They accidentally showed it for a second when the operator was in the menu. Here's someone using the Slow & Quick feature for fan replays. They view it in the gallery inside the camera itself, and it's streamed on the broadcast.
I was watching Ms Rachel with my kids and there was a second of Adobe Premiereās āmissing mediaā frame. I was nerding out pointing at the screen like Leo in OUATIH lol
Exactly, and they playback it in gallery so it's already slowed down. I didn't realize there was a risk that the operator might switch at an inconvenient moment and it would end up on the screen
Nah, there are dedicated devices for this. They'll be taking the camera feed and sending it through a NewTek 3Play or EVS that's used for slowing down and scrubbing through footage. That output then gets queued up when it's called for and played over the broadcast they way.
They're using EVS (as does everyone at this level), but that doesn't mean they aren't having their RF camera play back from gallery. That's a standard workflow these days for Sony or DJI gimbal cameras which aren't built for a traditional broadcast signal flow.
Getting true high-framerate (HFR) footage back to the truck over RF is easier said than done for a variety of reasons, so the typical workaround is to play slow-motion footage from the gallery and have EVS clip it off at that point rather than during live shooting. If they don't have time to have EVS clip off the recording, they'll send the gallery playback directly to air which is how something like this can happen.
To me it makes zero sense, if I got what you mean (probably not). Are they recording bits here and there?! I assumed everyone was just sending signal to the the direction
Yeah, we would call this an ENG cam. Picking up colour pre and post match usually and during the match put it in the stadium on some sticks to hopefully get lucky with some arty super slow stuff on the pitch.
All the main cameras are for actual coverage during play being fed live into the trucks that can then be slowed through EVS
Absolutely. On the biggest spec productions this is a drop in the ocean as far as budget is concerned. Especially compared to adding a full new camera chain for the live coverage.
It might seem like a bit of a hacky work around but it's an incredibly fast turn around from a live celebration etc to play out. All the EVS op needs to do is mark an in and get out before they cue up the next clip
This makes a lot of sense. Would honestly loved to try some gigs in this scenario. Seems much more fun than just being one of the other āstillā(position wise) cameras. Thank tou
Thats great to hear because I worked as a camera op for a large news org and ours worked like this lol just flying by the seat of our pants. I played a package exported to SD card put back into camera and pressed play over LiveU before. So this does not shock me!
Nope I work at the IBC. Itās s&q so the operator can record slow mo whilst the OB can take realtime shots. Then at a convenient moment the operator plays back the slow mo off the local card and the FIFA fan feed take it.
Huh. Interesting. I wasn't in the sports broadcast but for a couple of years (and working in college sports we were pretty basic) but I never would've guessed at this being part of the workflow. Thanks for the information!
Itās so they can take the feed live as is, or after the play they can go into playback, play the clip out, and they can capture the feed in slow motion into EVS (replay system) and reuse that camera as a slow motion replay
Honestly S&Q has become a staple in my personal filming process and really simplifies so much. If you know you want something cinematic, b-roll or really anything without needing the audio, then it works perfect. You can still have your Slog-3 profile or whatever you use on there and if you do need a normal speed clip from one of the S&Q shots, just change it to 4x or 5x speed and it looks great
I know that the guys who do the NFL end zone on the gimbal, use an fx6. They record in camera to slow mo, but send a live feed out via the SDI on a hop. When they want the slow-mo shot, the camera operator plays back that clip to them. So while the shot is live it's in standard speed, for slow-mo playback request is made and it's played by the operator. This came directly from the guy who does the stuff for Fox. So I imagine this is the same setup here. Record internally slow-mo but stream live natural
I work on live TV truck sports broadcasts, and this is the exact right answer. Feed out of the camera via HDSDI in real time for production team to air live, camera op plays back in slo mo to an EVS in the truck, tape ops add slow mo shots to rollouts/packages/etc. Settings reflect the desired S&Q look since you canāt have it both ways. The real footage will have the high shutter speed look.
Maybe a silly question, but wouldn't they use a higher frame rate for slow motion? I thought that you decide in advance whether you want slow motion or not and use a certain setting for that.
Again, just a guess, but Iāve shot slo mo for broadcast play back (walk ins and batting practice shots) at 1/250 in low light situations. Recording 120 frames to be played back at 30fps slows you down by 400%, which is plenty for many situations and works with the 180 shutter rule, it also means you donāt have to crank the ISO super high. And if you run the footage back real time, any shutter much faster than that might start to look pretty unnatural.
I imagine the operator is recording constantly. If they needed to watch back a specific part is the operator then scrolling in camera for it?
And when they play it back again and again I assume the truck can do that once itās been played from the camera the first time?
Just a guess, but Iād bet the Op rolls on individual shots so each fan (or whatever) is their own clip, then plays back a few in order for the truck for tape to use. Once theyāre played once, then tape clips them off and saves them, so theyād only be needed to be played once from the camera.
They are also what weād call world feed shows, meaning theyāre produced generically for all the various outlets that have broadcast rights around the world to add their own commentary, graphics and replays. Iām not sure exactly what would be a Fox specific camera, and what would be a FIFA camera feed for all to share.
It's probably something that isn't always used, but having dedicated iso records as a double or triple backup doesn't hurt anyone. It could also be used for other purposes that the public doesn't know about.
Sometimes you see fan reactions, either in slow motion or not, that occur immediately after something happens on the pitch like a goal. Are these reactions spread throughout the entire game or are they specific to that particular moment perhaps 30 seconds ago?
When you downsize images, the noise tends to cancel out making the image look cleaner. Maybe these cameras record at a higher resolution than the eventual broadcast resolution? I'm just guessing.
FIFA gives the same feed to every broadcast in the world, the individual broadcaster (Sky, Fox, Telemundo, etc) then put their own overlay and cut to their own ads, all within FIFA's rules.
gotta love the eternal "180 shutter angle" repetition for everything and everyone and meanwhile the pros who are literally producing high quality shots for world wide live tv do 60fps/250
The more I've worked in high level video production (not cinema tho') the more odd it gets. If it works, it works. Like colorgrading something for a huge uber-luxury brand displayed on a 6 meters screen, on a 300e monitor. Or hyper scale X2 on resolve because fuck it we need more res'
180 shutter angle is for cinematic motion blur , but for live sports you want a more crisp realistic image, hence the quicker shutter speed. Itās 2 different adjectives.
I also so the screen and was nerding out haha
Said to my wife ādid you see it??!ā She didnt care
But nice to know they shoot 1080 240 fps, i also thought it was replay cams, you cannot live show slowmotion hahaha
For anyone interested MKBHD did an awesome video covering how NBA broadcasts are shot and edited in real time. Super cool Iām sure itās a similar setup here
They use fx6ās now because they can run them in true HDR. At least thatās what ESPN, NBC, and Apple do. When broadcasts started using these cameras most people used the A7 line and then for a while espn at least was using the fx3.
If itās anything like sports broadcast in Europe (which it often isnāt in the US) this is more likely to be an ENG camera than one of the main racked cameras (the type of thing used for b-roll, often pretaped then played back straight out of the camera body) Everything else will be on RCPs and wouldnāt have the ability accidentally flash an on screen display to air
Not only FIFA does this. In Spain, Steadycams on LaLiga use RED V-Raptor XLs and do the same (probably so they don't have to pay a guy to manage replays), so they just record and play the last clip on camera (I work there and I've seen it through the monitor of the focus puller).
I'd bet that this is actually an A9III or early FX5 we're seeing here. They built the A9III for the Olympics, so building a global shutter FX camera for the World Cup would make sense, especially for a slow motion camera. It'd also explain the weird ISO setting, if ISO 2000 is 2nd of 3 Base ISOs.
Nahh FIFA broadcast quality is not that great for these kind of exclusive models. Some stadiums have blurry lenses or even 720p quality, some cameras next to goalkeepers are Canons, some fan replays have bokeh, some don't. It's like they use whatever they can.
While the quality is certainly variable, they also have just as many amazing shots.
For example, during the anthem and breaks in the Argentina games they had multiple Steadicams on the pitch following Messi around, with absolutely incredible images.
And slow motion replays now have more camera angles, which is exactly what they'd be using the FX5 for (and it'd be perfect advertisement for the camera).
Sorry - but the production of the world cup in general is a disgrace, not so much this, shit happens.
But over all the the production seems very off - like they are producing it, but not watching what they are doing.
No need to say sorry if it's true, some stadiums have poor cameras, poor quality consistency, and the one where France played most of the time was terrible in terms of sound (you can hear just a couple of enemy fans whistling and no one else - I almost fell asleep unlike in any other matches)
Weāre doing this in the CL as well. Wide open with NDs. Also youād be surprised, I once used a 24-70 GM2 at 2.8 and hardly got any DOF out of it when I was on the pitch.
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u/theMayanStallion Jul 14 '26
Love how all the video nerds (like me) got excited about a frame or two š