So, it's the 3rd day of NAB 2013, and despite weary bodies and minds, the Eurotek team are continuing to tramp the halls to see what's new and what the hot topics are. At least the sun is shining today so that's a big plus already!
As I've said in my previous blog posts, 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.
Underlying all the hype on these new technologies, of course is the requirement for manufacturers to sell what's deliverable today, and on the show floors, you can often see a divergence of views between the corporate line promoting the new technology, and the guys on the ground who have to meet monthly sales targets! But it's not necessarily a bad thing, and a touch of realism is no harm amidst the hype.
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.
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 the processing, and this will show up in keying and compositing operations. Also in transmission, but more of that later.
The delivery of this content to the consumer is a whole other 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 its possible that premium channels will see 4K as a differentiator- especially for drama and sports. And, as I said in my first post, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube have all stated their intention to support 4 K 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. So to maximise the quality of a 4K compressed image (whether compressed to H.264 or H.265) the originating material needs to be as good as possible. So while there are a lot of lower cost solutions being shown, time will tell if these have the performance to produce the pristine pictures that the compression systems will demand. The encoding process will be critical, but even the best compression technology will need to have a good signal to work with at the outset. So a move to higher quality content creation system (whether cameras or post/graphics systems) could be on the cards, and a well-defined QC process will need to be adopted by broadcasters and content delivery organisations.
So, in summary, I guess the 4K hype will become a reality- first for feature film production, then general post and production, and eventually for broadcast- but there's a way to go yet. Interestingly, a couple of people I spoke to said 4K could well become very popular very quickly in the corporate conference display and medical markets, where high picture quality is essential! So maybe that will be its first home.
Talking to broadcasters and vendors, it seems that second-screen is a more urgent topic for them, and there's a lot to chew on in that topic, so maybe that will be the subject of my next post...
As always follow me on Facebook, kevineurotek, and Twitter- @kevineurotek- feedback welcome!
Kevin
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