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Watch and Bet / When there is no picture
The text feed, the animation, the frame
What is shown when there is no picture
Two events in three have no picture, and most of them still have something moving on the screen. The something is a text feed, an animation or a still frame, and the three are easy to mistake for each other and for a camera.
Desk spec
- events, no picture
- 204 of 300
- data lag
- 2.5 s
- picture lag
- 12.0 s
- text ahead by
- 9.5 s
the pictureA live picture is a licensed broadcast shown beside a market, not a window onto the event. It has an owner, a territory and a cost, and only 96 of 300 events in the month carry one.
the two clocksThe event happens at 0.0 s, the price refreshes at 0.2 s and the picture arrives at 12.0 s, so the number beside the picture is 11.8 seconds newer than the picture it sits beside.
the one sourceThree things describe an event - the picture, the data feed and the official result - and only the official result settles a bet. The picture looked decisive in 96 of 100 disputes and settled none of them.
Direct answerWhere there is no live picture a site usually shows a text feed, an animated recreation or a still frame. A text feed arrives in about 2.5 seconds and so is 9.5 seconds ahead of a stream on the same event; an animation is not a camera and moves at whatever rate the data does; a still frame is a picture with no time in it at all.
Three substitutes, three different things
The substitutes are not interchangeable, and calling all of them a stream is where readers go wrong. A text feed carries the facts only. An animation carries the facts at a position, drawn rather than filmed. A still frame carries nothing that changes. Only the first is a source of what has happened; the other two are drawings of it.
Sample G - what stands in for a picture, and how fresh it is
| What is shown | Lag to the field | Is it a camera | What it can support |
|---|
| a text feed | 2.5 s | no | facts and timing |
| an animated recreation | 2.5 s | no | facts at a position, drawn |
| a still frame | none | no | one moment, frozen |
| a live picture | 12.0 s | yes | shape, movement, intent |
| four frames | 0 to 12.0 s | 1 of 4 | only one is a camera |
sample G - the text is ahead of the picture
data feed lag = 2.5 s
picture lag = 12.0 s
difference = 12.0 - 2.5 = 9.5 s
so on the same event the text is 9.5 s ahead of the picture,
which is 9.5 / 12.0 = 79.2% of the picture's delay given back:
a reader watching the text is closer to the event than a reader watching
the stream, and a reader watching both is watching two different moments.
Why the animation looks live and is not
An animated recreation is drawn from the same data as the text, so it is exactly as fresh as the data and no fresher. It is smoother than a text feed, which makes it feel more like a camera than a text feed does, and that feeling is the whole risk: a reader treats the moving picture as the event when it is a drawing of a feed.
sample G - an animation on a six-second update
if the animation redraws every 6.0 s and the data arrives at 2.5 s,
then the drawing can be up to 6.0 + 2.5 = 8.5 s stale on a slow update
and no fresher than 2.5 s on a fast one, so the animation is
between 2.5 s and 8.5 s behind the field, against a picture at 12.0 s:
the drawing is ahead of the stream by 3.5 s at worst and 9.5 s at best,
and it is 0% of the time a camera.
Check what is on the screen before you call it live
- Is the movement a camera or a drawing, which the edges and shadows settle immediately?
- Does the picture update every few seconds, which is an animation, or continuously, which is a stream?
- Is the score on screen ahead of or behind the thing you are watching?
- Is the frame frozen, which no stream ever is, however slow?
- Would the same page work with the moving part switched off, which is the test of a text feed?
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