warrant the expense?

sam• 19 years ago

Just use a software solution. Put 6 or or so cameras pointing out radially and then stitch the views together for a full 4pi view. No need for a fancy gyroscope. There's an idea for a startup...

amichail4• 19 years ago

So what would the default view be? Is there a view that would work for most sports?

Also what about having flying robocams? How would they work?

pg• 19 years ago

As long as you're going to use a software solution, you might be able to get the number of cameras on the ball down to zero: have a bunch of cameras in the stadium, and reconstruct from them what the ball would be seeing.

(I suspect you'd want the view of wherever the ball was projected to land.)

brianmckenzie• 19 years ago

What about when the ball bounces, or otherwise changes direction suddenly? It would be very hard to watch. But you wouldn't want to make the ball's POV the actual real-time feed anyway, you'd totally lose the context of the game. This technology would only be useful for replays.

Perhaps another approach would be to have a bunch of cameras around the stadium, motion-track the ball in 3d, then stitch the ball's POV together using a process sort of like Google street view, or that dumb 3d revolving-subject thing that was in all the commercials five years ago. Then you could calculate a 'line of best fit' for the ball's trajectory and render video 'just-in-time' for a quick, smooth replay.

paulgb• 19 years ago

How about a football? I can't think of a way to mount a camera on one of the ends, but a camera inside could work if it could be stabilized.

revolvingcur• 19 years ago

Real leather footballs aren't perfectly pointy on the ends. You could introduce a thin tube running through the primary ball axis containing all the imaging and transmission electronics, without throwing of the balance. Think endoscope.

trajan2• 19 years ago

This would be the exact opposite of "making something people want". Ask your average sports fan how high they are on the NBA's below-the-basket floor cam or (even worse) the wavering camera that floats down the center of the court over the action.

Thanks, but no thanks!

amichail4• 19 years ago

I think it would make a sport like golf a lot more fun to watch.

Also, pitch movements in baseball would become more obvious.

trajan2• 19 years ago

I think it could make both these sports more fun to watch, but then I'm not a fan of either. It seems to me that a lot of people following golf and baseball are purists easily turned off by this kind of thing. I could be wrong.

I am a fan of basketball and football, and do know that the innovative camera angles introduced so far fail the pub test; whenever I'm at a bar and the TV switches to one, people either complain or say nothing. I've yet to hear any support.

Sam_Odio3• 19 years ago

In theory, it would be a good idea.

However in most sports, the ball spins rapidly, anywhere from one rotation every few seconds to 50+ times / second.

Personally, seeing that on camera would probably make me barf.

Also, it would be almost impossible to compensate for this, since they usually rotate around more than one axis.

corentin• 19 years ago

Maybe it could be used by the referees?

I have no idea indeed, but I love how nearly everybody responded to the question by pointing out technical difficulties :)

andres• 19 years ago

A "glove" cam for boxing would be easy to implement and would give boxing fans exactly what they want.

aquateen2• 19 years ago

The only sport I think this would be interesting in would be (American) football. It would be a neat perspective to watch the quarterback get blitzed and chuck a hail mary, looking down on the WR right before the ball gets a view of the grass.

If you put a camera on both ends, you get a forward/backward view for the most part. Then write something that takes the video and orients the field to the bottom of the screen or something like that.

This reminds me of a post on reddit a loong time ago. Camera software for use with blurry surveillance video that sharpened the image by adjusting it with frames seen immediately before/after. Anyone by chance remember that?

aquateen2• 19 years ago

You may not see an IPO, but a good chance of becoming profitable or getting bought out. Think of SportVision, who make the "1st & Ten" first down line on televised football games, and glowing hockey pucks.

staunch• 19 years ago

A camera from every player's POV seems way more interesting to me.

gojomo• 19 years ago

I predict it will be easy in 10 years (and sooner with a large enough budget). High-res cameras will be no larger than a tiny segment of football lacing, or basketball inflation pins/pumps -- as are built into retail balls today with little effect on playability. Advanced optics will allow extremely wide-angle views in multiple directions. Fast computers will compensate for any rotations.

As others note, though, placing cameras in balls may not be as interesting to fans as other options, like player cams. (Beyond Justin.tv, what about LeBron.tv or Peyton.tv?)

When will we see "ball cams" in sports?

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