Etan Horowitz, Sentinel Staff Writer
June 11, 2009; Pg. A1
When you sit down to watch Game 4 of the NBA Finals tonight, you’ll probably flip on the TV and forget about technology — unless the signal cuts out.
But inside and outside the Amway Arena, there are the hundreds of people working to make sure there are no glitches.
And it’s not just about TV. Within minutes of a Dwight Howard dunk or Hedo Turkoglu three-pointer, photos, video and descriptions of that play are available online, on mobile phones and on social-networking sites.
“We’re very focused on getting everything to our fans in real time,” said Paul Hirschheimer, NBA Entertainment’s senior vice president of multimedia production. “It used to be good enough to get it to them when they woke up.” Here’s a look at some of the NBA Finals technology.
World feed
The Finals will be shown in 215 countries and territories in 42 languages including Mandarin, Icelandic and Thai. They are also being streamed live online internationally for the first time.
Part of a mini-city of trailers, antennas and cables in the arena parking lot, the NBA’s “World Feed Truck” is where producers supplement the ABC feed with footage from NBA cameras for an international audience. Some countries send their own announcers, while others add commentary from their home nation.
Goodyear blimp
For Orlando games, the Pompano Beach-based “Spirit of Innovation” shoots video from 1,000 feet up using a high-definition camera hanging from the blimp and controlled by an operator riding inside. To beam that footage from the sky, an employee on the roof of the arena uses a microwave antenna connected by fiber-optic cable to ABC’s trailer.
‘ESPN Axis’
ABC’s announcers are able to create a virtual replay with computers that take live video and process it to create virtual freeze frames from multiple angles. As they analyze the play, angles of view may be tilted upward by 90 degrees — from the court level to directly overhead — creating three-dimensional bird’s-eye views from multiple vantage points.
‘Wired’
Microphones are constantly capturing audio of the players and coaches, and piping it into an ESPN trailer where producers assemble clips they deem appropriate to air. As you might imagine, not everything is usable.
Photos
At each NBA Finals game, 12 NBA photographers positioned throughout the stadium will shoot about 5,000 or 6,000 photos using traditional and remote cameras. When Dwight Howard is going up for a dunk, for example, a photographer positioned underneath the other basket might trigger four remote cameras to capture the play.
To upload the photos to NBA.com, runners take memory cards to editors working in the bowels of Amway Arena. By the start of the second quarter Tuesday, 47 photos from the first quarter had already been transmitted around the world.
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Microphones used by ABC to capture the sounds of each game.
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High-definition video cameras used by ABC during each game.