Why do snowflakes run with the "peace dove"? It turned out to be real-time capture technology

In the "Peace Dove" session of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, where the children run, the snowflakes under their feet will follow. Photo: Xinhua News Agency

Beijing News (reporter Xu Bangyin) On February 5, at the regular press conference jointly held by the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, Chang Yu, director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee and director of the National Stadium Venues, introduced many scientific and technological highlights of the opening ceremony to everyone.

Chang Yu revealed that on the evening of February 4, nearly 15,000 spectators came to the "Bird's Nest" and participated in the opening ceremony together with the Olympic family members and athletes, with a total of 3,000 actors, "Under the guidance of director Zhang Yimou, the number of actors is actually relatively small, and 3,000 student actors and actresses cooperate perfectly with advanced technical facilities and devices, which is an important feature of the opening ceremony." ”

Of course, some links have extremely high technical requirements, which brings great challenges to the work team and technical team. Take the huge LED "ground screen" inside the National Stadium as an example, with an area of 11,600 square meters, which is a very complex playback system and has particularly high requirements for picture quality.

"The audience in front of the TV set and the audience on the spot look like one picture. In fact, this 'ground screen' is divided into 4 windows to play, and several windows have zero delay to form the same picture. The final result is obvious to all, but in fact, many technical details such as optimizing the playback system are involved. Chang Yu said that the "ice cube", the five Olympic rings and the main torch that rose at the scene all condensed a lot of scientific and technological content.

Not only the huge "ground screen", "ice cube", the main torch, in many details, the opening ceremony is also full of technology. For example, Chang Yu and director Zhang Yimou are very fond of the "Peace Dove" link, the name of the program is "Snowflake", for the children's feet of the shining snowflakes, the technical team overcame many difficulties.

"Everyone has seen that no matter where the innocent children run, under their feet, the snowflakes will follow them everywhere, the scene is very agile, with strong infectiousness." Chang Yu said that this is not a snowflake effect designed in advance, but the use of real-time capture, real-time rendering, real-time playback and other technologies.

Chang Yu said that real-time capture, rendering and playback of the scene is not the latest technology, but in such a large-scale real-life square performance, it is very rare to achieve such a large-scale application, "It is rare in the world, of course, for us, the technology is facing great challenges." We worked with our TOP partners and Beijing Film Academy to overcome many difficulties and finally successfully completed this difficult and innovative performance. ”

Beijing News reporter Xu Bangyin

Edited by Han Shuangming Proofreader Wu Xingfa