Broadcast
Growing demand for Ultra HD in live sport is driving change in OB technology, from IP delivery to remote production, writes Adrian Pennington http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/outside-broadcast/5092386.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957
ITN Productions has emerged as a significant new player in UK sports production, shaking up an industry dominated by IMG and Sunset+Vine. Having won the contract to produce Football League coverage for Channel 5, it set about reimagining the traditional outside broadcast model.
“Instead of shuffling trucks up and down the country, we wanted to explore new opportunities,” says ITN chief technology officer Bevan Gibson. “We looked very seriously at whether we could do production in 4K down-rezed to HD with pan and scan or fixed cameras, and we looked at remote operation and remote production.”
Gibson concluded that neither route was quite ready for a production team taking its first leap into the big league.
“We have been packaging clips of EPL matches for mobile and online platforms of News International titles since 2013, but the Football League contract takes our involvement to the next level,” he says. “So in the first year, our workflow is conservative. We want to make sure the first few months are nailed before pushing boundaries.”
With Sunset+Vine’s match presentation, ITN has developed a system that will allow it to record up to 36 matches for editing while the games are still being played.
However, the multicamera coverage remains conventional, with trucks supplied by Video Europe posted at stadia. From there, proxy files are sent via dark fibre to ITN’s London headquarters.
“We are looking to work with partners to do more of this remotely and to significantly reduce the kit we move around,” says Gibson.
Remote production
The ambition is to base all production, including camera control and direction, at Gray’s Inn Road. Gibson says: “If we can deliver remote production in a reliable and cost-effective way, then one benefit for the Football League is that we could produce more multi-camera coverage from more stadiums, rather than the single-camera coverage of the majority of the week’s 36 games.”
The ambition is to base all production, including camera control and direction, at Gray’s Inn Road. Gibson says: “If we can deliver remote production in a reliable and cost-effective way, then one benefit for the Football League is that we could produce more multi-camera coverage from more stadiums, rather than the single-camera coverage of the majority of the week’s 36 games.”
A typical objection to remote OB has been the idea that producers need to ‘smell the grass’ – that is, to get as close to the action as possible so they can deliver a better editorial product.
“We’ve explored this with production teams to see whether they can provide coverage that is as good 150 miles away as they can from the venue car park,” says Gibson. “I was expecting it to be a big upheaval, but it’s perhaps more psychological than anything. After a couple of games, we think a production team are quite comfortable being at an HQ that doesn’t have wheels on it.”
He adds: “You still need riggers to install the camera hardware and a cut-down crew to make a basic cut at the stadium if connectivity goes down, but the benefits are there and we will be looking to exploit them.”
Gibson acknowledges that trucks are still required at tier-one events such as Wimbledon, the FA Cup Final and the London Marathon.
“If a broadcaster has spent several million pounds on rights [both BT Sport and Sky are paying £6.5m per EPL game], then spending a fraction more on a traditional OB is not going to make much difference,” he observes. “For the foreseeable future, remote production is more applicable to sports and events that are not yet as commercially successful.”
OB suppliers are still building large trucks to cater for premium live event coverage and Gibson’s view is shared by one of its major players.
“It depends on how essential the sport is and what the penalty is for missing things,” says Richard Yeowart, who runs OB stalwart Arena: “For top-tier events like Champions League, if you miss a goal the football body levies a huge fine on the broadcaster. That applies to varying degrees in all sports. Where broadcasters are paying significantly for rights, they are not yet willing to trust remote technology.
That said, there is a halfway house in which ISO feeds of EVS clips are fed down the line to be turned around offsite into highlights montages.
“I’m not sure that camera operation and live directing will move away, purely because producers may have to respond to the match situation,” says Yeowart. “They are too cautious about making that jump.”
Outside broadcaster CTV has tested remote production, believing that it has a place in future live events. It, too, has some caveats.
“Until manufacturers can agree on a standard protocol [AVB or SMPTE- 2022 for routing uncompressed signals in a IP environment] then the industry is in a hiatus,” says technical director Hamish Greig. “The other element is network management of the bandwidth, which requires some new skill sets in our engineering team.”
The transition to IP and to 4K/Ultra HD are almost running in parallel, but there is a lag, causing some delay in commissioning 4K-ready vehicles.
BT pushed the button on a 4K live Ultra HD channel knowing that it has the distribution network to stream it to the home. But it was aware that the technology was not ready for live IP production at HD, let alone 4K.
It commissioned Timeline to build a 4K truck ready for 2 August with four circuits of HD-SDI. Timeline managing director Daniel McDonnell says any new truck it builds will “almost certainly” be IP based.
Yeowart adds: “Ultra HD is a natural progression or us – it would be crazy to build another HD truck now.” Nonetheless, Arena has put back the launch of OBX, its latest triple-expanding truck, until early 2016.
“We’ve allowed the date to slide so we can incorporate IP,” he explains.
“It makes no sense to build a truck with coax cable when IP is so close to market. We’re bullish that we’ll have an IP truck. Not all the routing will be IP, but we will have the ability to upgrade.”
The truck will be capable of processing at least 20 4K UHD cameras operating at 50 frames a second with an upgrade path to 100 frames a second.
4K UHD investments
Arena doesn’t have a specific contract for its new 4K facility, which is costing £6.5 million, so the truck is fully capable of working in HD.
“We’ve chosen not to rush this out and to avoid having to field two trucks for one job in the longer term,” says Yeowart. “We’re trying to make this a very powerful truck that does everything an existing HD does but capable of delivering a 4K feed alongside.”
Customers are beginning to talk about the possibilities of 4K, says Megahertz chief technology officer Steve Burgess. The systems integrator and OB provider demonstrated a fully 4K truck at IBC last year and recently upgraded a couple of vehicles from HD to 4K “in a relatively simple way” for a customer.
“Customers face some very difficult decisions,” he says. “There is a solution available now, but everyone knows that interconnection by 4 x 3G-SDI coax cables is not the way forward. It is a case of assessing the benefits of being first in the market versus the costs of implementing what must be considered an interim and slightly compromised solution.”
CTV has had a 4K-ready vehicle on the road since the summer, although it was used in HD mode for Sky’s Ashes cricket coverage.
The Euro Media Group (EMG), of which CTV is a subsidiary, plans to replace all 400 of its cameras with 4K over the next four years. It has a request for proposal out to manufacturers including Grass Valley, Sony and Hitachi, and is conducting tests into 4K production.
NEP Visions runs a number of 4K-ready trucks, which have lacked the missing piece of a true 4K camera chain. As it gears up to launch its next scanner (currently with chassis built), the company’s commercial and technical projects director, Brian Clark, still has questions over kit.
“A 4 x SDI path might be practical as an intermediate step but we’re looking at how to manipulate signals around a truck in 4K over IP,” says Clark.
“One issue is how you treat audio. There is the opportunity to deliver a new audio format into the home alongside Ultra HD, so our equipment decisions are dependent on broadcaster plans and on developments at standards bodies like SMPTE.”
HDR tests
OB suppliers have also been tasked by clients, including BT and Sky, to investigate ways of bringing high dynamic range (HDR) and wider colour to the screen. Ultra HD TVs are coming to market capable of displaying HDR, which brings a more vibrant colour palette and greater contrast in the shadow and highlight areas of a picture.
OB suppliers have also been tasked by clients, including BT and Sky, to investigate ways of bringing high dynamic range (HDR) and wider colour to the screen. Ultra HD TVs are coming to market capable of displaying HDR, which brings a more vibrant colour palette and greater contrast in the shadow and highlight areas of a picture.
Tests are focused on trying to find the most efficient way to work with rec.709 (the TV colour spec that BT Sport is deploying) and rec.2020 or DCI-P3 (the new wider colour spaces defined for 4K/Ultra HD). NEP has one such test under way with Sony and the National Theatre
“Translating the information from camera to transmission is not straightforward,” says Clark. “If you adjust the rec.709 space at source it has a direct impact on the rec.2020 space when displayed, and vice versa. The aim is to find a means of delivering the best Ultra HD HDR and 1080p HDR image so that we are not altering the signal twice.”
CTV’s Grieg adds: “HDR would deliver enhanced production for football and cricket because it would provide detail into shots with high contrast shadows and pictures from night time games. Any good engineer will know how to tune gammas and clip levels for HDR, so the process should be straightforward. It has to be plug and play, though, which is a limitation of current HDR workflows.”
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2015/16 SPORTING HIGHLIGHTS
All of this activity is taking place before the hectic summer of 2016, another landmark year for live sport.
But for this year, CTV, Visions and Telegenic still have the Rugby World Cup in England (and Cardiff) for host ITV.
Arena is taking the lion’s share of ITV’s presentation facilities, fielding 16 trucks including technical and rigging units and crew transport to cover 13 stadiums and 48 fixtures over 46 days.
2016, though, is Olympic year. Arena, NEP Visions and EMG will be sending trucks and crew to Rio. Arena and EMG also have facilities ordered for the Uefa European Championships in France.
CTV’s biggest event next year is The Open, but it will be sending kit and crew (not trucks) to cover the Ryder Cup in Minnesota next September. There’s also the Queen’s 90th birthday at Windsor Castle in May to consider, although tenders had not been put out at the time of writing.
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