A new 8K camera recorder with two significant features has been developed.
First, this is the world-first camera that uses a CMOS image sensor with an organic photoconductive film instead of silicon photodiodes as a photo-electric conversion element.
One of strengths of 8K/4K broadcasting is the ability to show high dynamic range (HDR) content. To fully display the quality of HDR, the camera must have a higher dynamic range. Because saturation level of pixel was related to the area of photodiodes, it is very difficult to keep the dynamic range with an 8K camera whose pixel size is smaller than that with the current HD cameras. So we decided to adopt an organic film sensor with a higher saturation. We optimized the level diagram of the camera process by considering the balance of sensitivity, S-N ratio, dynamic range, etc. to optimize the performance of this sensor.
Secondly, an 8K recorder has also been developed using the HQX codec. Previously 8K camera recorders are adopted compressed RAW format because it had been difficult to implement a video codec adapted to 8K inside a camera recorder. Footage used RAW need to be processed at post-production process, however these methods tended to reduce the workflow efficiency. Considering the spread of 8K production opportunities and the progress of broadcasting culture, it is necessary to reduce the production cost, including the post-production methods. Thus, we tried to implement not only an 8K video codec in the camera recorder but also a High Definition (HD) one to produce proxy data simultaneously. We adopted H.264 as the HD codec which is already suitable for a file-based solution. We can re-link the 8K data at the online editor by using the edit record produced at the HD offline editor. Because of more elapsed time for rendering in file-based editing, this offline editing method is an acceptably efficient solution now. The HD proxy data can be handled separately right after the shooting; thus, it is also efficient when considering sound editing, which is processed with another flow.
Thus, in this paper, we introduce an improvement to 8K video quality by using the novel organic-film-based image sensor and our challenges in making the workflow for 8K onsite shooting programs more efficient, including post production.