24 TVBEurope Wrap-Up NAB blog from the show floor
THE BUZZ here is all 4K and HEVC. Add to that, broadcasters are talking about Second Screen. We’ve taken a lot of time to talk to customers, suppliers, friends and colleagues to get their views on these issues. My impression is that 4K
for production will most likely become a reality in the near future, fuelled in the same way as HD production was — basically it’s not much of a premium in terms of cost for new hardware and software, so why not future- proof your assets. With 4K cameras from all the main players coming in both low cost DSLR form factors (think Canon, Blackmagic etc) to proper production camera types from the traditional manufacturers, acquisition at 4K should be
straightforward — and most file-based graphics and editing platforms are resolution-agnostic. With high quality cameras from
manufacturers such as Sony’s F series, Arri’s Alexa and Red’s Epic, I think we’ll see serious directors insisting on using this level of camera rather than compromising on low cost options. And with studio accessories being shown, the practicality of using these on live events is a step closer — especially as most of the leading vision switcher manufacturers are showing 4K versions of their switchers. Telegenic has already announced a 4K truck project in conjunction with Sony, so no doubt over the coming couple of years we’ll start to see similar developments from other major OB companies.
However, as with anything,
there is a caveat: 4K images do demand a higher level of quality control, and it remains to be seen if the lower-cost solutions will hold up well through the production process. In particular, signal to noise becomes an important measurement, since the high data rates mean that any increase in S/N will be magnified at processing — and this will show up in keying and compositing operations. (Also in transmission, but more of that later.) There have also been comments on the blogosphere about image quality issues in some of the lower cost cameras, particularly black spots around highlights. So buyer beware! The delivery of this content to the consumer is a whole other
Ed note:
Kevin Moore, managing director of Irish SI/reseller Eurotek, penned a live blog during the show in Las Vegas. Below, some edited and abridged highlights from his excellent on-the-run industry analysis at the show — from the perspective of the reseller channel
ball-game, and any of the broadcast customers and manufacturer salespeople we spoke to felt the additional costs associated with 4K were probably not justifiable in the current business climate. So this is potentially where
HEVC becomes interesting. With at least double the efficiency of H.264, a 4K programme could be delivered with not much more bandwidth than an existing HD stream requires, and it’s possible that premium channels will see 4K as a differentiator — especially for drama and sports. And Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have all stated their intention to support 4K in the future, so broadcasters will need to keep up to compete in some way.
The efficient transcoding of the 4K images to HEVC (or H.265 as its being referred to) will require a high quality master to work at its best. So back to the argument I made earlier about source quality and in particular S/N. Compression systems rely on being able to dump pixels in frames and this in turn depends on being able to re-use pixels from preceding and following frames. Where the signal to noise ratio is poor, the compression system has to work harder to compress the picture, and this leads to a higher bit rate compressed file for a given target quality. To maximise the quality of a
4K image (whether compressed to H.264 or H.265), the originating material needs to be as good as
www.tvbeurope.com May 2013
VISIT OUR OPEN HOUSE ! PARIS
15 and 16 May 2013
BRUXELLES 22 and 23 May 2013
More info on
www.studiotech.be
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60