Network Introduces SideTrax;
Applies Other Technologies to Mid-Summer Classic for First Time
New York – The MLB All-Star Game, baseball’s jewel of July, annually gathers baseball’s best and brightest, and to illustrate the action this year FOX Sports has mustered an all-star roster of high-tech gear, the most sophisticated ever deployed for the Mid-Summer Classic, befitting the evening’s honorees. FOX Sports’ 85th All-Star Game effort is consistent with its 20-year tradition of offering its audiences the latest technical, graphic and audio innovations, regularly setting industry standards. The game is set for Tuesday, July 15 with pregame coverage beginning with AMERICA’S PREGAME (4:30-7:30 PM ET) on FOX Sports 1, and game coverage on FOX beginning at 7:30 PM ET, live from Target Field in Minneapolis.
New to MLB on FOX coverage and this year’s All-Star arsenal is SideTrax from Hawkeye Technology. True to its moniker, SideTrax graphically presents the pitched baseball as it travels through the strike zone from a side perspective and also offers a view of the ball as it sails through a virtual 3D strike zone that appears suspended over home plate.
Several production enhancements used previously in other broadcast settings are making their way to the All-Star Game for the first time, while Home Run Tracker returns:
– Diamond Cam, first deployed in 2005 in SD, returns to the All-Star Game this year, but for the first time in crystal-clear HD. The camera, using a specially crafted prism not much larger than a few grains of infield soil, is positioned in-ground in front of home plate and creates striking images via wireless, radio frequency transmission.
– N-Cam is an optical tracking technology that is also new to the All-Star Game, N-Cam creates the appearance of 3D graphics in the real environment and has been used in FOX Sports’ studio production since 2013, Super Bowl XLVIII and during SpeedWeeks in the 2014 Daytona 500 .
– FOX Super Zoom 4K Cameras – Introduced in 2012, 4K “Super Zoom” cameras produce pictures with five times the resolution of normal HD cameras and capture action at 120 frames-per-second. The resulting detail is remarkable and can zoom into an area of interest with incredible detail.
– FOX Home Run Tracker, previously used during MLB on FOX postseason coverage in 2012 and 2013. Used in replays, the FOX Home Run Tracker graphically represents the trajectory of a batted ball’s travel and measures its distance.
Included in the arsenal of 36 state-of-the-art HD cameras positioned throughout Target Field are the following “Hyper-Motion” cameras slow the action down for a detailed look:
– Phantom Cameras (2) – Range from 2,000-3,000 frames per second located in the low first base and low third base camera wells. It was the “Phantom Cam” that famously captured San Francisco Giants batter Hunter Pence’s bat strike the ball three times as it broke apart in Game 7 of the 2012 NLCS.
– X-Mo Cameras (3) – Located at centerfield and along the first and third base lines, X-Mo cameras shoot at up to 400 frames-per-second.
– Super-Mo Camera (1) – This “Super-Mo” camera in centerfield shoots up to 540 frames-per-second.
Eric Shanks is President, COO and Executive Producer and John Entz is Executive Vice President, Production & Executive Producer, FOX Sports. Ed Delaney serves as Executive Vice President, Operations and Michael Davies is Senior Vice President, Field Operations, FOX Sports. Gary Hartley is Executive Vice President, Graphics and Zac Fields is Vice President, Graphics & Technology, FOX Sports.
— FOX SPORTS –
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