Enhanced sports broadcasting by means of augmented reality in MPEG-4

In this paper we present the architecture of an application that will address the needs of viewers and broadcasters for enhanced content creation, viewing and interaction by means of augmented reality for sports broadcasting. The presented system aims at the fast creation of visual enhancements and their embedding in the footage of sports events either in real-time (as they are being transmitted) or near real-time, in the so called replay mode. The goal of the work is the creation of the complete chain from production to the viewing, covering aspects like motion detection, image analysis, generation of 3D scenery, transmission, encoding/decoding, viewer interaction etc. The basis for the representation of the content and the interaction is the MPEG-4 standard. The infrastructure used for the transmission of such content is DVB. The work presented here is carried out in the framework of the IST project PISTE funded by the European Commission.