IBC
The barriers to 4K UHD live broadcasts are dropping one by one, making a channel launch for live sports more likely by the start of next season's football by payTV broadcasters across Europe.
Just a few months ago live event producers placed frame rates high on their agenda for 4K live acquisition. While still valued, rates of 50 Hz have been proven both possible and acceptable and the discussion among broadcasters has shifted to incorporating higher dynamic range.
Noting the trend is Sony's Head of Business Development for 3D, 4K and Sports, Mark Grinyer. “At one point discussions revolved around achieving frame rates of 100 Hz, but the consensus now is for 50 Hz and to be honest what everyone is talking about now are wider colour spaces.”
There were compelling demos on the Canon and Sony stands at NAB illustrating the wider colour space of UHD standard Rec. 2020 side by side with HD colour standard Rec. 709.
Sky Sports has spent considerable R&D at the Ryder Cup last year and Football League OBs this year testing a variety of the new HD/4K cameras for their ability to perform in different lighting conditions.
“HDR will bring the picture to life in a wider colour space but we have to think about the full production workflow particularly in live sport and events for which we will want a glass to glass approach,” says Keith Lane, Director of Operations for Sky Sports. “The cameras can, in some cases, already capture this information and some TV's will be ready to receive it. Encoding and decoding the signal needs to be fully considered and there is some work to go by manufacturers and standards bodies before equipment capable of processing it comes to market.”
“All of a sudden HDR is gaining a voice,” comments Jamie Hindhaugh, Chief Operating Officer, BT Sport. “HDR is really important. I know that for a lot of public service broadcasters HDR plus HD is of greater benefit, but for us HDR has to be done in conjunction with 4K.”
HDR demonstrations seem to show that HDR and richer colour stands out more than resolution making the inclusion of it a more marketable upgrade than pure resolution increase.
“There is an engineering issue which needs carefully thinking through,” explains Alan Bright, Director of Engineering at sports production company IMG. “You don't want to display Rec.2020 images on a Rec.709 TV so you have to perform a conversion using a LUT.”
For live trial 4K productions, such as the National Theatre's production of War Horse in conjunction with Sony last autumn, the F55 camera and the projector are able to work with the wider colour gamut. The Rec.2020 monitors and camera racking however are not yet part of the outside broadcast chain.
The capability will come as the UHD phase 2 specifications, which include Rec.2020, wind their way through standards bodies like the DVB. Sony has designed its new camera to be compatible with these colour standards when they are introduced.
Also ticked off the list of 4K must-haves from an outside broadcaster's perspective, are 2/3-inch systems cameras capable of accepting standard B4 mount lenses for switchable shooting in HD/4K.
“The development means the long awaited removal of one of the log jams to 4K live,” says Bright. “The problem has been that outside broadcasters have not wanted to invest too early in tech which was not suitable for sports coverage.”
Two log jams remain, although both are not likely to impede the first launches of UHD sports but be an incremental bonus down the line.
These hurdles include the ability to stream live 4K signals wirelessly for close to the touchline action. Manufacturers are working on the issue but units small enough to fit a camera back may not be available for a year.
The other issue, also being worked on but not here yet, is having to use 4K workflows using four pipes of HD cable.
“Handling quad-3G is so cumbersome, it decimates the capacity of your resources and creates errors,” says Bright. IMG handles all the international distribution for the English Premier League from its headquarters at Stockley Park.
“We’re waiting for the industry to agree on a solution to send 4K down one piece of wire before we convert one of our studios at IMG to 4K,” he says.
As the industry heads into IBC2015 all of these issues will come into focus, and who knows... by September we may be talking about an actual live 4K service.
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