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Comment by KnightHawk3 | Hacker News Reader

I don't actually know what this yellow line is, probably because I am from Australia. Have you got a sample video for it?

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The yellow line in the 3 to 5 seconds mark in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtxoYaMebF0

Why is it so hard to find a single HD video with this line? I searched for 'football "yellow line"' and filtered only HD videos, and none in the first page actually showed some game footage with the line. The same for 'football "first down line"'.

Is there no HD footage for these events? Or do even short extracts get removed due to copyright issues?

You won't find it with those search strings because the American viewer (presumably who is posting those videos to YouTube) takes it totally for granted.

Try searching for just "first down" with football, or viewing some game highlights on NFL.com.

I was about to say the same thing. You wouldn't even need to search first down, just watch any football footage from the last decade. The first down line is going to be in pretty much every shot. Note that it isn't always yellow. Sometimes it's orange, and there are also other lines, namely the line of scrimmage, that are marked as well.

Which also shows the evolution of the yellow line idea: another line (usually blue) for the line of scrimmage, which turns out to be really useful. I think I've also seen a line for maximum field goal range.

And you probably also have seen advertisements inserted behind the end zone. I do not know how much use they make of it, but that allows the broadcaster to send different advertisements to different markets (the low tech variant that I have seen of this in soccer is to have one country show the main overview from one side of the field, and another country the main overview from the other side. That way, one can sell the main advertising space at the center of the field across from the main camera twice)

Also, in speed skating, the technology gets used to project a moving line indicating where a skater should be to reach some goal (win the race, world record, etc)

The concept was used a lot in the Olympics. I remember seeing national flags superimposed in swimmers' lanes, and they also used pace lines for swimming.

That is pretty cool, thanks!

Australians are pretty familiar with high tech sports enhancements, cricket probably uses them the most of any sport. You've got Hawkeye/Virtual Eye which are video systems that predicts where the ball would have gone if it hadn't hit the batsman being used by umpires for replays during the game, Snicko where a microphone is used to judge whether the ball hit the bat, and Hot Spot which uses infrared cameras to see if the ball made contact with the bat (or leg).

The yellow line is impressive because it's done on Live TV though not as a replay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFor0BgTEw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H96PPrwVxMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTfREipYxc

http://www.wimp.com/slickadd/

Us Aussies probably saw the same kind of tech first in swimming coverage. Where they used a moving line to show the world record times.

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