In Broadcast - April 2016 - 30

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 6 - Issue 4 | April 2016

InForm

NAB Show 2016:
A Meeting Of The Minds
Contributing Editor Michael Grotticelli expects record crowds At NAB Show this year as new
advances in a number of key fields have led to renewed excitement in audio and video production...

ach year in spring the NAB
Show brings together friends
and competitors in Las Vegas for a
look at the current state-of-the-art
in technology and what's just over
the horizon. It's a good bellwether
to see what broadcasters and video
production professionals want to make
their jobs easier and more productive,
and what vendors - this year there will
be more than 1,300 companies - will be
offering them to meet their customers'
goals.
This year the NABS Show, to be
held April 18 to 21, will feature new
innovations in image resolution, frame
rates, dynamic range imaging, Internet
Protocol (IP) signal distribution, audio
networking, virtual reality and much
more.
This is the year when 4K production
equipment has reached the level of
critical mass that it's now more costeffective to buy a 4K capable camera
or switcher than it is to buy strictly
HD versions. The idea being, if you
are shooting a programme, produce
it in 4K and then an HD master can
be extracted from that if required.
[Remember 4K is four times the
resolution of HD]. This is how the
major sports networks are currently
producing high-quality slow-motion
replays during live telecasts. They
shoot in 4K and then extract just the
part of the image in question in HD and
broadcast that.

4K/ UHD And Higher
Of course when the term "4K" is
used, it means different things to
different people. Looking to save
bandwidth
during
transmission,
broadcasters are using a version
with slightly less data (3840x2160, or
Ultra High Definition, UHD, versus the
DCI spec of 4096 x 2160 pixels used
by digital cinematographers. There
are still concerns about storage and
compression, but it's safe to say that
an end-to-end 4K production chain can
be found on the exhibit floor at NAB.
Of course, most local broadcasters
have stated publically that they don't
foresee shooting or distributing their
daily newscasts in 4K for many years.
There's no financial justification for
the extra expense or the added pixels.
Meanwhile 8K equipment has begun
to show up on more and more vendor
booths, even though many are not
quite sure what this higher-resolution
format (7680 pixels × 4320 lines)
will be used for beyond large digital
signage screens. Japan's NHK has led
the charge towards 8K production,
having shown demonstrations for
the past two years at various trade
shows. At this year's show, several
new products will be shown that are
capable of acquiring and switching 8K
signals. It remains to be seen who's
buying.
It has been stated that this year's
2016 Rio Olympics in
June will be shot in
HD, 4K and partially in
8K (and virtual reality),
and that the 2020 Olympics
Games in Tokyo will be entirely
shot and broadcast in 8K.
Achieving this could
take some major
feats of engineering,
but the industry is
set on moving
forward,
if

Sony's new HDC-4300 system camera,
aimed at sports and events broadcasting
boasts three 2/3-inch 4K image sensors

NAB Show brings out the best and brightest in people and technology

only for experimentation purposes.
Many issues remain with getting it into
consumers' homes.
High Dynamic Range
High Dynamic Range (HDR) is
another buzz phrase that will be
heard across the show floor. Many
scientific and viewer tests have
shown that seeing deeper, brighter
colours and darker ("truer") blacks
is more important than extra lines of
resolution. HDR comes from the still
camera world and has added a new
dimension to image acquisition, but
is really seen as a marketing ploy to
sell new television sets. In practice,
a TV capable of HDR isn't simply one
with a high-contrast ratio. It's actually
a TV that is capable of displaying the
dynamic range of a video camera that
can capture high-dynamic range. Thus,
several camera manufacturers will
show cameras with an HDR feature
built-in, adding cost. The jury is still
out on whether HDR will catch on in a
big way within the professional video
production industry.
Along with high-quality images,
the NAB Show will also highlight
the latest advances in immersive
audio, that is using more than
5.1 surround sound channels
to create the sensation of
height (sound above), and

becoming enveloped within a space
and time. For audio engineers, it's
about mixing for individual objects as
opposed to mixing for speaker location
in a listening environment. Many of
the most popular immersive systems
use upwards of 22 channels of audio,
although a number of headphone
makers have also come out with new
products that have found an audience.
Internet Protocol
As media organisations look to
do more with less, the notion of
IP-enabled production devices has
become attractive to many. The theory
is that an IP-enabled device can be
remotely controlled over miles, so
one could shoot a soccer game in
Brazil and have the announcers
sitting in an American city, while
the viewer never knows the
difference. IP is also being used
for unmanned PTZ-POV cameras
and could see increased use in a
variety of applications
Snell Advanced Media will debut its
Kula 4K-capable production switcher
at the 2016 NAB Show

http://www.inbroadcast.com https://youtu.be/Hi6OVpcwryw https://s-a-m.com/products/1-2-mes-kula/c-24/p-234 http://www.sony.co.uk/pro/product/broadcast-products-system-cameras-hd-system-cameras/hdc-4300/specifications/ https://s-a-m.com/products/1-2-mes-kula/c-24/p-234 http://www.sony.co.uk/pro/product/broadcast-products-system-cameras-hd-system-cameras/hdc-4300/specifications/

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