Tokyo (AFP)

As the Tokyo Olympics open on Friday in near-total closed doors because of the pandemic, viewers can count more than ever on advances in broadcast technology to bring the event to life in immersion.

After the postponement of the Games for a year due to the pandemic, "we have made a commitment not to reduce the amplitude and the quality of our coverage," Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting, told AFP. Services (OBS), company responsible for filming and broadcasting all the Olympic Games since 2008.

Olympic broadcasts have come a long way since the first television experience in Berlin in 1936, with three cameras capturing footage for an audience a few miles away.

The OBS teams are thus preparing to film during these Olympics-2020 some 9,500 hours of footage - 30% more than in Rio in 2016 - made available to television channels around the world having acquired the broadcasting rights, and promise viewers an experience enhanced by various technological innovations.

Among these innovations, Yiannis Exarchos cites 3D Athlete-Tracking, a system combining images from several cameras using artificial intelligence to review sports actions from all angles.

“A few seconds after a 100m, you can recreate the whole race in 3D and identify for example the speed peaks of the athletes, a good way to show viewers behind the scenes of these incredible performances,” he describes.

- Audience noise recorded -

For the first time, the Games will be fully filmed and made available to ultra-high definition (4K) channels, and Japanese viewers with an adequate television will even have the right for certain sports to broadcast in 8K, standard at the same time. four times higher definition on which the Japanese public channel NHK, world leader in this field, has been working since 1995.

"One of the strengths of 8K is that it renders the detail of body movement on screen in an unparalleled manner," explains Takayuki Yamashita, of the NHK's Technology Research Center, referring in particular to the high-quality slow motion allowed recently developed cameras.

"It should not be either the race for K", thinks however the sports director of France Televisions Laurent-Eric Le Lay, before evoking a novelty of the channel for these Games, a television set which will appear immersed in Tokyo Bay thanks to virtual reality.

"We are going to create a virtual glass bubble, with a setting that will show the most beautiful buildings in Tokyo behind. There will be a lot of work to bring this set to life."

To compensate for the lack of spectators in the stadiums, OBS has created from recordings of previous Games soundscapes adapted to each sport, which will be broadcast at the competition venues.

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Athletes who are private to the public will still be able to see the fans cheering them on, via screens displaying mosaics of video selfies sent from all over the world, and be connected by video to their loved ones at the end of their events.

- "In the service of storytelling" -

The drastic sanitary measures forced the national broadcasters, to whom OBS provides the images, to send fewer personnel to Japan, ensuring part of the technical operations such as production from their own country.

Optimizing its system like the majority of broadcasters, France Télévisions thus sends 180 employees on site, against 210 in Rio in 2016, a change made possible thanks to the adoption by OBS of IP and Cloud technologies, allowing remote handling of files. ever larger IT systems.

But "it is very important for us that part of the device remains on site, in particular all the editorial aspect and commentary on the tests", notes Mr. Le Lay, who specifies that France Télévisions will send more than thirty journalists and around forty sports consultants.

Interviews with French athletes will be carried out in Japan: "I think that for French viewers it is important to be there, rather than being in Paris with a Skype poorly framed on the athletes."

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"Technology must be at the service of storytelling", sums up Yiannis Exarchos: "This is one of our essential mantras: we love technology, but it must be used to tell the stories of the best athletes in the world."

© 2021 AFP