Dartfish Lets Athletes,Sports Fans See Double
Sports fans and athletes can be forgiven for thinking they're seeing double.
During last year's Winter Olympics, NBC showed replays of what looked like two downhill skiers racing side by side on the same course. In reality, the skiers had raced separately, but NBC used video technology developed by a Swiss firm to compare their techniques.
In this year's NBA playoffs, TNT's replays of slam-dunks showed players sailing through the air and leaving "ghost" images of themselves in their wake. Again, technology from the Swiss firm, Dartfish, allowed TNT to show various points of a player's arc on one screen.
The special effects from Dartfish (
www.dartfish.com) are spreading across the world of sports television, as seen by fans of skiing, figure skating and basketball over the last 18 months. An average of 30 million viewers watched NBC's prime-time Olympics coverage. Soon, Dartfish's technology will be used for football broadcasts, and possibly golf.
Push for Training
But while the telecasts get publicity, Dartfish's main market opportunity is athletic training. The company is making a big push to sell its digital-video technology to coaches and players at all levels, from high school to the Olympics, in sports ranging from softball to bowling.
"My main focus is sports training," said Victor Bergonzoli, general manager for Dartfish's U.S. unit, which is based in Atlanta.
It's been embraced by athletes training for the U.S. Olympic team. Thousands of athletes in about 20 to 25 sports are using Dartfish's software, says Tanya Porter, senior sport technologist with the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colo. Mr. Bergonzoli says athletes using Dartfish have already won 45 medals in Olympic games.
"The innovation behind the product is pretty impressive," said Ms. Porter. That's not the only factor. The Olympic Committee doesn't have to pay cash for the software licenses. Instead, it gives Dartfish access to the various sports governing bodies that feed athletes to the Olympic team, Mr. Bergonzoli said.
Dartfish was founded in Switzerland in 1998 to market SimulCam, a video technology created at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. SimulCam is what later allowed NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., to show two skiers racing side by side.
Superimposing skiers on the same screen may sound like old hat to people accustomed to Hollywood dazzle. But it's not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, camera angles and distances are different for each ski run, depending on the athlete's movements. In the past, TV broadcasts compared two skiers with split screen replays, including a line down the middle of the screen.
SimulCam eliminates the split-screen by adjusting the images so that the skiers are the same size, even if the camera had zoomed in closer for one skier during the actual run. When skiers overlap on the SimulCam replay, their bodies become slightly transparent.
Gymnasts, Others Use SimulCam
Another advantage is quickness. Replays using SimulCam can be shown on television within 20 seconds. In training, SimulCam can be programmed to run a replay on a laptop immediately after a performance, such as a gymnastics maneuver. The software runs on a regular laptop connected to a digital camera. In some cases the images are projected onto a large screen.
Dartfish's second big innovation was StroMotion, launched in January 2001. This was the technology that TNT, the cable channel owned by AOL Time Warner Inc., has used in basketball. In the past, broadcasters could analyze the elements of an athlete's movement with freeze frames. But freeze-frames don't leave a trail of images on the same screen, while StroMotion does.
Dartfish has gained a foothold in the U.S. sports TV market through a partnership with New York-based Sportvision Inc. Sportvision is a pioneer in sports broadcast technology, having developed the "first and ten" line for National Football League games, the graphic yellow line superimposed across the field.
Steven Roberts, executive vice president at Sportvision, says Dartfish's technology is catching on. "SimulCam for skiing broadcasts is almost a must now," he said.
For any video technology to fully catch on, it has to meet a few criteria, Mr. Roberts said. It has to address an element of a sports event that occurs "very often." Also, this element should be something that's normally difficult to see. For instance, it used to be tough for football fans to see the first-and-ten line marker on the sidelines; now the yellow line is hard to miss.
"You can't just create a technology for technology's sake," Mr. Roberts said.
TBS Superstation, the cable channel owned by AOL Time Warner, will begin using Dartfish's StroMotion on broadcasts of college football games this fall, Turner Sports spokesman Jeff Pomeroy said. The station also is considering using the technology for its broadcast of the PGA Championship golf match in August, he said.
Behind the spotlight of TV, Dartfish is targeting the sports training market. The company has sold more than 2,000 software licenses world-wide, and now is signing up 80 to 100 new clients a month, Mr. Bergonzoli said. The software sells from $480 to $4,500.
Breaking Out of a Batting Slump
Dartfish has sold licenses to a handful of National Football League and Major League Baseball teams, Mr. Bergonzoli said. The Milwaukee Brewers use the software for their minor league players. When a player is in a batting slump, the Brewers' instructors use SimulCam to compare his form to footage of better days, says Reid Nichols, director of player development.
"When a player's not going so good, we overlay the two and show the difference and where he's making a mistake," Mr. Nichols said.
Several college sports teams are using Dartfish, including Brigham Young University and the University of Buffalo. Mr. Bergonzoli defines his market as the 600,000 sports coaches at levels from high school and higher.
The software's immediacy is a big appeal to the athletes. Paul Hamm, the reigning U.S. men's national champion gymnast, says he uses Dartfish software to watch replays of his practice routines while waiting in line behind his teammates. This allows him to immediately correct any mistakes in his form.
Mr. Hamm and his coaches previously used regular video cameras with flipout screens during practices. But the screens were too small and the process of rewinding and pausing was cumbersome, Mr. Hamm said.
Mr. Hamm said the Dartfish software has improved his performance over the past year. His coach, Stacey Maloney, liked the way Alexei Nemov , the Russian who dominated the 2000 Summer Olympics, performed a move called "double twisting, double layout" during the floor routine. So Mr. Maloney stored footage of Mr. Nemov on the Dartfish software, then used SimulCam to compare it to Mr. Hamm's own performance.
It's especially helpful in gymnastics for an athlete to watch his own performance, said Mr. Hamm, whose twin brother Morgan also competed at the 2000 Olympics.
"It's a judged sport and they're looking for beauty and form in general," he said. Dartfish "really gives you a good idea of what you need to fix."
Other elite gymnasts used Dartfish to improve their performance in the vault at the national championships in Milwaukee last month, said Ron Brandt, team coordinator for the U.S. men's national team. He had wanted the athletes to improve their "pre-flight" vault entries, so he used the software to prepare a video comparing their techniques to their best competitors in other countries.
"Regular video doesn't give you that," Mr. Brandt said. "You can't alter clips of what you're doing. You just play it back."
The next big test of Dartfish's effectiveness will come next month during the gymnastics world championships in Anaheim, Calif.
体育迷的眼花了吗？
如果体育迷和运动员在看电视上的体育比赛时觉得眼睛出了问题，请不要见怪。
在去年冬季奥运会转播中，美国全国广播公司(NBC)在回放滑雪运动员下坡的过程时，就制造出两个滑雪运动员在同一个赛道上并肩滑行的画面。而实际上，滑雪运动员都是单独进行比赛的，但NBC采用了一家瑞士公司开发的视频技术，将两个运动员的比赛录像放在同一个画面上进行比较。
在全美职业篮球联赛(NBA)今年的季后赛转播中，TNT电视台在重放扣篮动作时，人们除了看到运动员在空中滑翔而过之外，紧接著还能看到他们那令人叫绝的动作"幻影"。同样，这个技术也是出自这家名为Dartfish的瑞士公司。通过该技术，TNT能够把运动员在空中的不同动作点展现在同一个画面上。
Dartfish的特技正在渗透到全球的体育电视节目中。过去18个月里，滑雪、花样滑冰和篮球等运动的爱好者们都目睹了这种特技效果。在NBC转播奥运会的黄金时段，平均有3,000万名观众在观看比赛。或许不久，Dartfish的技术将会用于橄榄球转播甚至高尔夫球赛事。
不过虽然这种特技日益引人注目，但Dartfish的主要市场机遇却是在运动员训练方面。该公司正在向各个层面的教练和运动员大力推销其数字录像技术，涉及范围之广从高中到奥运会、从垒球到保龄球不一而述。 Dartfish美国子公司的总经理维克托?贝尔贡佐利(Victor Bergonzoli)说，他的主要市场目标就是运动训练领域。
美国奥运会参赛队伍的运动员培训已经选定Dartfish的技术。美国奥委会高级运动技术专家波特(Tanya Porter)表示，大约有20-25个体育项目的数千名运动员正在使用Dartfish软件。贝尔贡佐利称，使用Dartfish产品的运动员在奥运会上已经赢得了45枚奖牌。
波特说，Dartfish产品的新奇之处令人印象深刻，并且这还不是唯一的因素。
贝尔贡佐利称，奥委会不必为使用Dartfish软件支付现金。他只需给Dartfish提供接近输送奥运会参赛运动员的各种体育管理机构即可。 Dartfish于1998在瑞士成立，目的就是推销由瑞士联邦技术研究院(Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)开发的视频技术SimulCam。NBC制造出两个滑雪运动员在同一个赛道上并肩滑行的画面就是通过SimulCam来实现的。NBC是通用电气(General Electric Co., GE)旗下的一家子公司。
对见惯了好莱坞令人眼花缭乱表演技法的人来说，把滑雪运动员叠加到同一画面上似乎有些老套。但实际上这并非那么简单，原因之一就是由于运动员行进动作的差异，摄像机的角度和距离都会有所差别。过去，电视转播是在回放时将屏幕一分为二来进行两个运动员的对比，屏幕中间有一条线加以分隔。
SimulCam则免除了这种屏幕分割办法，而是通过调整图像使两个运动员的大小保持一致，即便在实际拍摄一个滑雪运动员时进行了放大处理。如果两个运动员在回放过程中完全重叠时，他们的身体就会变得略微透明可见。
棒球运动员、体操运动员及其他人士均使用SimulCam
SimulCam的另一个优势是其速度。使用SimulCam能够在20秒钟之内就进行电视回放。在训练中，可以用SimulCam将体操等训练在笔记本电脑上立即重放出来。只要连上数码相机，普通的笔记本电脑上就能运行SimulCam软件。在某些情况下，图像还可以进行投影放大处理。
Dartfish的另一项技术创新是2001年推出的StroMotion。美国在线时代华纳(AOL Time Warner Inc., AOL)旗下的TNT在篮球转播中采用的就是这个技术。过去，分析一个运动员的动作细节时用的是定格的处理方法，但这个办法无法在同一屏幕显示动作的连续性画面。StroMotion正好克服了这个缺点。
通过和纽约的Sportvision Inc.合作，Dartfish已经在美国体育电视市场扎根。Sportvision是体育广播技术领域的一个先驱。该公司执行副总裁史蒂文?罗伯茨(Steven Roberts)称，Dartfish的技术日渐流行，对转播滑雪运动来说，SimulCam几乎是一个必备工具。
Turner Sports发言人波默罗伊(Jeff Pomeroy)称，从今年秋天开始，TBS Superstation在转播大学橄榄球比赛时也将使用Dartfish的StroMotion技术。TBS Superstation也是美国在线时代华纳的有线电视频道之一。该频道还在考虑在8月份的PGA Championship高尔夫球比赛中使用这种技术。
在电视广播方面成为关注焦点之外，Dartfish正在致力于开发体育运动培训市场。贝尔贡佐利称，该公司在全球范围内已经售出了2,000多套软件，并且现在每月新签约80-100个客户。软件的售价从480美元至4,500美元不等。
贝尔贡佐利说，Dartfish已经向部分美国职业橄榄球联赛(National Football League)和美国职业棒球联赛(Major League Baseball)的球队出售了软件产品。
一些大学的体育运动队也采用Dartfish产品。贝尔贡佐利说，他的市场就是高中及以上的教育机构的600,000名体育教练。
美国全国男子体操冠军汉姆(Paul Hamm)说，在排队等候训练的时间他用Dartfish软件来回顾他的练习情况，因而他能够立即改正自己所犯的错误。
汉姆说，他和教练原来在训练中使用普通的录像机，但屏幕太小，并且倒带和暂停过程较麻烦。
汉姆称过去一年里Dartfish软件帮助他提高了自己的表现。他的教练麦考尼(Stacey Maloney)喜欢俄罗斯体操运动员尼莫夫(Alexei Nemov)的一个动作，于是就将这个动作存储在Dartfish软件上，然后用SimulCam将其与汉姆的动作进行对比。尼莫夫在2000年的夏季奥运会上曾技冠群雄。
汉姆认为Dartfish产品对想了解自己情况的体操运动员非常有用。
其他一些优秀撑杆跳高运动员也使用Dartfish产品提高自己表现。美国男子撑杆跳高运动队的协调员布兰特(Ron Brandt)说，他用Dartfish软件来将这些运动员的表现和其他国家最强有力的竞争对手进行对比。
布兰特说，普通录像无法做到这一点。
对Dartfish产品有效性的下一个大检验将是下个月在加州阿纳海姆举行的世界体操冠军赛。
