Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Thursday, March 31, 2011 Head(cam) to head(cam) sprintAt the sprint race a couple of weeks ago the top two juniors (Matt and Joe) ran with my GoPro headcam. Below you can see each of their races. You can get them in sync (roughly) by starting one and then immediately starting the other one. It makes for a head(cam)-to-head(cam) race. The course map is below and it can be interesting to follow along and see the different routes. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:54 PM 
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Thoughts on the sprint relay at the Ski WOCI thought this comment from a few days ago was worth highlighting.Hi! I was one of the athletes skiing the sprint relay and I just want to say that the sprint relay is the most funny of all the distances, also for the athletes! It's a first man to finish race, which means a lot of close man-man fights and there is always happening something. It's also a relay so you're skiing for your nation and another person and you are also allowed to do "3 races" which you're getting the fun 3 times! Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 7:11 AM
Monday, March 28, 2011 Stabilized headcam videoThe video clip shows a bit of yesterday's run.I discovered that Youtube has a video editing feature that lets you stabilize the image. Here's the stabilized version (with some music added). I was impressed with how well the stabilizing worked. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 8:14 PM
Sunday, March 27, 2011 Watching some Ski WOC TVI've spent a bit of time watching the video from the Ski Orienteering WOC and been interested to see a couple of new (to me) ideas in action: the mixed sprint relay event and the use of the live headcam video. It has also been fun to see some strong performances from the US team.Here's the sprint video: I'm not sure what the competitors think of the mixed sprint relay format, but for TV it has potential. The teams were just 2 people, each skiing 3 legs. The total winning time was about 65 minutes. I don't know enough about ski orienteering to have any opinion about the technical demands of the format. When I look at the maps, it looks like a typical ski orienteering courses. The sprint relay format has some nice features for TV coverage. It is easy to see who is in the lead. Of course, a team can be ahead at an exchange because they had the short fork (so they really aren't necessarily ahead in the race). But, as long as the forking isn't absurd, for the TV viewer I don't think it really matters. You can think of it as being like a NASCAR race where the car in the lead has older tires than the other cars, so it is in the lead on the track but won't be able to stay in the lead. It doesn't confuse the viewer. It gives the commentators something to talk about. The WOC coverage featured live coverage from the course by having a good skier with a headcam who would ski behind some of the competitors. There were some technical problems (and better weather would have made the images easier to see), but the concept seems really good. It gives you a sense of the speed of the skiers and an interesting view to contrast with the fixed cameras with skiers going by). I don't know how the details of the live headcam views. I guess they may have used a mobile phone network to send the images back. But, I really don't have any idea. The sprint relay format lends itself to during-the-race interviews with competitors between legs. I think there's some real potential for those interviews to engage the viewers and make the event more alive. Short interviews also have the potential to fill time that might otherwise be filled with pictures of the empty ski tracks waiting for skiers to arrive. The clip below is from the US team's blog. I think it gives you an idea of how during-the-race interviews could work: Sprint Relay @ Ski WOC '11 from Cristina Luis on Vimeo. Some athletes might balk at having an interview during the race, but I think most would be ok with it. Certainly it would help improve the TV coverage and that's a goal that orienteering athletes ought to support. As an aside, I was glad to see frequent updates on the US team blog. OUSA has a (very modest) goal of having the blog updated twice a month. In the six months leading up to March 2011, the blog was only updated 5 times. Going forward, I hope they meet (or even exceed) the goal of two updates a month. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 10:50 AM
Thursday, March 10, 2011 Engaging the spectatorI'm not sure who this is from, but it is about sports and fans..."To understand what it means to produce sports in the creative economy means everything. It's not about production, but engagement." The various discussions about orienteering as a TV and spectator sport have largely focused on the format as the issue. Some people have put effort into the production issues (e.g. GPS tracking and 3d rerun). As best I can tell, people haven't done much with the idea of engaging the spectator or viewer and what that would entail. That's a topic for another day Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:51 PM
Sunday, March 06, 2011 Matt's fast run at yesterday's sprint orienteering The map is one of 4 short courses from yesterday's event at Dad Perry Park. I asked Matt - one of juniors from PTOC - to run the course wearing the headcam. The video is short (the course is only 1.2 km and Matt ran it in just over 8 minutes.It is fun to watch the video and follow along on the map. The terrain and course are straightforward, so it isn't too difficult. Though it is a bit tricky for the last 4 controls. You can also use the GoPro headcam to take still photos. The camera has a very wide angle lens, so you get some interesting images.  Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:12 PM
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