http://deadspin.com/5923264/sorry-m...n-fan-cry-how-tv-lied-to-you-during-euro-2012 If you can't be bothered to read an article, I'll sum it up for you: Remember when Balotelli scored his second goal against Germany, and the camera cut to a crying German fan? Remember when the camera cut away to show Joachim Löw sneaking up behind a ballboy and poking the ball out from under his arm, and then they both had a good laugh about it? Yeah those things didn't actually happen when you thought they did. They both happened before the game had started, and were later dropped in to make it seem live. The German fan was actually crying during the national anthem, and the ballboy thing happened during warm-up. None of the TV networks are to blame for this. They all merely aired a streaming live signal from UEFA. That's right, our good old friends UEFA are now adding pre-recorded shots to live footage, in order to basically create their own fictional narrative.
I have occasionally wondered how much of this has gone on. It's like canned laughter, and in the UK that was stopped, many years ago. The media responsible would say they are merely heightening the event experience, in an artistic way. I would say, this is a LIVE sporting event, and therefore it isn't fiction, so don't f*** about with it. The event alone should stand or fall on its own merits.
I should just add... Welcome to the Digital Era. Many of you will notice how different formats, transmitting the same event seem to be out of syncronisation with each other. Analogue, of course, would always come across with the signal first, because there's very little between You and the Action. But in Digital they have popped in loads on delay. If there is time allowed for a digital buffering delay, one can also pop in an engineering desk delay too, where all sorts of tricks can be achieved, along with a non-swearing delay. You get the idea. Pretty soon the LIVE event ain't so LIVE.
I'd be interested in knowing just how delayed the broadcasts are. I'm okay with a few seconds, so long as I'm seeing honest footage.
I know whenever we were on TV it was live, because I'd always get a text a couple of seconds after we'd scored. But they've been editing TV like this for years. I wasn't aware they did it on live broadcasts but on Match of the Day they've always edited in reaction shots, you can sometimes see players on the bench who had already been subbed on.
I'm sure there is a rule about the length of delay and still calling it 'live'. I remember hearing that the digital encoding and decoding took about four seconds. Was a big problem for radio 4 broadcasting the 'pips' on the hour on digital radio! Not sure how they resolved that (if indeed they did at all).
Well when the Euro 2012 games kicked off at 19:45, I'm pretty sure it was also 19:45 in my house, so there can't be more than a minute delay. Didn't know that about MOTD though. I thought the BBC were better than that.
Give me a break! Using pre-recorded footage of a crying fan at an inappropriate point is one thing but using generic reaction shots to cover edits is done all the time, and you'd be asking why there were weird cuts everywhere if they didn't do that.
Well I always thought they'd have enough cameras to capture live reaction shots. They always have a couple of cameras on the crowd.
You can do a little test. Next time a LIVE event is being covered by Analogue Radio 5 AM [that's 909MW] and BBCTV [specifically Digital, if Analogue is still available in your area], do a count off in seconds. Sometimes it can be as much as minutes. Be aware NOT to try the Radio 5 coverage from the infamous Red Button, as that has been sync to the digital TV action. Incidentally, the other day I was watching England v Italy on the BBC website. I then realised that it was on the TV, so I switched on the old box for once. The Digital TV feed was a good 5 minutes in front of the Internet feed. Now there are a couple of minor reasons why the Internet feed might lag behind the Digital TV feed, but 5 bloody minutes..? Also bearing in mind that Analogue will always be at least 30 seconds in front of Digital. Enough time for manipulation..! And this is after the official broadcaster has released the signal. Just imagine how much delay they have popped into the feed..? Well enough to insert out-of-time reaction shots, anyway.
What's the problem with substituting one, perhaps underwhelming, reaction shot for a better one though? That doesn't change the narrative one bit, unlike the crying German woman and indeed Loew's touching encounter with a ball boy, which were two of the most memorable moments of the tournament (though perhaps only because they seemed out of place!) Yeah there are actually several pretty major reasons why an internet broadcast will be delayed. Five minutes is far from sub-optimal. My experience with having an analogue radio and a digital telly is that the digital action matches my earlier assertion of four seconds, I've never seen a delay anywhere near 30 seconds, and if you indeed did then that's a very unusual situation.
There is a delay of a couple of seconds caused mainly by the time it takes for the internal circuitry of your digital TV to convert what is on your aerial into what you want to see/hear, you can notice this if you have a digital TV on in one room and analogue in the other (or an FM and DAB radio). TSS is talking about a couple of extra seconds which is enough for some technical wizards to pop a bleep in at the appropriate moment, or switch to the right camera angle. But it's not so easy for sport because most of the time the commentators will be watching the same pictures as the viewers at home. I did notice the rise of the super slow motion camera in the tournament, they are really useful for making every innocuous foul looking like a vicious leg smasher.
Five minutes seems a bit much. I'd be inclined to suggest that there might have been some lag on your end.
Waht next, Balotelli's celebration was really just a still image of him before he put his shirt on during the warm up?
So all the beautiful European girls they kept cutting to were also likely selected in advance. I did wonder how they found them among the more shall we say standard football fans while all the real action takes place on the pitch
