46 TVBEurope London 2012 Countdown The Olympics inUltra HD
8K images to deliver the best seat in the stadium. By David Fox
THE OLYMPICS is often a technology milestone for broadcasting. In 1948, the BBC did the first ever live outside broadcast to homes from Games that were held where its White City buildings are now. At the Mexico Olympics of 1968 the innovation was colour. In 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics were the first to be captured in HD (by NHK), even though only four people in the truck could see it. Now, the 2012 Olympics will see the introduction of Ultra HD, or Super Hi-Vision, with all of the world’s SHV cameras in London, and public viewing in six UK, Japanese and US cities, thanks to a collaboration between NHK, the BBC, and Olympic Broadcast Services. Audiences will be able to watch SHV images of the Games at three locations in the UK (the BBC Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London, its Glasgow studios at Pacific
Project Lead for the Super Hi-Vision project. It will mainly show locked-off
shots, “where your eye can do the editing […] to give people the experience of being there.” The production will use three SHV cameras to cover the opening and closing ceremonies plus the Men’s 100m Final live, as well as creating highlights packages of other events.
“We need to allow people to take it all in. However,
staying with the Olympic aims: Plyming hopes to give people the experience of being there
Quay, and the National Media Museum in Bradford), as well as four NHK sites in Tokyo and Osaka, and at an NBC venue in Washington DC. A prototype SHV plasma screen is also likely to be on show at the International Broadcast Centre in
London — broadcasters will also be able to watch highlights on the NHK stand at IBC, probably on a Sharp 85-inch screen. “We will be running
screenings all day at these venues. People can book tickets free at the BBC website to
watch an hour-long
shot longer makes it quite different
highlights package, with events from the main stadium, the velodrome, the aquatics centre and the basketball arena,” says Tim Plyming, the BBC’s
from the television experience” Tim Plyming, BBC
Higher frame rate NHK is also bringing its new, prototype compact camera (about the same size as a conventional ENG camera), but isn’t currently planning to use it for the Games coverage. However, if everything is working perfectly it might be used. Besides weighing a lot less
(about 5kg) and being more compact, the new camera can also shoot at 120 frames per second, so could be used for slow-motion work, recording on to 16 solid-state cards. The new 33-megapixel (7680x4320 pixel) CMOS sensor uses an advanced two-stage (4-bit then 8-bit) cyclic analogue-to-digital converter to deliver a 12-bit image at the higher frame rate (twice that of the current SHV cameras). This architecture also reduces
power consumption, with the ADC drawing 800mW (out of a total drive power of 2.5W). To deal with the high number of pixels involved, the sensor outputs alternating rows of pixels to ADCs on either side, each of which has 48 parallel outputs. The 120fps sensor will reduce motion blur and allow for much better slo-mo replay. As resolution increases (and 8K is 16 times the resolution of