Rival watch

I know what you mean. We get those as well

 

We noticed.

 

Dead right. Firmino's offside armpit, the foul on Origi not given leading to the utd goal etc etc

 

Was that the one where Origami was knocked down with a feather?
The refs really should do something to protect these great, big fellas from the faintest of touches.
It's not just the physical contact, it's the mental scarring too.

 

Well,it is a dump.Do you live there,poor soul?

 

The trouble is that in order to look across the line to accurately judge it needs to be at a 90 degree angle...

The camera photo is taken from a different angle so it is simply not possible to judge.

My point at laughing at the "matter of perspective" is that taking a photo and then imposing a random line and deciding it is accurate is bollocks.

The difference in movement between film frames makes it completely unreliable.

If they had moved yo the next frame Salah would have been offside, such is the difference.

VAR is not up to judging these cos they are effectively estimating imo...VAR is supposed be factual but it ain't.

 

The question is foul or no foul. I grew up watching Tommy Smith and Jimmy Case for ****'s sake.

 

Not now, but it was a parental decision.

 

You seem like you’re one of those people on Twitter that abuses any celebrity who dares to express an opinion on politics or anything that isn’t their ‘area’

 

So did I. Roughly twice a season,thank goodness. I can remember Spurs going to Liverpool and losing 2-5. Next day (?) Spurs 7 Liverpool 2.

 

With modern technology you can draw the line on the grass pretty much exactly. Your point on frames is exactly right though and I don't think they can drop a line from someone's armpit to the grass precisely either.

 

Except it's digital isn't it? No frames just pixels and therefore they should be able to drop a line from an armpit but it just makes the whole process even more bizarre. Offside was never meant to be like that or handball. It's supposed to be about stopping an unfair advantage not big toes or armpits.

 

Digital yes but not seamless. Surely there's a frame rate even if it's not old style film, even if it's quite a lot of frames per second. That means there's still a gap, however small, between pictures they can use. It's then someone subjectively saying this frame is better than that frame, like they can tell if it's over the other side of the field that the player passed the ball in that frame rather than the one before and the one after. Add getting the right frame to putting the line in the right place and it's becoming more like a lottery than science.

Also even if the geometry can draw the lines correctly across the grass, surely this means you can only apply the result to something that is on the grass, like someone's boot. Surely the parallax (if that is the right term) angle changes by the time you get to the top of a six foot blokes head. So this means that if a boot is over the line (or not) that same line does not necessarily work in a 3D space five foot above the line if their shoulder is over (or not) - or does it? What do you think?

Finally I think the whole line geometry thing is flawed, regardless how cleverly they draw them. Think of a horse race or a 100m sprint. They don't decide the photo finish by putting the camera half way down the course and drawing a line across the screen. They put the cameras at the end because that's the only place it's properly accurate. Can you imagine if they put them elsewhere but said they could accurately estimate when the athlete or horse had actually crossed the line? Of course not. In order for those lines to be correct, there would need to be camera on each one. So clearly there's a margin for error (as there is with the frame rate, as there is for the distance above the line). The trouble is they say the technology is perfect and scientific. I say bollocks.

 

The pixels are not continuously updated though. Only at 30 hz in a normal camera but I think possibly at 120 hz in a UHD one. That gives two sources of error. The scan is progressive so the pixels where Salah is will be updated about 4 ms before the ones where the ball is. And the ball can move a long way between frames.

 

I expect someone on here will know about digital video but I can't see that it needs frames anymore but maybe I am wrong. I would have though that with the aid of computer technology they could be accurate BUT as you say it still comes down to humans to select what part of the film or what angle.

 

In the Premier League, VAR uses cameras which shoot at 50 frames per second for broadcast.
This has been confirmed by VAR Hub Command for the Premier League Neil Swarbrick.

 

Apparently most video is 24 - 30 frames per second so this must be 'special' equipment. I think we may be running foul of technical terms here because digital video is continuous and 'described' as having a frame speed for want of a better description. There is no place in a digital video where you can be between one frame and another like you can with analogue film.You can stop it anywhere and still have a 'clear' picture. Thus making 'offside' infinitely variable. Am I wrong?

 

That may well be the case, but someone still decides at what "instant" someone actually kicked the ball. I think that's hard to be certain about from a distance.

Don't all players have a GPS tracker? Couldn't they put a sensor in someone's boot which tells them the exact time the ball was kicked and if so, they could link it to the GPS system to know exactly where everyone was at the time. It wouldn't allow for the millimetres they are (incorrectly due to margin of error) dealing in at the moment, but at least it would be consistent and the same for everyone.

 

if only someone had pointed this out prior to the season starting