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The Technology Behind the Magic Yellow Line

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the don't-eat-the-yellow-line dept.

CurtMonash writes "Fandome offers a fascinating video explaining how the first-down line on football broadcasts actually works. Evidently, theres a lot of processing both to calculate the exact location being photographed on the field — including optical sensors and two steps of encoding — and to draw a line in exactly the right place onscreen. For those who don't want to watch the whole video, highlights are here."

3 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. New trend by plankrwf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hmmm... A new trend? No longer reading 'have not RTFA' but 'have not Viewed TFA'?
    Dear oh dear, what is /. coming to.

  2. Watch the video by Baricom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I already knew in pretty significant detail how all this works, but there was a lot of additional information in the video that never made it to the PR-sanitized behind-the-scenes descriptions of the technology.

    Plus, you get to see the ugly UI that appears to have been built as an afterthought - just like the UI of all the other industrial television software I've operated.

  3. Re:unreality TV -- digitally inserted ads by Ihmhi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's true, but I was always more fascinated by the stuff they did for NASCAR. Not only do they use on-screen tech, but they also make use of GPS to do those fancy graphics showing info on the cars while they're moving on the road.

    There was an article about this particular tech NASCAR uses in some magazine, but I can not for the life of me remember it, nor can I find any videos demonstrating it...

    --
    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)