Martin Weiss
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Leafing through the magazine "TV Technology Europe" (March 2010 edition, sorry - couldn't find it online) I found an article where Italian broadcaster RAI explored the viability of using 4k - and RED - for broadcasting.
I'll paraphrase some sections below.
During ten days they used a R1 with two Angenieux zooms (the article states that the camera records in 4k/25p compressed at 288 Mbps JPEG 2000. I have a hunch that Græme might beg to differ.) and sent the 720/50p signal to a Sony monitor. "Critical aspects of the filming included the weight of the camera/lens unit, the significant difference in resolution between the signal available for monitoring and the signal acquired by the camera, and, finally, the difficulty in performing movements at such a low speed as to be able to maintain the perception of detail during the movements."
For post, they relied on two Avid systems, "the recorded material was imported, using AVID Metafuze software, to an AVID Media Composer platform in order to produce the off-line version.", where they edited in 1080/25p. Then "the offline version was imported to an AVID DS platform using AAF before proceeding to colour correction and finalisation in 4k. Post-production turned out to be particularly complex. There were problems - some expected but others not anticipated - resulting from the less-than-perfect compatibility between the two NLE systems, and from the need to carry out the colour correction processes without any real-time monitoring."
Rending was done on an HP xw8600 workstation with Intel Core 2 Quad processor, resulting in rendering times of about one hour per minute of footage, "and no reference display (grade 1) in 4k was available."
For transmission, DVB-T2 technology was chosen "because it offers adequate capacity for a high-quality transmission of four HD 1920x1080 streams encoded in H.264, equivalent to an aggregate resolution of 3480x2160 (sufficiently close to the resolution provided by the RED-ONE). The transport stream transmitted was then decoded using four H.264 HD decoders.
The short film was then shown on an Astro DM3400 56" LCD monitor and a sony SRX-T110 projector.
Future adoption of 4k for broadcast will depend on the availability "of screens with higher resolutions than the present High Definition".
Director Ariella Beddini is quoted with saying "4K is a directing experience that is, in some ways, thrilling, and thus needs to be carefully handled. You can obviously see much better and much more than with HD; you sometimes see too much, even things that the human eye would not naturally perceive, or at least things that you are not aware of perceiving. And then there are special effects - also available to mere mortal directors, not just the greats - and the possibility to work in poor or dangerous lighting conditions and then be able to put 'everything' right in post-production."
He continues, "But that is not really true: no bad take can become good, but a good take can become stunning. The problem is that you cannot see any of this while you are filming bacause the reference monitors are 'murky', or even while you are editing because you never see the real 'fabric' of the film, which is too heavy, and so you are never sure of the rhythm or the colour."
Beddini finishes, "And then the camera is complicated to move and operate, so nothing or almost nothing can be done impromptu; you certainly cannot seize the unexpected, fleeting opportunity. But when the opportunity stands still, and the camera picks out the eye in a portrait of the sun at dawn, or when the opportunity strechtes out in the trails of lights at night or when something that seemed to be just a shadow turns into something real, well, yes, then it really is thrilling."
Written by Daniele Airola Gnota, who is with the RAI Technological Strategies Department, and Massimo Visca, who is with the RAI Production Department's Turin production centre.
The article was sponsored by Harris.
---
P.S: I found a similar article on http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1G4b87f5e0884f1283.cde (pages 8 & 9) that shares one writing credit, but seems more neutral.
P.P.S: Found an Italian site that seems to carry the article; here's the googletranslate version.
I'll paraphrase some sections below.
During ten days they used a R1 with two Angenieux zooms (the article states that the camera records in 4k/25p compressed at 288 Mbps JPEG 2000. I have a hunch that Græme might beg to differ.) and sent the 720/50p signal to a Sony monitor. "Critical aspects of the filming included the weight of the camera/lens unit, the significant difference in resolution between the signal available for monitoring and the signal acquired by the camera, and, finally, the difficulty in performing movements at such a low speed as to be able to maintain the perception of detail during the movements."
For post, they relied on two Avid systems, "the recorded material was imported, using AVID Metafuze software, to an AVID Media Composer platform in order to produce the off-line version.", where they edited in 1080/25p. Then "the offline version was imported to an AVID DS platform using AAF before proceeding to colour correction and finalisation in 4k. Post-production turned out to be particularly complex. There were problems - some expected but others not anticipated - resulting from the less-than-perfect compatibility between the two NLE systems, and from the need to carry out the colour correction processes without any real-time monitoring."
Rending was done on an HP xw8600 workstation with Intel Core 2 Quad processor, resulting in rendering times of about one hour per minute of footage, "and no reference display (grade 1) in 4k was available."
For transmission, DVB-T2 technology was chosen "because it offers adequate capacity for a high-quality transmission of four HD 1920x1080 streams encoded in H.264, equivalent to an aggregate resolution of 3480x2160 (sufficiently close to the resolution provided by the RED-ONE). The transport stream transmitted was then decoded using four H.264 HD decoders.
The short film was then shown on an Astro DM3400 56" LCD monitor and a sony SRX-T110 projector.
Future adoption of 4k for broadcast will depend on the availability "of screens with higher resolutions than the present High Definition".
Director Ariella Beddini is quoted with saying "4K is a directing experience that is, in some ways, thrilling, and thus needs to be carefully handled. You can obviously see much better and much more than with HD; you sometimes see too much, even things that the human eye would not naturally perceive, or at least things that you are not aware of perceiving. And then there are special effects - also available to mere mortal directors, not just the greats - and the possibility to work in poor or dangerous lighting conditions and then be able to put 'everything' right in post-production."
He continues, "But that is not really true: no bad take can become good, but a good take can become stunning. The problem is that you cannot see any of this while you are filming bacause the reference monitors are 'murky', or even while you are editing because you never see the real 'fabric' of the film, which is too heavy, and so you are never sure of the rhythm or the colour."
Beddini finishes, "And then the camera is complicated to move and operate, so nothing or almost nothing can be done impromptu; you certainly cannot seize the unexpected, fleeting opportunity. But when the opportunity stands still, and the camera picks out the eye in a portrait of the sun at dawn, or when the opportunity strechtes out in the trails of lights at night or when something that seemed to be just a shadow turns into something real, well, yes, then it really is thrilling."
Written by Daniele Airola Gnota, who is with the RAI Technological Strategies Department, and Massimo Visca, who is with the RAI Production Department's Turin production centre.
The article was sponsored by Harris.
---
P.S: I found a similar article on http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1G4b87f5e0884f1283.cde (pages 8 & 9) that shares one writing credit, but seems more neutral.
P.P.S: Found an Italian site that seems to carry the article; here's the googletranslate version.
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