Minimising cost rather than 4K investment is the priority for many broadcasters, writes Graham Day, managing director, ATG Broadcast
ALTHOUGH IT is easy to get enthusiastic about new developments like 4K and 8K super-high resolution at broadcast trade shows such as IBC, many channel managers will be attending this year’s event with a quite different priority: how to minimise the cost of their technical infrastructure. For some, this task coincides with industry’s gradual migration from SD to HD. Over the past few years, we
have helped many clients make the transition to HD or to expand their existing HD output. At the front end of the broadcast chain, equipping and running an HD studio or an external shoot is today no more expensive than producing content in SD. As 625-line and 525 line cameras and
camcorders reach the end of their useful life, many programme-makers and broadcasters are replacing them with 1080-line equivalents given that SD products are now disappearing from the broadcast market. A lot of modern camcorders
capture video and audio as integrated digital files direct to solid-state memory. This allows huge savings in post production through the use of software- based editors running on standard Macs or PCs. ATG Broadcast has long
experience of designing and installing file-based systems for production studios, post production houses and playout centres. File-based technology is tried and proven except in the eyes of a few traditionalist cameramen who still feel
safer with tape, until it tangles or is mislaid. Files are easy to create, easy
to archive, easy to back up, easy to search and easy to share. This whole activity goes under the misnomer of ‘media asset management’. It is more accurately called ‘content management’ since the specific medium the files are stored on (solid state drive, disk array or data tape library) is incidental to the actual data. Easy to delete? We hear that comment occasionally but this relates to a human rather than a technical issue. Data storage devices are so compact and economical that there is no excuse whatever for valuable content being accidentally erased. Depending on the size of the establishment, an entire week or even year of content
Graham Day: ’File-based technology is tried and proven’
can be routinely archived as a safety backup in addition to whatever other security arrangements are in place. Cloud storage offers a further layer of protection if a broadcaster’s headquarters are, for example, at risk of flooding.
Most TV networks in industrialised countries have already embraced file-based workflow or are in the process of doing so. In other regions, a remarkably large number of networks are persevering with discrete media, some of it analogue, until such time as their hardware becomes uneconomical to maintain or until they get up to speed with computer-based technology. So where does that leave 4K and 8K? I draw your attention to the rapid progress now taking place in portable video displays. This began with subjectively very impressive ‘retina-quality’ screens in mobile phones, has already progressed to laptops and will soon be available in desktop monitors. Perhaps the impetus to move forward into 4K resolution, and maybe higher, will percolate up from these smaller sizes rather than from attempts to sell 2m high television displays into the home.
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