FascinatE is a €9.5m EU funded project involving a group of partners from across Europe looking at broadcasting live events to give the viewer a more interactive experience no matter what device they are using the view the broadcast.

The FascinatE project will develop a system to allow end-users to interactively view and navigate around an ultra-high resolution video panorama showing a live event, with the accompanying audio automatically changing to match the selected view. The output will be adapted to their particular kind of device, covering anything from a mobile handset to an immersive panoramic display.

At the production side, this requires the development of new audio and video capture systems, and scripting systems to control the shot framing options presented to the viewer. Intelligent networks with processing components will be needed to repurpose the content to suit different device types and framing selections, and user terminals supporting innovative interaction methods will be needed to allow viewers to control and display the content.

Partners include Alcatel – Lucent Bell NV (ALU); Arnold & Richter Cine technik GmbH (ARRI); BBC Research & Development; Fraunhofer Gesellschaft – Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI); Joanneum Research (JRS); Softeco Sismat S.p.A; Technicolor; The Interactive Institute (TII), The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO); Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), University of Salford (UoS).