Fletcher Chicago hits home run with HD slow-motion system
SportsVideo.org
Jul 11, 2006, 05:07 PM
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Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies may have been hitting the
biggest home runs on the field during Major League Baseball's Home Run
Hitting Contest that aired June 10 on ESPN but it was Fletcher Chicago
that had the biggest one off the field with a new HD slow-motion system.
Deep
in the bowels of PNC Park in Pittsburgh the company had a special HD
slow-motion system set up that could record images at up to 1,000
frames per second, giving ESPN a chance to let viewers see some of
baseball's quickest swings appear to be slow as molasses. Located near
the American League dugout it was such a hit that players like Vernon
Wells from the Toronto Blue Jays and Michael Young from the Texas
Rangers stopped by to see slow-motion versions of swings by competitors.
The
system offered by Fletcher Chicago is based around a camera from NAC
called the Memrecam fx K4. "It's used for crash tests and 1,000 frames
per second is its upper limit when recording at HD resolution," says
Grainge. Light sensitivity is ISO 2400 (color) and resolutions can be
recorded up to 1280x1024 pixels at 1,000 pps.
Because the camera
records in computer files Fletcher needed to write software that would
take the computer data and convert it to video. "It took us about a
year-and-a-half to develop a back-end for the camera that would play HD
images back at near realtime," says Dan Grainge, Fletcher Chicago vice
president. "Once it does that it's effectively like an EVS clip and be
scrubbed and played back," says Grainge. Playback is controlled using a
joystick so the user can adjust the speed slower or faster for critical
moments.
Even without the new HD slow-motion system the Home Run
Derby is very much a Fletcher show. The company's robotic cameras
located near the batter's box and behind the pitcher's mound capture
most of the key footage during the event (Grass Valley hand-held
cameras supplement the coverage with fan and player reaction to the
monster home runs).
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