
When will we see "ball cams" in sports? - amichail

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trajan
This would be the exact opposite of "making something people want". Ask your
average sports fan how high they are on the NBA's below-the-basket floor cam
or (even worse) the wavering camera that floats down the center of the court
over the action.

Thanks, but no thanks!

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amichail
I think it would make a sport like golf a lot more fun to watch.

Also, pitch movements in baseball would become more obvious.

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Sam_Odio
In theory, it would be a good idea.

However in most sports, the ball spins rapidly, anywhere from one rotation
every few seconds to 50+ times / second.

Personally, seeing that on camera would probably make me barf.

Also, it would be almost impossible to compensate for this, since they usually
rotate around more than one axis.

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amichail
How do you know it would be almost impossible to compensate for this?

Could you elaborate?

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Sam_Odio
Well, theoretically, if a ball was spinning around only one axis for the
entire trajectory of the flight, then you could have a camera at the center of
the axis and use some combination of gyroscopes / image processing to
stabilize the image.

However, the axis on which the ball spins may change during the flight. The
ball can also spin on more than one axis at the same time.

The combination of (1) the difficulty associated with determining which axis
the ball will spin on, and (2) preventing the ball from spinning on another
axis, along with (3) putting all this hardware in the ball without changing
the physical performance of the ball, would make this idea difficult to pull
off.

However, your idea might work if we're talking about still images. Then you
only have to worry about creating a ball that performs the same as traditional
air-inflated balls, but has a camera inside.

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amichail
I don't see why software can't handle such spins, particularly if we assume
that the spin pattern does not change quickly.

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Sam_Odio
Think of it this way:

You would think that at the north pole the sky above you won't actually
change, and that it would only rotate around you. However, if you stand there
long enough (several thousand years), you'll notice that the earth rotates
more slowly along a second axis. This is why the "true" north star changes
over time.

See: <http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/121/lecture-2/precession.html>

Apply this to sports balls, and if there's more than one axis, it would
probably be hard to stabilize the image with software. One second you're
looking at the ground, then the crowd, then the sky, then the foot of the
player, etc.

You could put several cameras in the ball, but since most balls are inflated
with air - you'd probably significantly change the ball's weight by doing so.
My guess is that there are very few situations where a league would be willing
to play with a heavier ball.

You could also have one camera with just an extremely high frame rate, and
then use image processing to select the few frames every second where the
camera's actually pointing in the right direction. However, you'd still want
the camera along the major axis, which would be very hard to predict before-
hand.

My guess is that if you did this (with only one camera), you might get a few
good frames, but not enough to create an actual video. Maybe that's OK - I
could see you getting some stellar shots.

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daniel-cussen
You might partially compensate for the weight of the camera by using
lightweight materials (and paying the monetary cost) and by filling the ball
with hydrogen.

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aquateen
The only sport I think this would be interesting in would be (American)
football. It would be a neat perspective to watch the quarterback get blitzed
and chuck a hail mary, looking down on the WR right before the ball gets a
view of the grass.

If you put a camera on both ends, you get a forward/backward view for the most
part. Then write something that takes the video and orients the field to the
bottom of the screen or something like that.

This reminds me of a post on reddit a loong time ago. Camera software for use
with blurry surveillance video that sharpened the image by adjusting it with
frames seen immediately before/after. Anyone by chance remember that?

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gibsonf1
Thats a great idea - but boy could that be disorienting unless they included
some sort of amazing stabilization mechanism. (Think spinning balls). One way
to pull it off would be to make a clear ball with a camera mounted on a
gyroscope on the inside so the camera could move independent of the ball. On
second thought, maybe the value added here doesn't warrant the expense?

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sam
Just use a software solution. Put 6 or or so cameras pointing out radially and
then stitch the views together for a full 4pi view. No need for a fancy
gyroscope. There's an idea for a startup...

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pg
As long as you're going to use a software solution, you might be able to get
the number of cameras on the ball down to zero: have a bunch of cameras in the
stadium, and reconstruct from them what the ball would be seeing.

(I suspect you'd want the view of wherever the ball was projected to land.)

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aquateen
You may not see an IPO, but a good chance of becoming profitable or getting
bought out. Think of SportVision, who make the "1st & Ten" first down line on
televised football games, and glowing hockey pucks.

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paulgb
How about a football? I can't think of a way to mount a camera on one of the
ends, but a camera inside could work if it could be stabilized.

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revolvingcur
Real leather footballs aren't perfectly pointy on the ends. You could
introduce a thin tube running through the primary ball axis containing all the
imaging and transmission electronics, without throwing of the balance. Think
endoscope.

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andres
A "glove" cam for boxing would be easy to implement and would give boxing fans
exactly what they want.

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staunch
A camera from every player's POV seems way more interesting to me.

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gojomo
I predict it will be easy in 10 years (and sooner with a large enough budget).
High-res cameras will be no larger than a tiny segment of football lacing, or
basketball inflation pins/pumps -- as are built into retail balls today with
little effect on playability. Advanced optics will allow extremely wide-angle
views in multiple directions. Fast computers will compensate for any
rotations.

As others note, though, placing cameras in balls may not be as interesting to
fans as other options, like player cams. (Beyond Justin.tv, what about
LeBron.tv or Peyton.tv?)

