Computational sports broadcasting: Automated director assistance for live sports

Abstract

Live sports broadcast is seeing a large increase in the number of cameras used for filming. More cameras can provide better coverage of the field and a wider range of experiences for viewers. However, choosing optimal cameras for broadcast demands a high level of concentration, awareness and experience from sports broadcast directors. We present an automatic assistant to help select likely candidates from a large array of possible cameras. Sports directors can then choose the final broadcast camera from the reduced suggestion set. Our assistant uses both widely acknowledged cinematography guidelines for sports directing, as well as a data-driven approach that learns specific styles from directors.