10 TVBEurope Beyond HD: 4K Challenges War Horse
www.tvbeurope.com April 2014
National Theatre Live broadcast War Horsefrom the New London Theatre to over 1000 cinemas worldwide
War Horsewas the first live-to-cinema 4K transmission
The F55s were positioned in the
middle of the stalls (one on a jib, one remote controlled on a hot head) arrayed in an arc and shot mindful of a cinema audience watching on 15m screens. As usual with NT Live
performances, the stage director, broadcast director (in this case, Tim Van Someren) and production teams (including NT Live producer Emma Keith) got a chance to review footage shot during a rehearsal to see if any tweaks to coverage were required. Digital Cinema lab Soho Digital Cinema (SDC) created a 4K DCP for them to view it projected on a cinema screen. “There were no significant game-changing differences versus HD,” noted Chris Bretnall, technical producer for NT Live at Creative Broadcast Solutions. Links Broadcast provided the
charges into 4K live
Adrian Pennington goes behind the scenes of War Horseas the National Theatre production becomes the first event to be aired live to cinemas in 4K
THE 4K stage production of the National Theatre’s War Horse claimed a number of firsts when it aired on 27 February. Not only was it the first live-to-cinema 4K transmission, it was the first commercial run for the format in which cinema-goers at Chelsea’s Curzon paid to see the 180-minute event. It also necessitated the world’s first high frame rate 4K Digital Cinema Package (DCP). National Theatre Live (NT
Live) broadcast War Horse from the New London Theatre to over 1000 cinemas worldwide — most of them live but with many also showing delayed ‘live’ screenings. All but one of those was an HD broadcast, but the significance of the sole 4K TX points the way to the future.
Technical producer for NT
Live, Creative Broadcast Solutions (CBS), together with NEP Visions, NT Live’s long- term OB partner, partnered with satellite provider Links Broadcast and Sony to deliver the event, which is NT Live’s 36th stretching back to 2009. “We regularly cover NT Live
productions in HD but the National Theatre thought that War Horsewas such an important show that it should ideally be captured with large format cameras,” explains David O’Carroll, technical projects manager, NEP Visions. “What was equally important was maintaining the HD workflow, since that feed was going to the majority of cinemas. We built a
4K layer into the flypack installed onsite, complemented by an audio truck and a second truck for graphics, subtitles and autocue.” Six F55 CineAlta cameras equipped with Fujinon Cabrio
as four HD 3G signal (quad 4K) to create the live mix. NEP Visions were tasked with
creating three paths: a 4K mix with graphics, an HD version of the same and another HD
satellite uplink and downlink facilities to enable the delivery of the 4K signal (and simultaneous HD signal) from the New London Theatre into the Curzon Cinema in Chelsea. Using four synchronous Adtec EN-100 encoders the incoming signal was combined into a single transport stream in MPEG-4 via an Adtec DTA3050 multiplexor for onward transmission via a 1.5m antenna on Links’s 4K uplink vehicle. “We made an initial test using a truck on location to ensure we could transmit a 4K signal and then we did a glass-to-glass test at Visions taking the camera signal
“Many cinemas are capable of showing 4K and we know a small number capable of showing it live”
lenses fed 4K video into BPU4000 fibre adapters which generated 4K and HD signals simultaneously. The BPUs are an essential piece of kit, allowing the F55s to be used as a system camera with rack and control. The feeds were presented at a Sony MVS-8000X switcher
path with subtitles. The mix feed was recorded on a Sony MasterDeck, for archive and the creation of a 4K DCP master that will be distributed to cinemas. NEP Visions also recorded 4K ISOs onto two additional Sony MasterDecks for later use.
Chris Bretnall, Creative Broadcast Solutions
into a 4K projector,” explains Links business development manager Andy Tweedley. The signal was then uplinked on to SES Astra’s 3B satellite using 36Mhz of capacity in order to achieve the maximum possible video data rate within the modulated 4K transport stream.
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