The Newsroom

BBC & Sky News Cameras

Related to studio and VJ cameras (August 2013)

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BA
Bail Moderator
I don't think your typical C300 shoot would be handheld or on-the-shoulder - much more likely to be on some kind of mount (tripod+head, track or similar)

It's not really a run-and-gun ENG camera or something you'd shoot an obs doc on, but for stylish factual, it's a lovely solution.

It's apples and oranges comparing a single large-format 4k CMOS design with a 3x2/3" 1080 line CCD model I guess.

I wish that were true, many many indies still love the "look" of the C300 and want that look for their doc, not realising the implications. That its just not as you rightly say geared for run-and-gun. That said the show I'm working on at the moment has both, C300 for pretties/gvs/etc and F800 for actuality, it works very well.

But I know which I prefer using!

*

Peas in a pod Smile
NG
noggin Founding member
Yes - there are always going to be some producers with Alexa tastes and C300 budgets...
LY
lynxfan
Bail posted:
The PDW-F800 is the go-to at the moment for most production companies, decent senor that's gradable thanks to hyper-gamma, decent to use, decent bitrate and no data wrangling after shoot!


Yes, I've had the opportunity to use the F800 from Sony on a couple of occasions, both shoulder and tripod mounted. Fantastic camera to use, and I felt it seemed more balanced than earlier versions, but that may just have been the lens combo on it.


It's not the right solution for News - wrong body design and to get the best from the pictures you really need to grade. (Which News don't normally do)

Oh yes, totally agree.

It's becoming possible to build 4k OB trucks (Telegenic, who do a lot of work for Sky, are building one) - and Sony have a method for using their F-series 4K cameras with a camera adaptor and regular HDC-series CCU to provide fibre connectivity and remote camera control (for racking)


I've seen the Sony F55 docked to some form of CCU on demo, but didn't have the chance to explorer further. Interesting about Telegenic. I'm guessing that 4K will probably come into sports productions (ie Football) before ENG applications. Its the kind of thing that might just give the edge in Bars etc... I guess, although I have to say I'm still not personally convinced about 3D, but that's a whole different discussion!!
BA
Bail Moderator
I have to say I'm still not personally convinced about 3D, but that's a whole different discussion!!

3D was a gimmick to sell new TV's, 4K is a legitimate technological improvement and I'm all for it! Smile
CI
cityprod
Bail posted:
I have to say I'm still not personally convinced about 3D, but that's a whole different discussion!!

3D was a gimmick to sell new TV's, 4K is a legitimate technological improvement and I'm all for it! Smile


4K is going to use up 4 times the bandwidth that HD does now. And 8K will use 16 times the HD bandwidth. In terms of practicality for transmission, I think 4K isn't practical, for either terrestrial or satellite transmission.
NG
noggin Founding member
Bail posted:
I have to say I'm still not personally convinced about 3D, but that's a whole different discussion!!

3D was a gimmick to sell new TV's, 4K is a legitimate technological improvement and I'm all for it! Smile


4K is going to use up 4 times the bandwidth that HD does now. And 8K will use 16 times the HD bandwidth. In terms of practicality for transmission, I think 4K isn't practical, for either terrestrial or satellite transmission.


That's true for 25p content, when uncompressed.

However it's actually double what you quote if you compare 50Hz HD - as we don't use 1080/50p, but instead 1080/50i currently (which is the same in bandwith terms as 540/50p). 4k will be 2160/50p, so you actually have an 8x bandwith increase in baseband terms?

On the other hand, 4k and 8k are unlikely to use the same H264 compression scheme as current HD broadcasts in Europe (the US, Japan and Australia use the far less efficient MPEG2 for HD on some platforms) H264/HEVC should increase compression efficiency significantly, so that could bring it back to 4x or 8x, or even less. I've seen 20-30Mbs quoted as figures required for 4k using HEVC - and this is with first gen encoders. It may end up being less than this. You'd probably get 2 or 3 HEVC streams on a decent DVB-S2 Ku band transponder. Not a million miles away from the bitrates used for HD when it launched with sub-par H264 encoders.

The H264 2160/50p tests on Eutelsat are around 32Mbs, using 4 x 1080/50p streams at 8Mbs each (effectively taking a large proportion of a single transponder)

For satellite, the Ka band may make sense for 4k (though fitting a new LNB may not be a popular move). OTA is always going to be tricky as the available bandwith disappears to 4G/5G mobile data/telephony.

I think 4k has a much better chance of success than stereoscopic 3D - but am still not convinced how mass-market it will be. After all, people are still happily watching DVDs instead of Blu-rays on their massive flat-screens, even though they look pretty dreadful upscaled.

Having seen 4k and 8k content I am a fan - but not sure how big the draw will be outside of sport, movies and events.

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