Eurovision 2010 - 25/27/29 May 2010 - Norway

I know the ESC Final was eight days ago, but we can still discuss how the 2010 ESC Final result has altered Eurostats such as the ones featured near the back of the book "50 Years of Eurovision" (or whatever it was called, something along those lines) published just before the 2005 ESC. The 2010 ESC final results have moved some countries up and down the league table quite a bit. For instance, prior to the 2010 ESC, the UK was above Bulgaria in the average per year league table, now it's dropped below Bulgaria.

Does anyone know/remember if any of the spokespersons were filmed in HD? I can imagine SVT, NRK and a few others did. Did the BBC bother?

I read, maybe in this thread, that pseudo HD shots were used in most cases, involving close-up 576i shots, which when framed in the 1080 video, slotted into the scoreboard as virtual HD.

With the possible exception of NRK AIUI all voting contributions had to be 4:3 576/50i. That way they could all be processed by the scoreboard in the same way - and the way they were processed was optimised for HD (i.e. you didn't see them full-frame)

Think what you are trying to say (forgive me if I'm wrong) - is that because all the voting was in SD (aka 576/50i) they scaled it down so it was never full frame, and usually about 50% size in frame, which means that when viewed in HD it had HD resolution (it just didn't fill the HD frame)

(The BBC did a similar thing in their early HD Wimbledon tests in the very early 90s. They'd box SD 576/50i replays over a court wide so that they were HD resolution)

Interesting, thanks for the replies.

Does that mean the BBC still have a few 4:3 cameras knocking about in television centre? Or can you quite easily make the picture from a widescreen camera into 4:3?

Most SD 16:9 cameras are 4:3 switchable. In the SD studios at TVC, AFAIK all the cameras are 4:3 switchable. ARCs(Aspect Ratio Converters) are also pretty common in most studio centres and most SD vision mixers, gfx kit and so-on is all 4:3 switchable. If you were to make a 4:3 prigramme in a 16:9 studio, you could either switch every bit of kit and monitor in the gallery, or make the programme in 16:9 and simply ARC the output for transmission (or recording). The latter is FAR easier!!

As for HD, AFAIK there isn't a standard for 4:3 HD ... so HD kit is 16:9 and that's that. If you wanted to make a 4:3 programme in an HD studio (though why?) you'd probably downconvert and ARC the output.

No - you either ARC a 16:9 camera (take a 16:9 image from the camera and use equipment to convert it to 4:3) or you switch the camera into 4:3 mode. (Pretty much every 16:9 broadcast camera could run in 4:3 mode)

If you are making a 4:3 show, you'd probably switch all the cameras into 4:3, run the gallery and monitor stack in 4:3, and then all of your recordings are 4:3. (If you are used to working in a gallery in 16:9 it gets VERY odd suddenly running it in 4:3. Most monitor stacks in the late 90s / early 00s had 4:3 monitors that were letterboxed for 16:9 previewing - so suddenly the monitors look a LOT bigger in 4:3 - often called "tallscreen") If you just need to send a 4:3 output from your studio to a single location, it is probably easier to shoot 16:9 (but protected for 4:3) and then ARC the output to 4:3.

There are two ways that 16:9 cameras can generate 4:3 images :

Sony (and most other cameras) use a 16:9 sensor shaped and take the central 4:3 section when they run in 4:3 mode. This reduces the lens angle in 4:3 mode (as you quote horizontal lens angles) as they are cropping the left and right of the 16:9 frame.

Philips cameras worked differently - they used DPMS 4:3 sensors which had lots more than 576 lines vertically (4 x 576 lines?). By changing the number of lines you grouped (4 lines grouped for 4:3, only 3 lines grouped for 16:9?) you could deliver either a 4:3 full-height image or a 16:9 image with a reduced height. The advantage is that the lens angle (horizontally) remains the same in both ratios. Effectively they are discarding the top and bottom of the 4:3 frame to generate a 16:9 image - but because there are many more than 576 lines you don't get any major resolution issues - though 4:3 pictures may be slightly less noisy (and the camera more sensitive - as you benefit from greater noise reduction when averaging over 4 lines rather than 3?)

There isn't a standard for 4:3 HD in broadcast terms - if you want to carry a 4:3 signal in 16:9 HD you need to pillarbox.

NRK's voting contribution was no different to anyone else's - they even transmitted it on satellite from (AFAIK) their studios, to the voting co-ordination at the OB.

Indeed and it's often assumed by the suppliers of HD broadcast kit that 4:3=SD and 16:9=HD. Therefore trying to introduce 16:9 SD video can be problematic. I work in an HD facility and when we first set up we had a load of 16:9 SD material on tape but our HD tape machines pillarboxed it all. It took some checking of manuals and fiddling with menus to get it find the not very logically named setting.

Hmm - just received my DVD of ESC 2010 from Amazon.

Really disappointed - they've film-effected it all. Why?!

The show was shot with 50Hz motion (1080/50i I think, with some countries cross converting to 720/50p) and broadcast 576/50i in SD.

The SD DVD appears to have 576/25p motion when played on my PS3. Absolutely gutted. Good job I've got BBC and SVT HD off-air recordings with 50Hz motion and in HD...

I've just tried watching my copy of the 2010 DVDs on my Panasonic DMP-BD80 Blu-ray player and see the same bad 25Hz film effect.

The BD80 has a frame advance button, but on interlaced discs it actually advances 1 field instead of 1 frame. When you press that with discs 1 or 3 of ESC 2010 DVDs there's no difference in motion between each field (just a slight change in picture content - but people/the camera don't actually move every field - only every frame).

It seems to me:

Disc 1. 25Hz for Semi Final 1, etc. but one of the National Performances Top 1-5 is in 50hz (ie. No. 3. Romania).
Disc 2. 50 Hz for Semi Final 2 (up to about 1 hour 41 mins in, when it switches to 25Hz, then 50Hz)
Disc 3. 25Hz for the Grand Final

Just had another look at ESC 2009 final DVD, just for comparison, and that's a lot better than discs 1 & 3 of ESC 2010, with movement on every field, not just on every frame (except for the 25hz CGI etc. intro bits just before it cuts to the actual ESC camera footage).

I'll be complaining about the ESC 2010 DVD release as well .