Last Day at Sportvision Office

Today, we worked on learning to "key" the football field. Basically, that's where you select the colors of the field that the 'yellow first down line' will cover. It's a very important part of the system.

Ideally, you want to select just the field. If you select any part of the players, then the line will paint OVER them instead of them being over the line. So, it's part of the job that you are constantly manipulating. Astro Turf games are the easiest - and they're even easier if at night. The lighting stays the same and field doesn't change.

Daytime games where it's muddy, snowing or the field is otherwise getting torn up are the hardest. For example: if the players get muddy during the game and also tear up the field while they're playing - then even if you try to key the whole field - you'll have to key in some colors of mud. What this means is that when the line is being 'laid down' it stands a good chance of showing up ON a player.

We used 'game footage' to practice keying the field for different lighting conditions. It's not hard - it's just important.

Also, we took the computers apart (there's 4 powerful computers per game) and traced all the wiring inside and labeled it all. The purpose of this is to learn how the computers are made - so if we have problems, we can get inside and fix it.

Below is a picture of one of the computers.