FOX Sports Puts Largest Baseball Arsenal of Motion Cameras in Play for 113th World Series
FOX Sports Teams with SMT, MLBAM to Continue Augmented Reality Strike Zone as Part of Colossal Tech Effort
LOS ANGELES, CA – As part of its massive lineup of production technology, including up to 41 cameras and 121 microphones, FOX Sports is deploying a battery of eight Motion Cameras for the network’s 20th year of World Series presented by YouTube TV coverage, which begins Tuesday, Oct. 24 on FOX.
“We will have eight Super Slow Motion and Hyper Motion Cameras, including the FOX Phantom Cameras, at either side of the plate to capture at-bats and close plays at a blistering 1,500 frames per second,” said Michael Davies, FOX Sports SVP of Field & Technical Operations. “Quite simply, it’s more Motion Cameras in play than at any other baseball game on any network this season.”
FOX Sports continues the groundbreaking audio work it introduced earlier this season at the MLB All-Star Game, placing 14 underground microphones strategically around the playing field. With 80-plus game-action microphones in play on-site, an additional 15 to 20 mics are available for managers, coaches, umpires and players.
In addition, FOX Sports is teaming with SMT and MLBAM to provide an in-perspective strike zone for both live action and replays. SMT provides a live strike zone that incorporates data captured using MLBAM Statcast radar technology. This data shows pitch speed and location in real time. For replay sequences FOX Sports is using MLBAM’s Pitchcast system. This system, which made its debut during the ALDS, shows pitch speed, location and ball trails, while splitting the data into different varieties. Whether it’s showing all first-pitch strikes, pitch sequences to a certain batter or other specific data, FOX Sports has the strike zone covered.
The FOX Sports 113th World Series tech initiatives are the latest effort from FOX Sports Lab, a designed approach to exploring technical partnerships that give viewers a fresh perspective and ad sales teams more targeted sports integrations.
FOX SPORTS WORLD SERIES TECH BY THE NUMBERS
- Staff & Support140+ technicians36 support staff126+ man-hours over nine days
- Field Support384+ strands of fiber3+ miles of fiber optic cable3 edit bays64TB of shared storage2 Gbps of data connectivity12 transmission paths
- Cameras and Lenses30 HD game cameras6 SSMo 6X (360fps)1 SSMo 16X (960fps)2 Xmo (2000fps)2 RF cameras1 RF stabilized camera (MOVI)1 aerial camera
- Replay64 record channels32 playback channels2,000+ hours of recording capacity
- AudioSubmixAll digital audio network throughout stadium12 RF player, announcer and umpire mics8 RF FX mics9 RF base mics78 field microphones14 RF infield microphones
