Ben Shirley

The media industry is currently being pulled in the often-opposing directions of increased realism (high resolution, stereoscopic, large screen) and personalisation (selection and control of content, availability on many devices). A capture, production and delivery system capable of supporting both these trends is being developed by a consortium of European organisations in the EU-funded FascinatE project. This paper reports on the latest developments and presents results obtained from a test shoot at a UK Premier League football match. These include the use of imagery from broadcast cameras to add detail to key areas of the panoramic scene, and the automated generation of spatial audio to match the selected view. The paper explains how a 3D laser scan of the scene can help register the cameras and microphones into a common reference frame.

ABSTRACT Presents current trends and potential future developments by leading researchers in immersive media production, delivery, rendering and interaction The underlying audio and video processing technology that is discussed in the book relates to areas such as 3D object extraction, audio event detection; 3D sound rendering and face detection, gesture analysis and tracking using video and depth information. The book will give an insight into current trends and developments of future media production, delivery and reproduction. Consideration of the complete production, processing and distribution chain will allow for a full picture to be presented to the reader. Production developments covered will include integrated workflows developed by researchers and industry practitioners as well as capture of ultra-high resolution panoramic video and 3D object based audio across a range of programme genres. Distribution developments will include script based format agnostic network delivery to a full range of devices from large scale public panoramic displays with wavefield synthesis and ambisonic audio reproduction to ’small screen’ mobile devices. Key developments at the consumer end of the chain apply to both passive and interactive viewing modes and will incorporate user interfaces such as gesture recognition and ‘second screen’ devices to allow manipulation of the audio visual content. Presents current trends and potential future developments by leading researchers in immersive media production, delivery, rendering and interaction. Considers the complete production, processing and distribution chain illustrating the dependencies and the relationship between different components. Proposes that a format-agnostic approach to the production and delivery of broadcast programmes will overcome the problems faced with the steadily growing number of production and delivery formats. Explains the fundamentals of media production in addition to the complete production chain, beyond current-state-of-the-art through to presenting novel approaches and technologies for future media production. Focuses on the technologies that will allow for the realization of an E2E media platform that supports flexible content representations and interactivity for users. An essential read for Researchers and developers of audio-visual technology in industry and academia, such as engineers in broadcast technology companies and students working toward a career in the rapidly changing area of broadcast both from a production and an engineering perspective.

ABSTRACT An end-to-end AV broadcast system providing an immersive, interactive experience for live events is the development aim for the EU FP7 funded project, FascinatE. The project has developed real time audio object event detection and localisation, scene modelling and processing methods for multimedia data, which will allow users to navigate the event by creating their own unique user-defined scene. As part of the first implementation of the system a test shoot was carried out capturing a live Premier League football game and methods have been developed to detect, analyse, extract and localise salient audio events from a range of sensors and represent them within an audio scene in order to allow free navigation within the scene. Within this context, this paper describes a procedure for the detection, extraction and localisation of ball-kicks and whistle-blows from the pitch-side microphones used in the broadcast of football and describes a potential audio streaming format for an object-based broadcast.

ABSTRACT A number of listening tests were carried out to assess localisation of sound in derived surround sound fields. Two up-mixed consumer multichannel formats that use matrix decoding of 3/2 multichannel surround channels to increase the surround channel array (Dolby Pro Logic IIx and DTS Neo:6) were compared to original 3/2 multichannel material to determine the degree of spatial performance improvement. Noise bursts were panned to 11 different locations, thirteen subjects participated in the tests and results were analysed to assess any improvement in localisation in each of the assessed surround systems