Stereovision once again was involved in the coverage of a sport event with GoPro cameras. Together with our resellers in Goa, FB Motorsports Goa, we shot the emerging fighting modality of Combat Cage Fighting (CCF), a hybrid of the popular mixed martial arts Ultimate Fighting Competition (UFC).
Welterweights and heavyweights, masculine and feminine fighters, all of them coming from different parts of India were the protagonists at Tito’s Courtyard in Baga, Goa, the perfect venue due to its great location, right in the most touristic area of Goa, and its massive capacity. It was a full house!
We reached location the same day of the fight, took measurements, studied the venue, and started unpacking all our equipment and rigging GoPros as soon as possible. We used three Hero2 attached on truss around the cage to transmit a live feed to the TV’s and projectors at the venue, and two Hero4 Black to operate handheld and shoot some action shots of the crowd, the fights, the fighters in their dressing rooms, etc for promotional purposes and edit a video of the event.
GOPRO SET-UP
The Hero4 cameras we used were rigged on the truss around the cage, the same place where all the lighting and speakers were installed. We needed a good rig to keep them firm and not shaky, the GoPro Rollbar Mount was just perfect. No shakes and super easy to set up. We needed something simple and reliable as these truss are 15 feet tall! We used a GoPro Skeleton Housing as we needed to plug in power and output live through the mini-hdmi output. We used GoPro cables, mini-hdmi to hdmi and usb power cables (which we then plugged to a USB power adapter of 5 Volts and 2 Amps – we found that higher voltage can damage the cameras, like 12Volts, and lower ones will stop the cameras running randomly).
Getting equipment ready for Goa.
We needed to output a live signal of these wide shots as per CCF Producer Sinead McManus requests. The aim here was to transmit a live signal to all the projectors located at Tito’s Courtyard (all HD and equipped with hdmi inputs), the restaurant, cafeteria and lounge. The projectors were far, more than 100 feet away. We refused to use Hdmi cables, no way! Expensive and unreliable. We tested SDI cables from a rental company in Goa which worked great and cheap. They did the job perfectly. I’ve always trusted SDI cables especially for long distances; its a standard for professional video transmission.
To convert the signal from the mini-hdmi output of the GoPro’s to SDI we used the Atomos HtoS Converter (Hdmi to Sdi). Superb! We have already done some jobs in the past and they are super accurate. They can last for 24hours with not a single frame drop, they do not power off ever, are small and easy to rig (we used gaffer tape and sticked them onto the truss poles next to the GoPro cameras), and can power to AC and run on Sony batteries. We connected the SDI cables to the Atomos converter and the +100feet cables were sent to the projectors where we converted the signal from sdi to hdmi again with an Atomos StoH Converter (Sdi to Hdmi). Small, compact and reliable device.
The video signal output of the GoPro in 1080/25p looked great. Find a small clip of the event below:
All equipment used is available at http://www.stereovision.biz.
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