Sport video analysis

Sometimes you can do a corner pin track in Mocha and use that to generate a grid that you can overlay to hide all of the noise created by the player. If you can get a Camera Track using the right settings for zoom, advanced analysis, and camera pan then you can turn off the grid you added to the scene and end up with a fairly decent camera pan and zoom solution. The problem is that you get no depth information with a camera pan and sports cameras are almost always in a fixed position panning around the scene. 

If you do finally manage to get a decent camera pan and zoom camera track and you can set an origin and ground plane for the field you can at least match the perspective and have a starting point.

A better option may be to just run motion tracking on the players, smooth that out, then create an oval graphic rather than try and use 3D layers. 

The most efficient solution depends entirely on the shot, but I think that a completely 2D solution is going to be the easiest for most typical shots.

Not really. Your issues will begin with actually getting a useable track, which is nigh on impossible with such a limited field of view, barely any visible marker and the players acting as disturbances. I'm not saying it's imposible, but it's going to be a lot of work. It also seems to me you underestimate how this stuff actually works live on TV. You know, they calibrate this long before the games even begin, have extra sensors and cameras and so on....

Mylenium