Inside an unassuming building near Los Angeles International Airport is a 25,000-square-foot soundstage. At the center of that space sits a dome of cameras and lights, pointing down from the ceiling. This is Intel Studios, which houses the world’s largest volumetric video studio. And this could be the future of sports broadcasting.
Digital pictures, moving or still, are composed of multitudes of tiny squares called pixels. Volumetric video is made up of voxels: cubes instead of squares—data with depth. Paramount Pictures is already on board to explore its cinematic potential.
To generate volumetric video, arrays of cameras capture 2D views that powerful computers process together to generate a 3D, voxellated, model of the real world. Broadcasters can then choose whatever point of view they want to watch the action from. Traditional virtual reality views of real scenes are usually anchored to a single camera location, but volumetric permits full immersion. This technology powers Intel True View replay technology but is now being harnessed on a larger scale.
On Thursday, Intel Studios announced its first partnership, with the NFL Network program Soul and Science that stars sport scientist John Brenkus and former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer. Volumetric video will aid the hosts in providing innovative analysis on human performance.
“Everything you see today is from the perspective of a lens, a camera or a video camera,” said James Carwana, general manager of Intel Sports Group. “You experience reality from what that lens is showing you. In volumetric video, instead of capturing reality based on that perspective, you capture the entire scene. It allows for infinite camera positions and infinite camera angles.
“You go anywhere you want. You can do anything you want.”
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich first announced the opening of Intel Studios during his CES keynote address back in January On Wednesday, Carwana spoke of the transformative power of the technology while at the Sports Business Awards.
“The opportunities are boundless,” Carwana said. “An interesting thing is, if you talk to anyone who produces NFL or NBA today, you unleash their creativity. What would you do if you had this capability? It takes some time to grasp what that means, [but] that’s what I’m excited about.”
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For example, a future mobile app built to handle volumetric video might have an interactive image of the 22 players on a football field. Clicking on a player could switch the perspective of the game to his vantage point.
Carwana said the goal now is to improve the quality to 30 frames per second. He estimated that might need a timeline of 24 months.
“I think that’s a stair-step evolution in our organization,” he said, “and I think it’s a stair-step evolution in the ecosystem.”