Systems that track objects in an event, such as participants in an athletic event, are known. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0129825 to DeAngelis et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses systems and methods to facilitate autonomous image capture and picture production. A location unit is attached to each tracked object (e.g., participants in an athletic event). An object tracking device receives location information from each location unit. A camera control device controls, based upon the location information, at least one motorized camera to capture image data of at least one tracked object.
It is also known to manually create video and still images of an event. For example, a video feed of an event (e.g., an American football game) is typically generated by highly trained camera persons and highly trained production staff who select camera shots and combine graphics into the video feed. Video images and/or still picture production can be partially or fully automated using systems and methods disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0129825.
In many American football games, two ‘standard’ views are manually filmed using two digital video cameras; one on the sideline, and one in an end zone. These views are then manually ‘broken down’ by humans watching the videos, clipping them into plays, and identifying interesting attributes of each play. One of the most obvious attributes is simply who was on the field for each team at a given time. This is also one of the most difficult things to determine from the video since the resolution is not sufficient to clearly determine each of the players' numbers, thus making it difficult to identify all of the players.