Watched about 4 hours of the Olympics over the last 2 weeks (coverage really blows when you know the results from the web 6 hours before the event!), but what really impressed me was the short focus packages that the network did on the athletes to feature them.

The key was that they got the total film look just perfect or damn close.

Does anyone have a friend at the network that may have worked on this stuff that can shed some light on their techniques and post production tricks that were done to get this look?

I know that from what I have seen, lighting was key, slow motion is another and very narrow DOF with f1.6 apeartures seems to have been the key. Obviously there was some additional filtering being done to negate the look of the HD video since the shots were much softer.

Hope that someone can contribute to this, would be really nice to try to get some of these looks.

Miguel

i don't think it's a very good idea to look at what NBC did and figure you can then achieve similar results yourself. Of course their content is going to look good, its NBC covering the olympics.

What did they do? They spent millions of dollars.

I agree, there was certainly a jump in certain areas of aethstetic quality. It's looks like thanks should be given to Sony. And HD.

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?SESSIONID=&aId=9396

David

And AVID for editing.

The athlete packages did look pretty good. However, the event quality looked wasn't so great to me. Opening night they had some skiing. My short list of problems is; oversharpened, aliasing, moire artifacts, and logos not in the safe area. I was watching it on a normal 4:3 TV. The quality did improve after that, but there were a few times it looked framed for 16:9 and faces were cut off.

Why didn't they letterbox it?

and apple..of course...http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/02/olympics/

I expect they were running the Avids on MACS as well. Interesting use of the graphics stations.

Yes, the video quality had a wide range.

The snowboarding 1/2 pipe looked like third generation VHS, while the tight shot of the ski jumpers at night, right before they started their run was about the best looking image I have ever seen.

I was watching on a 27" SD CRT.

The athlete packages did look pretty good. However, the event quality looked wasn't so great to me. Opening night they had some skiing. My short list of problems is; oversharpened, aliasing, moire artifacts, and logos not in the safe area. I was watching it on a normal 4:3 TV. The quality did improve after that, but there were a few times it looked framed for 16:9 and faces were cut off.

Having seen the Olympics on both an HD CRT and a couple SD CRTs, I agree the quality didn't look as good as I would have thought it should have on the SD broadcast, given the source was HD. In fact, the SD broadcast was rather disappointing. I don't remember having any complaints with the HD broadcast, however.

I watched some events on DLP w/HD cable. Most of the video was amazing to look at. Although there was some artifacting and Bob Costas hair looked like a dyed wig.

My good friend TD'ed the opening ceremonies... I'll see what I can find out from him regarding 'look' and get back to you guys.