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30 TVBEurope Beyond HD:Future Directions


www.tvbeurope.com April 2013 In association with: 4K is a matter of natural Survival


Natural history is one area of television production that can benefit greatly from the greater detail in Ultra HD, and at the BBC it is seen as important for Survival— one of its main nature documentary series. David Foxreports


MANY DOCUMENTARY series, particularly in natural history, have such long lead-in times that any planning has to take into account what technology might emerge three or even five years from now. For BBC One’s natural history strand, Survival (co-produced with Discovery Networks), which has six one-hour programmes going out at the end of 2014, it was important to look beyond HD when it started shooting in December 2011. Although the BBC has announced no plans to broadcast Ultra HD, the Japanese intend to have a channel available via satellite in mid-2014, while European satellite operators Eutelsat and SES Astra will both offer at least experimental 4K transmissions before then. “We were 4K right from the beginning,” says Survival’s series producer, Rupert Barrington. “We’re shooting as much as we can in 4K,” not to future proof it, but for creative reasons. “It benefits natural history to


have that huge resolution. This is the next step in image quality. So much of the attraction of natural history is resolution and picture quality,” he says. “We broadcast in HD, so we can get two shot sizes out of a single shot or do a cropping zoom or pan. It opens up a lot of flexibility for the editor in how they cut this material. You get a lot more out of your shot. With HD, you couldn’t do much with the shot before it was no longer an HD shot.”


Epic proportions Its main 4K camera is the Red Epic, and it has bought three for the production. “Initially, our interest in them was that they could do high speed — 300fps.” However, “we were worried


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Delivering 4K content to mass home audiences Several challenges still remain. These include: n Finding the extra bandwidth required to dedicate the transmission path from service provider to the home. This is


whether they would be able to stand up to the rigours of natural history shooting, but they have performed really well and seem to be pretty robust,” he adds. Occasionally they get too hot, needing to be turned off and on again, “but that is the limit of the problems we’ve had.” The production has also used an Arri Alexa (owned by one of the cameramen), Panasonic P2 HD cameras, and various Vision Research high-speed cameras (Phantom Flex, Gold and Miro — versions of all of these can have higher than HD resolution, if not 4K). It can also do 4K using DSLRs for timelapse shots, although it won’t be using many of these in the series. They are also using some of the new GoPro Hero3 action cameras and


a daunting prospect as UHDTV/4K content will supplement — not replace — HD for many years to come. n Enabling new decoding devices (integrated into TVs, set-top-boxes (STB), gaming consoles, etc.), which need to handle the higher resolution


some Cam-Ball 2 remote cameras from Bradley Engineering. One of the big advantages of shooting 4K, with a large sensor camera, has been depth of field. It gives a cinematic look that helps them isolate a particular animal from the background. “It draws you into that one animal’s world,” he says. “Obviously, that is much harder if you have greater depth of field and more is in focus.” Of course, the larger sensor also makes it more difficult to get and maintain accurate focus, especially in fast moving situations. However, with the Epic they


have the choice to shoot at lower resolutions (2K or 3K), whether for depth of field reasons on a very long lens, or to allow shooting at higher


of UHDTV, as most existing devices were not designed to support more than HD. n Upgrading the entire end-to- end content process chain to 4K native capture and production. This will be a necessary change before terrestrial broadcasters can get to the point of transmission.


Workflow and editing The material is recorded using the Redcode Raw codec, and being downloaded on to RAID drives on location. There is rarely any time to do anything further when they are shooting, even shot selection. Editing is done at the BBC


Natural History Unit’s base in Bristol, and they are trying to do as much as they can of it while still in production rather than the traditional way of doing it all at the end. They have been doing some editing as proxies on Final Cut, but are currently looking at doing the bulk of the work on Adobe Premiere, so that they can cut it all at 4K. If they don’t go ahead with Adobe, they’ll probably turn to Avid and edit using proxies.


“The big question for us is that if Cameraman Toby


Strong on a shoot to film meerkats in South Africa


frame rates. “But, we are trying to shoot at 4K when we can, because that look is so good. When it works for us, it is really nice.” The production is global.


“We can choose stories from anywhere.” So far they have done about 35 stories, with the same again to come, and have got a good geographic spread. Unlike some natural history


programmes, where a camera crew can be on location for very long periods of time, most of the shoots for Survival are fairly short (generally not more than six weeks). At times it will have up to four shoots on the go at once, and as the production takes place over two years, that gives them two goes at each season for a particular story.


In the immediate future, content acquisition must be mastered in the highest picture quality possible, even if the roll- out of UHDTV to the home isn’t feasible at present. This will jumpstart the pipeline of content availability and help operators understand the best practices for capturing this new technology.


we don’t go down the Adobe route, it seems as if we’ll have to do all the zooms, pans and scans by eye in the conform from Avid, whereas with Adobe all the changes come across automatically.” The reason for not sticking with Final Cut for the edit is that “with the amount of material we will have to cope with, I’m told that Avid would handle that better than Final Cut from a media management point of view. But, with Adobe, people feel confident that if we have enough storage and do 4K all the way through it will handle it.” They are due to make their final decision in April, following the release of the new version of Adobe Premiere, when they can do experiments with it to see if it lives up to expectations. “It would simplify the


workflow and remove a huge black hole, which has budgetary implications, of having to redo things [such as zooms] in the edit. It also frees up the editors to do what they want to do.


The demand is there; the Ericsson 2012 ConsumerLab TV and Video Consumer Trend report highlights a high willingness among consumers to pay for 4K ‘extreme quality’ as part of their TV and video service. It’s now up to broadcasters to make it a reality.


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