IBC
Sports broadcasters have given up on 4K UHD for the time being at least with the UEFA Champions League Final and this summer’s European Championship both being produced in 1080p HD HDR as the host production format.
article here
That’s a significant reversal of more than a decade long trend to up the ante in terms of broadcast resolution with each successive major tournament.
The Champions League Final has been broadcast in UHD since 2015 and the Euros since 2016 (then 2021) but now there’s been a rethink.
Nor is UEFA an outlier. “There’s been a change in delivery format for a lot of major international tournaments and also domestic tournaments where broadcasters are now looking at 1080p HDR as the chosen one,” says Eamonn Curtin, Global Client Director for leading outside broadcast facilities provider EMG.
“It’s a benefit for us technically since we just have one signal to produce and manage rather than the four that made up the UHD signal.”
If UHD cameras were used as source routing in a standard (non-IP) outside broadcast truck they would typically be distributed as four links using 3G-SDI (Serial Digital Interface). This
Quad Link 4K/UHD signal needed careful monitoring to ensure sync when combined on output and made the work of the OB technically more challenging.
That’s not the reason there’s no UHD at either event. UHD could after all be produced with upscaling. The main reason is lack of broadcaster/rights holder interest. Eight years after BT Sport became Europe's first 4K broadcaster few others have followed suit. The cost to buy kit, refresh, rip and rewire studios and OB vans let alone buy satellite transponder space is an expense few could justify when viewers were unwilling to pay a premium for the visual uplift.
More tellingly, the visual uplift in resolution wasn’t actually a huge leap when full HD High Dynamic Range came into the equation. Taste tests of HD HDR versus 4K suggested that viewers preferred the sharper contrast and detail in light and shade in the HD version.
Add to that BT Sport’s takeover by Warner Bros. Discovery which closed in September 2022. BT Sport, like Sky Sports before it, had planted a flagpole as the most consistently innovative broadcaster of its generation. Where Sky Sports led on HD, on-screen graphical presentation and dabbled in stereo 3D, BT Sport pioneered 4K, Dolby Atmos and experimented with VR with plans for 8K broadcasts thwarted by the pandemic.
WBD brand TNT Sports, which is covering the Champions League Final as host broadcaster from Wembley, is not averse to innovation but it is choosing to put its firepower into other areas. This includes virtual presentation studios the likes of which we’ve seen at recent Olympics, its remote ‘holographic’ style interview studio ‘Cube’ which features at tennis tournaments and richer data insights gleaned in realtime from athletes and equipment, as showcased during the Tour de France.
Coverage produced for digital distribution online and social media is another highly significant area of production that WBD (through Eurosport) and rights holders like UEFA, FIFA and Wimbledon are putting more and more resources toward.
Paris 2024 will, however, be produced in UHD HDR and 5.1.4 immersive audio (alongside extensive social media and digital output) by the International Olympic Committee’s production company OBS, in part because of demand for the format in Japan and by NBCU in the U.S. It’s not clear if the BBC will offer a UHD channel as part of its summer coverage.
Ursula Romero, Executive Producer at International Sports Broadcasting (ISB), said at the 4K HDR Summit last November, “We are constantly questioning whether we should broadcast in 4K and HDR. It’s a perpetual question mark because there is a big gap between producers and consumers.”
Her reasoning was that younger audiences care about other things than resolution – or indeed watching on the main household TV. “Everything revolves around social networks and they are now looking to watch sports by the minute and by the second, even in vertical format.”
Yet, Isidoro Moreno head of engineering at OBS said at the same event that Paris 2024 will consolidate 4K-HDR as the “top” TV standard for the next decade.
Most viewers won’t notice the lack of UHD coverage from either UEFA event. Indeed, the widespread use of cine-style cameras at the Euros will provide a cinematic quality to that production that viewers have not seen before.
These feeds will be cut live into the broadcast in a trend which is being ramped up across all major sports. The depth of field from the large format sensors is able to capture fan reactions, team tunnel entrances and team line ups in a way that viewers have come to expect from the numerous glossy sports docs on streaming services.
For consistency, the bulk of HD cameras used for the host coverage at the Euros are Sony HDC 3500s. There are in excess of 40 per venue and feature a global shutter to eliminates the ‘jello effect’ and banding noise. The 3500s are also capable of HDR as well as standard dynamic range. The HDR format used in the tournament is HLG.
Other than that the technical template and editorial formula for Euros coverage will be largely unchanged. “It’s a safe pair of hands,” is how Curtin puts it.
EMG servicing UEFA host coverage
EMG are providing the host facilities and the unilateral facilities for UEFA at Cologne and Dusseldorf, two of the ten venues in Germany, in a continuation of work for the tournament organisers which began in 2008.
Its specialist cameras division ACS is supplying helicopters for match coverage at every venue. It is additionally servicing the official Fan TV production for every venue with flyaway kits as well as every Technical Operations Centre (TOC). The TOCs are essentially banks of servers, routers and waveform monitors which supervise distribution of all Uefa’s on-site feeds, including those for Eurovision, UEFA broadcast partners and VAR technology.
EMG merged with fellow facilities provider Gravity Media in January although it won the Euro 2024 contract a year ago.
“One of the keys for us was that our EMG headquarters is in Cologne,” says Curtin. “We can show the strength of our combined group across Europe by sending teams from Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany.”
Its team is led by operational lead Chrissie Collins and Simon Nichols, who is Gravity Media’s director of engineering. Xavier Devreker is in charge of Fan TV at EMG, Matt Coyde of ASC handles special cameras and Chris Brandrick manages connectivity.
The groups is sending four trucks to Germany, two per venue. Each is identical in size and floorplan. One is for the host, the other for the unilateral feed, but the unilateral truck is also the back-up should anything in the host fail.
EMG is also working with ITV in Germany providing facilities for ITV’s unilateral coverage such as matchday commentary and presentation studio in Berlin. ITV feeds will be routed out of a Nova 50 series truck from each venue with production remoted back to EMG’s operations centre at WestWorks in White City where there are also greenrooms, 6 edit bays and office space of ITV’s team. For presentation, all signals are backhauled to the remote centre, incorporating video, audio and data.
Sustainability was a key reason that ITV selected EMG as its partner. The Nova 50 series truck is designed to use less power-hungry equipment. The 1700w solar mats fitted to the roof help create fuel efficiencies and internal battery power. A remote surface model enables much of the kit that would be housed in a traditional articulated OB can be maintained at WestWorks. While much smaller than conventional trucks and needs fewer crew it still features four bays of equipment including a gallery space and can accommodate up to nine people.
“ITV is able to send fewer production crew for the initial stages of the tournament to help achieve their sustainability goals,” Curtin says.
Because EMG is providing facilities at every venue for the Fan TV and TOC it is able to combine forces and send fewer trucks, regionally based too, to deliver the kit “which is another great way of reducing CO2.” EMG Group crew will also travel to Germany by train.
This is the start of a bumper summer of sport particularly for European facilities with several trucks and crew catering to Germany in June then moving across to Paris for the Olympics.
“It means most if not all facilities providers are at full tilt,” Curtin says. “There isn’t much resource availability left.
At least one of EMG’s trucks is heading to Paris straight after the Euros. Meanwhile EMG is still busy delivering T20, ODI and test cricket in the UK for Sky Sports as well as golf production for the European Tour, the centrepiece of which is The Open at Royal Troon, Scotland which begins the Thursday after the Euros final.
No comments:
Post a Comment