26 TVBEurope Beyond HD:Future Directions
www.tvbeurope.com April 2013 In association with: Future technology:
NAB and beyond: George Jarrett talks to senior executives from AJA, Grass Valley, Harris Broadcast and Sony for the movies, and Ultra HD at 3840x2160 — is mixed with high expectations of HEVC, managing the transition
Nick Rashby:
“I went to my first CES show in
January and had
an almost religious experience. I was shocked by the amount of
consumer 4K”
Katsunori Yamanouchi: “4K world development is focusing right now in three areas – shooting innovation, viewing innovation, and in
workflow innovation”
Katsunori Yamanouchi, vice president, Sony Professional Solutions Europe KATSUNORI YAMANOUCHI had just one trend in mind — Sony’s strong commitment to 4K, and how critical it is in the light of a directive from new Sony Corporation president and CEO Kazuo Hirai. “Kazuo says clearly that
Sony’s mission is that we should inspire and fulfil consumer curiosity. We would like to continuously deliver innovation in entertainment, and deliver an amazing emotional experience. It is here that 4K fits with our goals — it provides a new emotional experience and that’s why 4K world development is Sony Corporation’s key strategy,” he says. Sony’s ambition for 4K is to
offer a “scene to screen” deal, and it can achieve it with a diversified proposition that starts with the Cine Alta cameras and ends on its new OLED-based consumer display technology. In between it has the content, from Sony Pictures Entertainment, plus professional and consumer projection systems and even a consumer level 4K camcorder. “From acquisition to content creation and to the home, we
want to develop an end-to-end solution for the 4K world,” says Yamanouchi. “We (here) are in the area of professional business so our mission is to provide our proposition to content creators. 4K world development is focussing right now in three areas — shooting innovation, viewing innovation, and in workflow innovation.” The first leg started with the launch of the F65 at NAB 2011, and the 30 features shot with this camera since January 2012 will soon be added to by Oblivion starring Tom Cruise, and After Earth starring Will Smith. So what follows cinema production? “The challenge is to expand this 4K application to new areas of content creation — drama, episodics, documentaries, sport, commercials and news. These are mid-level budget areas compared to features, and we launched the F5 and F55 and introduced the new codec XAVC to meet that type of requirement,” says Yamanouchi. “4K is another animal
when you speak of data, and workflow is an issue, but how we are going to help the broadcast industry is an entirely different story,” he adds. “When we discussed 4K with broadcasters
the first time their reaction was, ‘No way. Forget it. It is not for us.’ This was natural, but afterwards — and maybe IBC was the trigger because the EBU promoted 4K heavily — we found a next generation angle.” This is how to use 4K in the
HD environment, shooting and banking away 4K masters and then pumping out 1080p streams via down conversion. “At NAB we will propose this type of approach, showing down-converted images (one 4K camera in a football shoot capturing all the key movement) so people can see how it looks compared to normal HD. Maybe this will inspire the broadcasters,” says Yamanouchi. “The US is a far bigger market in terms of high end cinema and TV productions, but the bigger opportunity that exists in Europe is in the sports market. At NAB we will show a 4K live system. I am not just talking about the camera but also the switcher, server and monitors.” Will it be a product launch or an R&D technology demonstration? “Money is coming into sports for TV, so if we can create a 4K solution for live production it will be great,” says Yamanouchi. “It will be
step-by-step, and in two years Sony wants to be the leader in live 4K production. The new compression scheme HEVC will make a great contribution, its main impact being in delivering 4K services.” At NAB Sony will launch services offered by its new Media Cloud Services Division — based on a ‘common core’ to be boosted for specific industry needs by Sony and third party applications. It will also show new camcorders that use XAVC to better effect.
Commenting on the cloud
business in Europe, Yamanouchi says: “One of the issues people are thinking about is moving from the CapEx model to an OpEx model. The technology is moving fast, but unfortunately manufacturers do not have one standard. The issue is how to create a very smooth, streamlined workflow. Security and reliability are big issues for broadcasters, and most people say it has to be a private cloud.”
Nick Rashby, president, AJA Video Systems Nick Rashby is expecting NAB to be a 4K tsunami. AJA got a ton of good press after it launched the Ki Pro Quad
last year, so what has happened since in terms of following a trend?
“I think it has been reinforced
that 4K is the direction where we really want to spend a lot of our development effort. It is still sussing out, and it is different in many regions of the world, but I went to my first CES show in January and had an almost religious experience,” Rashby says. “I was shocked by the amount
of consumer 4K. It is not a fad. It is not a trend. It is real. It is very exciting, and ready to go in a lot of ways. At one end we have Netflix streaming 4K to beautiful Samsung panels, and at the other we are getting a lot of direction from our users that this is where they want to work,” he added. AJA has a deep IP base that helped to produce the Ki Pro Quad and its ability to bridge existing workflows to 4K workflows. “We are going to concentrate on that space, making problem solvers. Our NAB focus will be a pretty broad product line, but 4K will be one of the major focuses,” says Rashby. Next came a confession
unrelated to any trend, but something of which many
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