This article was originally published on www.display-central.com.
I will be headed to IBC shortly and my mission is to check out the state of 4K for production and distribution. I am already starting to see some advance announcements on this topic, which is sure to be a focal point for many companies. It will also help inform me for the two 4K events we will be participating in during October. These events are the 4K/UHD Symposium that Insight Media is organizing in cooperation with SMPTE in Hollywood, while the 4K-Forum is being organized by Lang AG, and will be produced in Germany. We will have more on these events in the coming weeks.
There are so many technical and business issues with the roll out and adoption of 4K/UHD in consumer and professional markets, we will be talking about this for some time to come. Some recent posts have discussed:
- New 4K Workflow Pioneered for Music Video
- NTT Releases HEVC Encoder for Mobile and 4K IPTV Services
- Crestron Releases 4K HDMI Extenders
- Subtitles for 4K Content Get Attention
- The UHD TV Pricing Conumdrum
- Will Cable Companies Bypass a 1080p Upgrade and go Right to UHD Delivery?
- New UHD TV Business Models Emerge
- Experiments with 4K Cameras in Broadcast Begin
There will be a lot to see at IBC around 4K. It is certainly reminiscent of the rush of broadcast and production providers to add stereoscopic support to their products 3 years ago, so I will be anxious to hear what these companies think of 4K vs. 3D.
In the news today – Cinery (Munich, Germany) has upgraded some of their broadcast products to support 4K and will show them off at IBC. Cinegy’s 4K product line will include Cinegy’s multi-view monitoring solution; Cinegy Multiviewer, Cinegy’s broadcast video player; Cinegy player (now supporting Sony XAVC 4K) and Cinegy’s playout and automation solution Cinegy Air. Cinegy Air will allow broadcasters to playout in 4K as well streaming 4K via IP (RTP/UDP). This latter is an indication of another trend in broadcast – the move to IP-based solutions and away from SDI-type implementations. This is clearly happening in the ProAV space so it is coming to broadcast too.
In theatrical film production, 4K workflow tools have been around for several years to support new cameras that came on line. At IBC, Argentina-based Assimilate will demonstrate its 4K DI and dailies toolset called SCRATCH 4K, which is 3 years old. SCRATCH now provides native support for all popular 4K cameras, including RED EPIC and Scarlet, Sony F5/F55/F65, Canon C500, and the GoPro Hero3. SCRATCH is a “post house in a box” solution – from dailies, to conform, color grading, compositing, through to finishing . It enables mixing and matching of any camera format, resolution or colorspace (including ACES) on the same timeline – and play back in real-time.
For the home, MHL has announced the release of the 3.0 specification. MHL was designed to facilitate the sharing of content from mobile devices to other displays in the home, office or automobile. It uses a wired connection while allowing remote control via the mobile device and charging at the same time. The 3.0 spec adds support for 4K (UHD) content using the same bi-directional channel approach, but it doubles the bandwidth compared to the 2.0 spec. This will allow display of UHD content at up to 30 frames per second – the same as the current HDMI 1.4 spec. It also will integrate content protection in the form of the new HDCP 2.2 spec, plus 7.1 sound.
MHL is connector agnostic, requiring only 5 pins. It is usually implemented in an HDMI connector package, but feature support is clearly based upon having the right silicon behind the connectors and implementing the features in the platforms. Silicon Image and other CE companies comprise the MHL group, so Silicon Image will clearly be offering chip sets to support this new standard. The big question left unanswered is: When will UHD at 60 frames be supported? And, will these new standards support 10 or 12-bit encoding, wider dynamic range and wider color gamuts. As I said – lots of unanswered questions in the 4K space. –Chris Chinnock