Name
A novel method for the simultaneous creation of live, HDR and SDR video.
Date & Time
Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 3:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Location Name
San Francisco Room
Description
High Dynamic Range (HDR) television production has been slow to become mainstream due, in part, to the perceived difficulty and cost of making premium content for the small, but growing, number of viewers with High Dynamic Range televisions, whilst providing a high quality video signal for the larger number of viewers watching via the more traditional Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) services.

Deploying separate HDR and SDR production facilities to cover the same event in parallel is economically prohibitive. Some HDR cameras are capable of providing simultaneous HDR and SDR outputs which may save on camera positions and resources, but the additional complexity of routing, switching, monitoring and synchronizing both signal paths in a live production environment has proved cumbersome and difficult to manage.

In this technical paper, the authors present a new method to create both UHD HDR and HD SDR streams from a single UHD HDR production workflow, developed through a series of real-world UHD HDR production trials in 2018 and 2019, concluding with the 2019 Football Association Challenge Cup, a major UK sporting event. The paper will describe the findings from those trials and the lessons learnt, and will include descriptions of what worked well and what worked less well.

The workflow solution presented allows for the integration of both HDR camera sources and SDR camera sources (e.g. super slow-motion and specialist cameras), pre-recorded or archive SDR content and SDR graphics into the single HDR production environment. It exploits the backwards compatible nature of the Hybrid Log-Gamma HDR solution and recent advances in color volume management. The paper will show how a production's two outputs, HDR and SDR, can be made using current standard dynamic range racking/shading monitoring, with only a single HDR vision guarantee monitor.

The establishment of this new workflow represents a major milestone in the roadmap towards full UHD HDR production and enables broadcasters to bring premium content to viewers in a shorter term.
Technical Depth of Presentation
The technical depth is intermediate. Some knowledge of UHDTV background is assumed.
What Attendees will Benefit Most from this Presentation
Senior Managers, Managers, Engineers, Technologists
Take-Aways from this Presentation
Delegates will be presented with a well-tested workflow, using commercially available unmodified equipment, that allows them to quickly, and with minimal effort, start producing dual HDR and SDR UHDTV and HDTV content streams.