May 2013 www.tvbeurope.com


TVBEurope 19 Wrap-Up Automated approaches to 3D


Giving the market an inexpensive entrée into Ultra-HD production is Blackmagic Design which unveiled a £2,500 Production Camera with Super 35 size sensor


EVS says it has proven its XT3


servers can handle 4K replays and there are professional-grade 4K monitors aplenty from, among others, JVC (a large 84-inch LCD costing £9,000), TV Logic and Sony (which has OLED versions in the wings). What is missing, according to


Panasonic, are the bread and butter products needed to create cost-effective 4K broadcasts. It ticked these off as 2/3-inch ENG-style camcorders, a VariCam variable frame rate shooter and switchers. Miyagi revealed that


Panasonic is developing such a product line, including a new sensor for a shoulder-mounted 4K camera which, like the others in its 4K imaging line, will use AVC-Ultra compression. “Everything we make in HD will be 4K by 2014,” he said. First out of the door later this year will be 4K LCD monitor. Grass Valley also aims to


have cameras and production equipment capable of 4K by end of 2014. The company is integrating IT components in its platform, wants to become format agnostic and sees terms like 2K or 4K becoming increasingly anachronistic for production especially. “Format doesn’t matter except in acquisition and final distribution,” says Karl Schubert, GV CTO. “The one real limiting factor will be physical cabling.” Sony is trying to drive OB


production forward by targeting the World Cup 2014 as a prime global marketing opportunity for its Ultra-HD TVs. It is working


hard to finalise a new scanner for 4K Telegenic and plans to test kit, including F65, F55, F5 cameras and MVS8000 switcher, at Brazil’s Confederations Cup in June. The success of that trial will determine the extent of Ultra-HD broadcasting for FIFA in Brazil next summer. Although the F55/F5 cameras


feature 35mm sensors designed for digital cinema, Sony says that when fitted with a B4 mount they can accommodate standard outside broadcast lenses. The F65 has already been trialled by Fox Sports, ESPN and Sky as an origination format with the subsequent extraction of HD by electronic pan/zoom.


Conversations turn to 8K


Remarkably, discussions are already turning to the ‘full fat’ level of the Ultra-HD standard. Japanese broadcaster NHK plans to skip 4K and go straight to 8K with domestic TX tests timed to coincide with the Rio Olympics 2016. Its NAB demonstration was the first outside Japan to transmit a recorded programme live using its 8K Super Hi-Vision system, enabled using two UHF television channels. Top-end post facilities have


been working with 4K for several years but multi-camera projects still pose a problem. Hollywood facility FotoKem is handling a 4K multi-camera show using Canon and Sony media and its chief strategy officer, Mike Brodersen said the volume of data generated was becoming difficult to manage.


Return of the Buddy By Jake Young


Timecode Systems SINCE LAUNCHINGthe Timecode Buddy: system at NAB 2012, Timecode Systems has been busy exploring how the technology behind its products could help to resolve other production problems. At NAB 2013 the team shared the new mini range and the new Denecke slate. “To beat the success of last


year’s NAB, we knew we needed to do something special for


2013,” said Paul Scurrell of Timecode Systems. “Turning up in Las Vegas with the same products and the same well- versed spiel would have been the easy option but it’s just not the Timecode Buddy way. So we were really excited to be able to give delegates a first peek at the new ‘mini’ additions to the Buddy family and also a prototype for the new Timecode Buddy-enabled Denecke slate.” Timecode Systems has


expanded its Timecode Buddy


3D HAD all but dropped off the radar at NAB — but will likely resurface once UltraHD TVs boost the viewing resolution to full HD, with glasses. Sony said it had no new innovations to announce, though denied it was abandoning the technology, while main rig developers 3Ality Digital and Cameron Pace Group were notable by their absence. Well, not quite. CPG co-chair


Vince Pace was on hand to defend James Cameron’s bold declaration at NAB 2011 that broadcasting held the key to the


“On some days we are


managing 6-7TB so how we would deal with 8K I just don’t know,” he said, though Fotokem plans to find out in upcoming tests of 8K images derived from a Sony F65 camera. Although the F65’s 8K chip


has only been optimised for 4K to date, that changes this summer when a software upgrade becomes available to unlock the sensor’s full capability. “There is bound to be a director out there who will decide to use it,” noted Jim Houston, chair of AMPAS’ Image Interchange Framework committee. As an indication of the size of


data that post houses may face, today’s 2K film dailies generate around 2.5TB — by contrast an 8K show at 120fps might average 187TB per day of new data. If higher resolution is your goal, shooting at higher frame rates will achieve this at lower cost. Although broadcasters have successfully tested rates twice that of HD (at 50Hz and 59hz) discussions are underway to determine whether 100, 120 or even 150fps may be necessary. At 120fps with at least 10-bit colour


product range to include the Timecode Buddy: mini trx, which offers all the functionality of the Timecode Buddy: wifi master but without the wifi, which means it’s much smaller in size; the Timecode buddy: mini rx, a cost-effective receiver only version of the Timecode Buddy: mini trx; and the Timecode Buddy: mini tx, a low cost, transmit-only timecode solution. “Our timecode revolution


didn’t grind to a halt last year once our first products went on sale — it was just the beginning,” says Scurrell. “We created this new and more versatile Buddy


Paul Scurrell reveals the Denecke slate and a new ‘mini’ addition


line up directly as a result of what our customers are telling us they need. And in addition to


this, there’s our collaboration with Denecke.” www.timecodebuddy.co.uk


future of 3D development. “It’s just going through a development cycle to the point when you can sit on a couch and watch without glasses,“ Pace said. “Autostereo is a model that works. The technology should not be looked at as a white elephant. It makes business sense.” Pace used NAB to announce


an agreement with Dolby to integrate the Dolby 3D glasses- free format into CPG’s stereoscopic production workflow. Data captured on set will be incorporated into Dolby’s algorithm to manage


depth, the data rate would therefore leap to 8x that of HD, or 12Gps. Uncompressed, that represents a whopping amount of storage — though costs are coming down. “If you look at how data


rates of network bandwidth and optical transmission are increasing, then to do an 8K show as easily as it is today to do a show in 2K or 4K, we are looking at the order of 10-12 years,” he estimated. An eye-catching NAB demo


of an 8K workflow was shown at Quantel where a 65mm IMAX sequence scanned to 8192 x 6144 was played back and rescaled to 4K in realtime over the Rio finishing platform. Powered by Nvidia Maximus GPUs the system was capable of nine layers of 4K grading without rendering. 4K output was enabled by a AJA Corvid Ultra card and the whole workstation represented the first time Quantel has offered a software only solution. Red continues to up the ante


by upgrading Epic to 6K. “The Dragon sensor is 10 times the resolution of HD and over two times the resolution of our


the playback of 3D content on autostereo displays that have a more limited depth budget than stereoscopic ones. Data is also key to concepts


to make 3D production as straightforward as 2D at German research outfit Fraunhofer HHI. A collaboration with Walt Disney Animation Research and Arri, the trifocal system employs an Arri Alexa as the prime lens paired with IndieCamGS2K satellite cameras, with depth maps extrapolated in post to render a 3D image. — Adrian Pennington


original 4K sensor,” said Red’s Ted Schilowitz. “We conservatively estimate it offers 17 stops of dynamic range.” Red’s roadmap includes 8K


and even 28K devices, the latter for super large format production. “The right question is not why do we need to 4K, 8K or beyond but what am I going to do with a device that can shoot at higher resolutions than ever before?” he said. Revered as the inventor of the CMOS sensor, Eric Fossum of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth is now researching a concept he claimed could be the electronic equivalent of film grain. “The Quantum Image Sensor


is a revolutionary change in the way we collect images in a camera,” Fossum explained. By contrast, NHK’s 8K CMOS chip generates Gigabytes of data a second. One advantage lies in post-capture where grain size can be traded for signal to noise ratio, like changing the film speed after capture. “Needless to say it is very difficult to do this and you won’t be seeing a camera anytime soon,” said Fossum.


Photo: Jake Young


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