BBC Sport consolidates its virtual sets with Vizrt

Vizrt has helped BBC Sport turn a small Media City space into a virtual studio for all types of sports productions.

Using Vizrt’s new Viz Engine 4 with its integrated Unreal Engine 4 and Fusion Keyer rendering pipeline, along with the Mo-Sys StarTracker 6-axis optical tracking system and set designs from BK Design and Lightwell, the new BBC Sport set has been delivering content to UK viewers since April 2021.

John Murphy, creative director and head of sports graphics at the BBC, elaborates: “We had a small studio space at Media City which was not being used as much as we would have liked so we decided to convert it into a green screen space. With the virtual design and rendering technology we now have a studio that has 5 different presenting positions and is able to house a variety of our sports output.”

Euro 2020, Tokyo 2020 and more

The studio coordinated with Vizrt technology has been used to produce different formats such as Match of the Day or to cover events of the stature of Euro 2020 or the Olympic Games. The staging is completed with a wide selection of dynamic graphics to accompany the sports analysis, thus enhancing the visual storytelling so appreciated by viewers.

The BBC Sport system benefits from the Unreal Engine, which can be used as an additional rendering layer within the workflow controlled by Vizrt. This feature improves the performance of the entire graphics system and expands the possibilities in the field of photorealism. As Gerhard Lang, CTO of Vizrt, explains, this has all been developed with an “operator-friendly workflow”, which is essential for the project.